Friday 20 July 2007

Fishy business?

I am grateful to Guido Fawkes' website (see links) for this piece of evidence based politics:

The correlation between making large donations to the Labour Party and receiving an honour is extraordinary. Statistical analysis shows that 58.54% of all donors giving more than £50,000 to the Labour Party receive an honour. This compares to just 0.035% of non-donors. Large Labour Party donors are 1,657 times more likely to receive an honour than a non-donor and 6,969 times more likely to receive a peerage. It is almost impossible to avoid the conclusion that the Labour Party has been selling honours, including places in the House of Lords. An analysis of all donations over £50,000 since 2001 reveals that Honour certainly has its price. We publish below the average amount donated by the recipients of various honours – an “Honours Price List”. Those receiving a Peerage have given £1.07 million on average, and a Knighthood £747,000...

I am happy to reassure you that the Save Bedford Hospital party will not make any recommendations for honours (not that anyone would take the slightest notice if we did!)

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

I think that this whole sorry business does go to show that we need a totally new system of funding politics. My personal suggestion would be a MAXIMUM donation of £50 per person per year...then you would need to involve lots of people in your party.

Anonymous said...

You have my vote Barry.
Please keep up the good work and don't let the bstds grind you down.