Day 2171: WHAT a COINCIDENCE

Thursday:


On the day that the papers were ALREADY wall-to-wall with coverage of the Princess Diana Inquest ("Conspiracy Cover Up" or "Ghoulish Death-fest", take your pick), we get news of new developments in the "Lord Blairimort is going to prison" saga.

As many of those same papers have commented, what a day to bury bad news!

But that is not the ONLY coincidence today:

News breaks that Lord Blairimort has been interviewed by the police over cash for honours.

News breaks that Mr Frown might have pushed through an honour for a close chum who also donated £1.3 million to the Labour.

Fancy BOTH of these stories appearing on the same day!


Meanwhile, Downing Street spokespixies were also hard at work denying any attempt to hamper the police investigation into cash for honours.

"It was a Christmas Hamper," said one pixie.


Mr Sir Hayden Philips has been looking into what the parties could do to raise money if ACCEPTING HUGE BUNGS is to be done away with. He has come up with the suggestion of a CAP.

Naturally, the Labour are FURIOUS about this, because they ABOLISHED wearing caps as part of their rebranding exercise in the 1990's!


Of course, the REAL problem is that Mr Sir Hayden has said that the top amount of a donation should be £50,000.

Now that SOUNDS like LOADS (and indeed would pay for AT LEAST half an MP, even if their new pay proposals went though) but – as the HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY might have said – that's just peanuts compared to ADVERTISING SPACE.

Trying to keep those big billboards covered will make the Labour go BANKRUPT (or to be honest MORE bankrupt given that they already owe more than twenty-MILLION pounds!) if they cannot call on big donations from the UNIONS.

There are only something like 69 Unions affiliated to the TRADES UNIONS CONGRESS, which would mean a total of about three-and-a-half million pounds, even if all of them WANTED to give money to the Labour.

THAT'S not enough to run a THIRTY MILLION pound advertising campaign on, now is it!

The Labour have held an emergency meeting over what to do about party funding. By all accounts, they were PRETTY CROSS.

"We feel we're being sold out," said Mr John McDonald.

To be fair, selling the NEC is certainly one solution to Lord Blairimort's problems!

This is not to forget that the Conservatories are EVEN MORE IN DEBT than the Labour, but the wheeze of a cap on donations is not so much of a problem for them, as it will only involve the extra work of setting up a few more DODGY FRONT COMPANIES.

The obvious solution to all these problems of course is SPEND LESS MONEY, but this does not seem to have occurred to the Labour or the Conservatories!