Anonymous Donations as Party Funding.

The perception that individuals and organisations donate to political parties in order to influence policy and/or receive honors makes the public, rightly or wrongly, view politics and politicians as self serving and corrupt.

In order to correct this, it has been suggested that parties should either be funded out of taxation or there should be a cap on the amount each donor can give.

I don’t think either of those two are satisfactory, and would like to suggest another alternative. Legislated anonymous donations.

Anyone wishing to donate above say £500, would have to send their cheque to the Electoral Commission nominating to whom it should go. Once a year, those donations would be passed on to the relevant party aggregated and without the names of the donors.

It should also be made an offense to let a party know, directly or indirectly you’ve made a donation, or colluded in this as a party official. The only possible reason you would want to make yourself known, would be to buy political influence.

Even if you did attempt to let yourself be known, there would be no proof you’d actually made that donation. It would be just your word. I therefore doubt any party officials would want to get involved, let alone pass on the message to politicians who actually influence policy and hand out the gongs.

Of course, there will always be those who seek to circumvent such rules. But that's isn't a legitimate argument, else we wouldn't have any rules or regulations. Making donations anonymous by law would draw a line, which people would then have to carefully weigh up the pros and cons before deciding stepping over.

Pity the poor landowners.

From The Guardian:

Zac Goldsmith has promised to keep spending on London’s rail and roads while pushing up fares if elected mayor, in a transport manifesto that attempted to paint a choice between Labour’s “experiment” in freezing fares, or delivering new infrastructure.

Launching the manifesto in Ilford on Wednesday morning, the Conservative candidate pledged to “get London building” by pushing ahead with projects including further tube upgrades, Crossrail 2 and a southern extension to the London Overground, which he claimed could be jeopardised by Labour hopeful Sadiq Khan’s proposed fare freeze. Goldsmith said that keeping fares at current levels would create a £1.9bn black hole* in the capital’s investment plans.

While younger Londoners will see fares rise, Goldsmith promised that he would keep the freedom pass, allowing over-60s to travel free, throughout the mayoral term – a pledge also made by Khan.

Goldsmith said 270,000 homes and 250,000 jobs would be unlocked by transport investment, most of which is already planned. He said: “It’s not just vital to keeping London moving, it’s also key to unlocking the land to build the homes London so badly needs.

* The £1.9 bn figure is a wild exaggeration and Goldsmith has already used that for one shock-horror headline, saying that if fares were capped, Council Tax would have to go up. That's the sensible way of doing it, of course, it mean average Council Tax increases of about £30 each year IIRC, so big deal.

But to sum up: Goldsmith expects working age commuters to pay more so that landowners can sell their land for higher prices (now referred to as 'unlocking' for some unfathomable reason). Pensioners are being bought off with their Freedom Passes (Heaven forbid their Council Tax goes up).

World Cup

From the BBC

The English Football Association has been urged to lobby Uefa for a European boycott of the next World Cup - unless Fifa implements meaningful reform.
Former FA chairman David Bernstein said it was time for drastic action against football's world governing body.
"England on its own cannot influence this," he said. "If we tried something like that, we'd be laughed at."
He says a World Cup would be weakened without Europe's top teams and that a boycott would have public backing.

As someone who watches World Cup matches I couldn't care too much where it's played. I'd prefer Russia to South America as it's closer to our time zone.

All this harumphing about what FIFA members did and who bribed them is largely irrelevant. It's no different to the FA selling off TV rights to Sky, except that that's done transparently. FIFA just have to keep up the pretence of picking the best country for prestige, while selling to the highest bidder, but under the counter.