Peter Hain, Harriet Harman And Jumbo Cash

Posted on January 12, 2008
Filed Under Politics |

Probably if you are a politician, the odd 103 thousand squid flowing through your hands is so trivial that you hardly notice. Yes, more money than most ordinary people will see in a lifetime, but to a New Labour politician, just loose change.

Certainly not important enough to properly register and audit, especially when you are a busy politician and administratively a bit slapdash. That argument, of course, would not apply to an ordinary citizen in his or her dealings with the government or its departments, as Vicki Woods argues in The Telegraph:

So the picture of Peter Hain’s injured, truculent face in the paper yesterday had me - and quite possibly you, too, reader - hopping with outrage as he tried to wriggle out of his accounting difficulties, citing absent-mindedness and being too preoccupied with his day job (Northern Ireland, Welsh Assembly elections).

However, the point seems not to be whether Peter Hain and Harriet Harman, in not being able to account properly for the funding they received in the race up the greasy pole to be deputy party leader, were just acting like normal criminally-minded politicians or normal imbecile politicians, with nothing resembling a functioning mind at all.

There still seems to be a very large elephant in the room in this regard, sucking up cash with its trunk and trumpeting as it sprays it around everywhere. The elephant seems to be saying: “Why is all this money involved in the first place?”

This may seem like too simple a question for the clever world of politics, but why are people giving money to a couple of nonentities in order that they might occupy a non-job?

If you go into a shop and give the assistant money, you do not leave empty-handed. You want a return on the transaction: an exchange of money for goods. Those people who are giving money will want a return on their investment in the form of … what?

Are we now in such a banana republic state of politics in Britain that politicians are bought and sold, like in America?

If this is really the case, can the likes of Peter Hain really be worth that much?

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