As the FT (and, I suspect, all other UK papers) have noted this morning:
On Wednesday the UK's Liberal Democrats and Conservatives said they would hand back the money the parties received from Joan Edwards, who died in Bristol in September last year aged 90, leaving £520,000 to “whichever government is in office at the date of my death”.
It was a quite extraordinary decision on the part of both parties to accept the funding in the first place, as many have commented and yet what their actions really tell us about what they think is, in many ways, the most interesting dimension to the story.
First, they could not believe that anyone could so believe in democratic government and the good it can deliver that they might willingly leave their money to the state to use as it saw fit.
Second, they confused government with the political parties in power.
Third, without the pressure of transparency they thought they could get away with this.
So we have people who have no faith in democracy or the process of government, who confuse their personal position with the requirements of office and who will do murky deals behind dark doors in power in this country.
Perhaps we already knew that we had such people running what I have called our Cowardly State, but it's depressing none the less.
Oh for The Courageous State.
Thanks for reading this post.
You can share this post on social media of your choice by clicking these icons:
You can subscribe to this blog's daily email here.
And if you would like to support this blog you can, here:
To be fair, her solicitors have since said they did ask her to clarify and she did say this:
http://www.politicshome.com/uk/article/83451/terms.html
Although really that just means the solicitors were a bit crap not to get the will corrected to be explicit!
…and I’m more incredulous that someone would want to leave money to a political party than the Treasury.
I found out what’s behind the idea of using the (easily manipulated) unemployment figures as an excuse not to raise the interest rates. Apparently the completely out of control banksters have made created a nest of unstable derivatives and a raise in the rates would bring the whole edifice tumbling down and the global financial system with it. The tail’s now firmly in control of the dog and, since neither Osborne nor Carney want people to realise, they’ve come up with this obviously suspect unemployment figures notion. I found out about the derivatives from the Max Keiser Report (2nd half) but Syzygsyzygy Sue who pops up her from time to time advises me Steve Keen is of the same opinion, though we don’t have a link.
Surely a simpler reason why interest rates cannot be raised is the effect it would have on house prices, mortgagees and mortgagors.
Indeed, so whay are they complicating matters by associating interest rates with unemployment numbers?
I have a friend who once suggested that he may leave money in his will to go to the people who publish begging requests at the back of Private Eye magazine, so a bequest may be eccentric and indiscriminate (although I think he was joking).
But it’s common sense that the ambiguous wording in Edwards’ legacy is not likely to mean that she wanted her money to go to any old political party that happened to be in charge at one particular moment.