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Lib Dems: Threatened to Discipline Honest Candidate
That's right. Tonight's South Wales Echo has the story of a Lib Dem candidate, Mark Hooper, who says he was threatened with disciplinary action if he reported a campaign donation late or drew attention to its existence. He has left the party and reported the problem to the Electoral Commission.
Only recently Mark was getting all angsty about Huhne's "Calamity Clegg" dossier over at Lib Dem Voice (comment 32 and onwards). And a month before, in the same place, he was getting all angsty about the Welsh Leadership (comment 16).
Mark (above, right) has already been more or less purged from the official Lib Dem web presence though there are cached pages. Search.
Sleaze-buster Norman Baker has also been done in for mis-use of tax payers' money. Malcolm Bruce makes a third Lib Dem in the dock. And Labour's Sadiq Khan also erred.
Hat tip: Iain Dale
3 comments:
What happpened to Miranda Grell, shite for brains?
I supect that an awful lot of this goes on at a local level - and guess which party is probably the worse offender?
The Tories have reported less donations at constituency level than the Labour Party for many years - even though they have 100s more CA's that file accounts with the Electoral Commission (the facts are easily verifiable from the Commission website). There are certain CA's which regularly report report total income in excess of £50k pa (and sometimes considerbaly more) but never (surprise, surprise) have individual donations above the £1000 reporting threshhold. The accounts are also stuffed with various committees/clubs which have the usual silly Tory names - which just show a net unreported donation and beg the question as to what stands behind.
One what one gets in return fro buying a table at the local Tory dinner? The potential questions are endless. For starters I'd be interested to know why Kent County Council is reported as having made an impermissible donation to Michael Howard's CA when he was leader of the Tory Party?
Oh Brave anonymous troll: Miranda Grell's situation is on the record. Including on this blog.
TBNGU: I've heard of other instances of LDs not reporting things along these lines also. Using Clubs etc seems to be legal but it shouldn't be. The Kent CC thing is a new one on me.
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