The Conservatives support big business and corruption rather than the electorate
This cartoon by David Simonds, from The Guardian, illustrates the problem – fat-cat businesses back Cameron while the working-class poor can only watch while they starve.
Looking at the headline, one might thing that is a bold claim – but it is what David Cameron’s party supported with their votes yesterday.
The Tories fended off a Labour Opposition Day motion for Parliament to ban MPs from having directorships or consultancies with private business interests with a vote of 287 against the motion, compared with 219 for – a majority of 68.
Shadow Commons Leader Angela Eagle said the public deserved to be “safe in the knowledge” that every MP was working and acting in their interests – and not for somebody paying them.
But her Tory counterpart, William Hague, pretended that unions were a far greater influence on MPs.
In that case, perhaps he should have explained the amount of influence that unions have held over the Coalition Government during the last five years, relative to big business – to illustrate his point.
No such demonstration was forthcoming – because unions have no influence on Tories while businesses dictate the Conservative Party’s every move.
This is what the last five years of Conservative-led Coalition Government have been about, you see – changing the system to make it easier for big business to make a profit – and to pass some of it on to the Tories in donations to party funds.
You won’t see any change in that while Tories are in office.
Labour has already changed its rules to ensure none of its MPs can hold business consultancies or directorships after this year’s general election.
That sends out a clear message about who voters can trust to make the right decisions.
David Cameron, meanwhile, just can’t get anything right.
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David CaMoron gets EVERYTHING right. Right for him, Right for his cronies, Right for the Super-Rich and Right for Big (mostly foreign-owned) Businesses.
So who else voted with the Government? The LibDems??? If so another reason to wipe them out in the General Election.
According to http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/ my MP (a LibDem) was loyal and voted No. So, yes, the LibDems voted with the Tories on this, as usual – this was despite said MP appearing to agree with the motion when she spoke during the debate (and being one of the “only have one job and it’s as an MP” brigade anyway). Maybe she thought that her constituents would look at what she said and ignore the way she voted…
David Cameron’s showing was just dreadful yesterday. Lots of witless, flustered, thrashing around. He knew that if that motion had been put through, about half of his party would have had to resign their seats on the spot.
As for the constant bleating about the Unions, it was one of the most unsubtle scare-monger changes-of-subject I’ve seen in over a decade. Totally irrelevant.
It is apparent that many MPs cannot live on their basic salary of upwards of £67,000 p.a., plus, of course, generous expenses, and they want to use their parliamentary privileges and contacts to further their profit. They are not employed by the electorate for this purpose and if they can’t manage on the parliamentary salaries then they should resign and get a proper job if anyone will employ them.
Totally agree – it should be one or the other, not both! I also wonder if these “second jobs” pay tax, I thought that by having second and third jobs that you paid tax on all of them?
Oddly enough, a saying comes to mind from an ethical businessman Henry Rowntree, when he was welcoming a new baby member to the family, he summed up his philosophy in 1882 by saying: ‘Hate alcoholism, Toryism, priestcraft, and all other concrete forms of sin…and believe me, dear Claude, to be now and ever (unless thou turned Tory), thy affectionate cousin H. I. R.’
Ref: http://www.rowntreesociety.org.uk/assets/HIR-life-legacy-FINAL-as-PDF.pdf