PeteBrant

BBC NEWS | Politics | No charges on 'cash for honours'


Anyone else think this is a complete whitewash, or is it just me?

I suppose it could be coincidence that every single person that has donated over £1 million to the Labour party ended up a peer of the realm, and that subsequent to that, any large donor was told to "lend" money rather than donate it (that way their identity could remain secret, makes it loads easier to knight them, then).

But I doubt it.

TopBanana

Well you'd have to prove they were promised peerages. Not easy I'd imagine.

PeteBrant

No, I suppose not. The whole thing relies on a paper trial/whistle blower, neither of which seem to hae appeared.

pwhittle

for once I'm with the cynics. Whether anyone's guilty or not, I've never seen such a transparent whitewash. the government controlled the 'investigation' from day one, and made their aims clear well before any results from the investigation.

I wonder if Blair would have acted the same had he not known he wouldn't be there at the end?

warrenm2

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...

Source : The Price of Dishonour

Dr Hu

I'm surprised that you all seem surprised!

I bet there was a fair bit of leaning on the Senior Police Officer for the right outcome!

Its like an epsisode of 'Yes Prime Minister' - I can imagine Humphrey pulling all the strings to make it happen......

PeteBrant

See, this is the clincher for me.

During the Watergate affair, Carl Berstien & Bob Woodford who exposed the story in the washington post said "The problem is that the people doing the operation weren't very smart."

I think the same may apply here - We assume that politicians and party officials are far too devious and clever than to make such a blunder as to be so utterly obvious with thier policy - But there we have it in plain view - Donate £1million, get a knighthood guaranteed.

Dan W

New Labour has systematically lied to us so often it is hard to beleive anything they say anymore.

In fact I would believe the opposite of what would once come out of Bliars mouth.

I find it hard to believe Brown aswell.

SJ_Skyline

Even better than the Hutton whitewash!

pwhittle

I don't think anyone's acting surprised.

To be fair though, the above stats for non-donors would presumably be for the entire population. A fairer comparison would be people who are in a position to give away that sort of money. If those figures were substantially less than the donors, that's be telling

CrisPDuk

The way I read it, the stats for non-donors were for Labour Party members, rather than the the population as a whole

DCI Gene Hunt

Here's the other famous "It was all just a dream/it NEVER happened"

Leslie

I imagine it was not down to the policeman heading the investigation but the CPS under the direction of a member of the establishment.

As I said in another thread-it confirms the existence of graft and corruption in the highest levels.

Les

pwhittle

yes, but in terms of position and wealth, the labour party membership will largely reflect the country as a whole. If you just considered how many of thos who could afford such a large donation and got a peerage, against those who did donate and got a peerage, you'd have true comparisons.

Not suggesting for a moment that there wasn't anything dodgy going on, it's just nice (though rare) to be given accurate information to base a view on.

PeteBrant

Not sure where you are going with this. Statistically, if you dontated a million pounds or more, you had a 100% chance of getting a knighthood/peerage.