Would you like more of your taxes to help fund political parties? At a time when every service imaginable is being cut and the Government is limiting the cash it pays out to all and sundry, many of you may be thinking I have not yet sobered up from the New Year.
Yet this is being considered as the Liberal Democrats want party political donations to be capped at around £10,000, and trade unionists to choose whether they wish to fund Labour.
This has been suggested before but quietly shelved, as it could leave political parties with not enough money to campaign, hence the call for the state to subsidise them.
The cost was put at £100 million over five years, on top of the £7m a year they already get, which was considered a difficult ask in these trying times.
They are not kidding.
The coincidence, however, of four large donors to the Conservative Party being handed awards in the New Year’s Honours list has reignited the debate.
Although it obviously was a coincidence, it might not look that way and has certainly angered some politicians.
So the answer, once again, is to limit the amount that can be given and to make up the shortfall, though not immediately, by giving political parties state handouts.
The Lib Dems, who feel shortchanged in the donations game, believe that both Labour and the Conservatives have to give ground, first on Trade Union funding, the latter on large donations.
Why do they need any money at all, I hear some of you asking.
Well running political parties is expensive, as is holding elections.
The problem is made worse if one party has bigger spending power and can therefore get its message across more powerfully.
In the USA, it is necessary to be a pretty rich person in order even to enter the race.
But, I hear you mutter, there are allegedly 18 millionaires in the current Cabinet, so cannot they pay more? Again there is no reason why not, so long as it does not become an unofficial necessity for a candidate to be a millionaire before they can stand.
But - you are warming to this - how can MPs be trusted to receive state funding for running their own parties.
They can’t, in my opinion. In various ways MPs and political parties get far too much money and benefits, which still largely seems unaccountable.
And most of them still don’t get it, believing all this largesse is somehow their right.
Let them find their own money.
Would it not be easier simply to ban people who make party political donations of more then £10,000 from being awarded in any way? I thought we were supposed to be stopping the rich and the famous from having honours handed out to them anyway. Rich people can give donations and poor people receive knighthoods.
Problem solved.
FOR a change there are no elections this year in Bedford Borough.
As in recent years the politics seems to have disappeared from local politics, I am sure we will not be too upset.
We used to have the problem that they were constantly at each others’ throats, now most of the councillors seem to be semicomatose.
And with the economy bouncing along the bottom, there might only be cuts on the council agenda.
I think it is time for the people to speak. Why not put your thinking caps on and decide what the council can do to improve the borough without spending a lot of cash.
We promise to publish all ideas that are not barking mad or libellous - those were the days - and see if councillors will be willing to sign up to them. Over to you, council tax-payers.
