What do people think about this? How can we ever expect to have politicians who have any integrity and who go by their conscience if they are dependent on their very existence on the charity of others. I think the only way to solve the problem would be for all funding to be from the public purse. In addition as it would be our money we would want severe limits put on this, for instance in election campaigns and so on.
What do other people thing. Bring politics back to the Politicians or leave our country at the beck and call of the highest bidder?
I am against the idea of money coming from the public purse. Why should my taxes contribute to political parties who I neither support, nor trust?
What do people think about this? How can we ever expect to have politicians who have any integrity and who go by their conscience if they are dependent on their very existence on the charity of others. I think the only way to solve the problem would be for all funding to be from the public purse. In addition as it would be our money we would want severe limits put on this, for instance in election campaigns and so on.
What do other people thing. Bring politics back to the Politicians or leave our country at the beck and call of the highest bidder?
Maybe they could ban corporations from donating to politicians. Ban the lobbyists and the like.
I am against the idea of money coming from the public purse. Why should my taxes contribute to political parties who I neither support, nor trust?
What about new political parties?
Who gets to decide if they get funding?
Wouldn't be good because entrenched groups, would make it difficult for new groups, to enter the race.
Maybe they could ban corporations from donating to politicians. Ban the lobbyists and the like.
No limit on what individuals can give.
No need for public funds to be involved.
I accept that that could pose a problem. However at the moment they also have problems. I am sure something could be worked out. At the moment however it is down to donations and we seem to have a similar Israeli Lobby to the US.
One of the advantages of getting old is that you can see when there appear to be strange shifts for no reason. The attitude of our Government to Israel is one of them - and I am not talking about Cameron's remark, I am talking about a lot more serious stuff.
It should certainly be against the law for any funding of this kind. Clearly it puts our foreign policy under blackmail. It deceives the British public who like myself fail to know this is going on and is basically a userping of our politics.
I find this totally unacceptable and believe if the UK public knew about it fury over politicians expenses would seem a minor inconvenience.
You think that's bad, HA!
You should see some of our voting districts.
Many of them, solely created for a party to retain power.
As you all know, I have been an avid supporter of Liberal Friends of Israel, emotionally, physically, mentally and financially. I have rallied to the cause as often as time and money allowed. As a person that has always considered myself "pro-Israel", I have very rarely called into question the actions of Israel. Least of all have I never called into question Israel's right to defend itself.
Over the past weeks I have expressed, at great length, my opinions that I do not support the current military mission that Israel has undertaken in Gaza. Since the expression of said thoughts, I've been called an anti-Semite, a Jew hater, a bigot, a neo-nazi, a liar and a terrorist supporter.
As a life long Liberal, I have always been of the impression that we, as Liberals, belong to a party that encouraged debate and did not try to censor, stifle or end said debate. Yet, over the past week alone, I have heard rumours of our own MPs being told not to speak about Gaza, I have witnessed firsthand our new War Room adviser stifle debate on his blog as often as possible (even referring to me as a "former liberal activist'), I have witnessed the Chair of Communications for Liberal Friends for Israel stifle debate on his Liblog aggregator and his one-sided participation in comment sections across the internet.
4. I do not recognize the duly elected Hamas government and do not support the ideology of said Hamas
What do people think about this? How can we ever expect to have politicians who have any integrity and who go by their conscience if they are dependent on their very existence on the charity of others. I think the only way to solve the problem would be for all funding to be from the public purse. In addition as it would be our money we would want severe limits put on this, for instance in election campaigns and so on.
What do other people thing. Bring politics back to the Politicians or leave our country at the beck and call of the highest bidder?
What do people think about this? How can we ever expect to have politicians who have any integrity and who go by their conscience if they are dependent on their very existence on the charity of others. I think the only way to solve the problem would be for all funding to be from the public purse. In addition as it would be our money we would want severe limits put on this, for instance in election campaigns and so on.
What do other people thing. Bring politics back to the Politicians or leave our country at the beck and call of the highest bidder?
I've thought about this from time to time, but remain unsure whether it would work out as intended. I know this is the Euro forum but being American my intrest is in whether it could work in my own country...
If each politician got the exact same amount of money, and owed nothing to big contributors or lobbyists, that might help keep them a bit more honest.... or would the money just go underground?
Are we going to forbid intrest groups representing concerned citizens from publically talking about politics and politicians? Such as the ACLU, the NRA and the NAACP? Would that not be a direct violation of the first Amendment and chill freedom of speech?
Who decides who gets funding? Will the Libertarians and Constitutionalists get the same money as the Republicans and Democrats? What about the Socialist party, Green party, and Neo-Nazi's?
There are too many unanswered questions and problems for me to support such a measure at this time.
I've thought about this from time to time, but remain unsure whether it would work out as intended. I know this is the Euro forum but being American my intrest is in whether it could work in my own country...
If each politician got the exact same amount of money, and owed nothing to big contributors or lobbyists, that might help keep them a bit more honest.... or would the money just go underground?
Are we going to forbid intrest groups representing concerned citizens from publically talking about politics and politicians? Such as the ACLU, the NRA and the NAACP? Would that not be a direct violation of the first Amendment and chill freedom of speech?
Who decides who gets funding? Will the Libertarians and Constitutionalists get the same money as the Republicans and Democrats? What about the Socialist party, Green party, and Neo-Nazi's?
There are too many unanswered questions and problems for me to support such a measure at this time.
Maybe they could ban corporations from donating to politicians. Ban the lobbyists and the like.
No limit on what individuals can give. No limit on commercials, ads, etc etc.
No need for public funds to be involved.
I am against the idea of money coming from the public purse. Why should my taxes contribute to political parties who I neither support, nor trust? I am, however, in favour of strictly policed caps on electoral spending. It should be a flat cap, across the board overseen by the Electoral Commission. I'd also maintain the ban on political TV and radio advertising
and tighten up the legal, decent, honest and truthful requirements in billboard advertising (no more demon eyes).
Still, the frauds and lavish cash payouts at EU level truly do make our scandals look like dog food in comparison.
not really.
I guess representative democracy just is not what we expected it to be. It all seemed to end in the 80's. Laws are brought in on funding and broken by all and sundry. People do not have much interest in political parties any more - one of the reason the BNP managed to wiggle in with a couple of seats at the European Election.
Party Membership is at an all time low and shows no sign of returning and yet within democracy we now have lots of different people trying to work for change rather than doing this through political parties which was the old idea. For instance UK Amnesty is hoping to have 1,000,000 members some time soon, that is more than the membership of all three parties. Perhaps we are seeing democracy diverse and show itself in other ways.
I accept that I am going off on a tangent. However it is consistent with the topic of the thread. People who are members of political parties pay membership fees. Clearly when sufficient people were interested this brought considerable money in.That has not much to do with funding of political parties and elections though.
That maybe so but I must admit that when I started this thread I was thinking of the UK, not Europe. I should have been more clear.Membership of political parties is in decline for various reasons which vary from country to country, but other than the UK, voting % are pretty stable if not growing across Europe during national elections.. again it varies country to country.
Now if we move to the flip side of political funding, aka the USA, then I doubt you will see higher membership of political parties (considering there are only two in reality), and certainly not higher voting %.
I doubt changing our financing methods in Europe to match the US, will help in anyway on political party memberships or activity.. quite the opposite I would bet.
I accept that I am going off on a tangent. However it is consistent with the topic of the thread. People who are members of political parties pay membership fees. Clearly when sufficient people were interested this brought considerable money in.
That maybe so but I must admit that when I started this thread I was thinking of the UK, not Europe. I should have been more clear.
In the UK since the 1980's and coinciding with the time when we were run by people whose top 'philosophers' were people who did not believe in democracy, we have seen people more and more feeling impotent with politics. Most young people nowadays would not think of joining a political party and with good reason. What point is there? What are they standing for? What have they to offer us? Is there any difference? There simply is nothing to get people interested. All they know is that they are all somewhat dishonest.
This lack of interest in politics has left holes in it for people sneakily to come in and affect our socio/political landscape without us being aware of it.
However I see hope because although the political parties do not present a great degree of interest to British people, except to mock, people are more and more becoming interested in interest groups. This gives me heart because it lets me know that there still is a political life going on in this country.
No, I am just thinking of the UK where there is far too much emphasis on Lobbying for the interests of Israel. You rarely hear about it but it is having a strong effect. I believe that that is corruption.
We have recently been told we are for instance Israel's ally. First I heard of it. I always understood us to be not on anyone's side, just wanting a just solution and very critical of the US's support for Israel regardless of whether she is right or wrong. Once you start doing a little looking you discover this is certainly in large part due to an enormous amount of funding going to all parties, but most of all the Conservatives I am told, and MP's increasingly must be also a member of their parties 'Friends of Israel' society. This I think has all happened in the past ten years. It would be silly to imagine it is not affecting British Politics but it is doing it in a subtle way which people do not see. They just start hearing that we are Israel's ally, that criticism of Israel is antisemetic and so on. It is affecting our journalism as well.
I am afraid we are going to become the USA, hence my radical views on funding - besides of which the Political parties are not worth it - when they are we will join and fund them and in the meantime some of us will continue to go out on election nights just to make sure parties like the BNP do not sneak in during this hiatus.
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