From The Guardian:
But lobbying doesn't begin to cover the extent of corporate influence. More than ever the Tory party is in thrall to the City*, with over half its income from bankers and hedge fund and private equity financiers. Peers who have made six-figure donations have been rewarded with government jobs.
But the real corruption that has eaten into the heart of British public life is the tightening corporate grip on government and public institutions – not just by lobbyists, but by the politicians, civil servants, bankers and corporate advisers who increasingly swap jobs, favours and insider information, and inevitably come to see their interests as mutual and interchangeable.
The doors are no longer just revolving but spinning, and the people charged with protecting the public interest are bought and sold with barely a fig leaf of regulation.
* Ahem, does the name Tony Blair ring any bells?
It isn't far enough
42 minutes ago
8 comments:
You could replace 'corporate influence' with 'Union influence' and that would fit Labour to a T as well.
S, yes, that's the tedious right wing rhetoric, but what you overlook is that the Labour party was originally set up trade unions/trade unionists. It was originally the political wing of trade unions.
If that were still the case and you don't like trade unions (mainly public sector non-jobs, nowadays), well don't vote Labour, that's fair enough.
But unless you have lived under a stone for the past twenty years you would know perfectly well that Labour and Tories are both in the pockets of the same people, the usual suspects (bankers, landowners etc).
The trade unions have little influence over Labour policies except for a couple of token things at the margin (non-jobs).
M, you can just as well say that the Tory party was set up to represent the interests of the landowning classes. After all , back then you had to be a landowner to be able to vote.
My take on this is "why does the G think this is news?; wasn't it ever thus?" The present state of affairs says much more about the corruption of the Labour Party than that of the Tories, who, IMHO, were always in the pockets of the usual suspects. The G is slightly dodging the real issue of corruption here, the corruption of the Civil Service.
I was taught that the Government comprises the Executive (Ministers and the Civil Service) and the Legislature (MPs and Lords), with the former being the more powerful. The only point of overlap is the Ministry and they are few compared with the Civil Service, so their corruption does not matter half as much as the corruption of the Civil Service. Perhaps it was ever thus, and I am taking a rose-tinted view of the past, but I don't think so.
B, yes, agreed to all that as ever. And yes, they clearly do get more corrupt over time, it appears to be a natural tendency.
I mean, everybody slagged off "sleaze" under Major government, but they were saints and choir boys compared to what went on under New Labour, and under the Lib-Cons it's got even worse.
And the next govt will be worse than this one, and so on.
Labour = Rent seeking directly from incomes.
Tory = Rent seeking indirectly from incomes via land.
BTW I think you missed this?
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-06-04/housing-bubble-goes-mainstream
SB, that's a fair summary of the historical roots, although ultimately it comes to the same thing in the real world (the two parties are now more or less identical in every way).
Ministers should be entitled to appoint their own private office of hand-picked aides from both in and outside the civil service, Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister said, as he claimed Whitehall was still gripped by "a bias to inertia".
In his major new proposal he called for ministers to be served by their own appointed French-style cabinet, saying ministers are less well supported in the UK than in many other comparable countries.
He said the scale of support given to ministers matters since they only have "small teams chasing progress and pulling the levers on policy".
He added: "Many of the Labour former ministers who have spoken out on civil service reform have called for greater direct support for ministers. This is not about more political advisers. But it could be about being able to bring in from outside people of experience and ability".
"What they must be is personally responsible to and chosen by the minister – that's the key to sharpening accountability."
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