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This is embarrassing for the UK's reputation. We're turning into a banana republic without the bananas

This Channel 4 news report is particularly damning, and I would urge my fellow Brit dakka members to read this.

http://www.channel4.com/news/election-expenses-exposed

I was going to post this in the EU thread, but I don't want to derail that discussion.

If these allegations are true, the implications are massive. I get the impression that certain people are glad the EU referendum debate is in full swing, otherwise, this story would get more prominence, but it can't be allowed to be swept under the carpet.

I don't think it embarrasses the UK. In a real banana republic such shenanigans would be ignored or never discovered at all. Our Electoral Commission and the Police are on the job with a good prospect of some arrests, it would seem.

I've been following the story for a while. My impression is that it might not be an cunning evil conspiracy by the Tories so much as a series of relatively minor technical infractions of the rules caused by ignorance and stupidity.

That does not absolve them, of course, and they must go through the process and be punished if the cases have merit.

I would be interested to know if any of the other parties have had similar things with their battle busses and so on in the past.

The specific thing against the Conservatives is that they are the richest party by a big margin and with the local election spending limits they have the wherewithal and motive to "top up" local initiatives from central/national funds. This of course gives them an unfair advantage.

Time for funding and spending limits on the national scale, perhaps?

Channel 4 spouts BS at the best of times.

There's corruption in pretty much any country's elections.

 Kilkrazy wrote:
I don't think it embarrasses the UK. In a real banana republic such shenanigans would be ignored or never discovered at all. Our Electoral Commission and the Police are on the job with a good prospect of some arrests, it would seem.

I've been following the story for a while. My impression is that it might not be an cunning evil conspiracy by the Tories so much as a series of relatively minor technical infractions of the rules caused by ignorance and stupidity.

That does not absolve them, of course, and they must go through the process and be punished if the cases have merit.

I would be interested to know if any of the other parties have had similar things with their battle busses and so on in the past.

The specific thing against the Conservatives is that they are the richest party by a big margin and with the local election spending limits they have the wherewithal and motive to "top up" local initiatives from central/national funds. This of course gives them an unfair advantage.

Time for funding and spending limits on the national scale, perhaps?

If it were a handful of MPs, I'd be inclined to agree with you, but 29? Nah, something else is going on there. Let's not forget the Tories have a track record of this. You and I both lived through the 1990s with all the Tory sleaze and corruption of the John Major years.

As for the electoral commission, they were pretty toothless during the Scottish independence referendum, when rules were flagrantly being breached, so I don't have a lot of faith in them.





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 angelofvengeance wrote:
Channel 4 spouts BS at the best of times.

There's corruption in pretty much any country's elections.

I couldn't give two hoots for what other nations get up too

We need to be whiter than white. The odd renegade element will always be there, but once it starts creeping in on this scale, we could be storing up big problems. That's how it starts - drip drip drip.

We need to come down on it like a ton of wet concrete. I recognise of course that these are only allegations, but if there's criminality involved, stick 'em in the tower of London!

Well, you're comparing the UK with a banana republic, so I think that fairly introduces the idea of a comparison with other countries.

Corruption can never be eliminated in human life. What matters is the efforts to deal with it.