“The contract to run the failing National Health Service Hinchingbrooke hospital was controversially awarded in November to a private company, Circle”

Yes, but Ruddock, Odey and Platt will regret it. It ain’t easy to run a DGH (if it was, why did Hinchingbrooke get in the position is has?) and it is nutz to hand the hospital over to people who have only ever run a 28 bed hospital and have never run an A&E.

But hedge funds are gamblers, they like the idea of taking on a challenge when the odds are against them.

However, we have to be vigilant – if the government shows any sign of changing funding rules that will pay Hinchingbrooke more than an equivalent NHS hospital, or if they are allowed to ditch services like A&E, maternity or paediatrics, then we will know that it is payback time.

So does Andrew Rosenfield’s return make Labour (once again) “the party of property tycoons”?

The tories are bankrolled by about 2000 rich scum. Yet they wine about millions of union workers. I know which is the least democratic and representative.

“No wonder George Osborne is so eager to cut the top rate of 50p tax.”

Sorta doubt it. Hedgies make their money off carried interest which is taxed at capital gains tax rates.

Which I think Osborne raised, from 18 to 28 %, didn’t he?

@OP, Sunny: “FT research show that over the past 10 years, hedge fund managers have personally donated more than £14.3m to the Conservative party.”

Ignoring the first three years during which the donations were modest, hedge fund manager donations average at about £2.5 million per year. The FT figures also show large personal donations by wealthy men; the accounts for the Labour Party and LibDems will show similar donations from wealthy men during that period. (Do wealthy women act in such a way?)

Sometime around the 1990s, activists convinced large companies who traditionally gave money to the Conservative Party to desist. Quite rightly, activists argued that promoting the Conservative Party was not necessarily in the interests of the companies or their share holders. And thus the Conservative Party switched their fund raising activities, holding out the begging bowl to people who were not accountable to shareholders and pension funds.

The difficulty in responding to this change is that money is being donated by individuals. If they want to give money to political parties (Conservatives are not the only beneficiaries), that is the donor’s personal affair.

If there is evidence suggesting a link between donation and contracts (the real meat in the FT story), that is covered by bribery laws. The challenge, therefore, is to encourage and support whistle blowing and to create a culture that questions the close relationship between government and suppliers. I remember investigative journalism…

So, when the unions account for over 80% of the labour party’s funding and definitely exert their influence over policy, as this whole Burnham saga is showing, that’s ok is it?

Tyler

“So, when the unions account for over 80% of the labour party’s funding and definitely exert their influence over policy, as this whole Burnham saga is showing, that’s ok is it?”

Not *entirely* OK, but thousands of times *more* OK than the Tory model (since the unions represent the interests of millions of electors rather than thousands).

If the Tories took steps to move themselves closer to the Labour model – fewer large individual donations, more donation/affiliations from mass-membership organisations representing the interests of significant chunks of the electorate – I fail to see how that could be painted as anything but an improvement.

@ 7 GO

The tory party have more idividual donors than any other party, but of course the sdamll donations don’t make headlines like large donations from headge fund managers.

The labour party gets most of its money from the unions. Apart from this clearly buying influence, there is also the question of the manner unions fund the labour parrty.

Firstly there is union funding itself. Unions get subs from their members, but by far the biggest source of income for them is the union modernisation fund – oddly enough implemented under labour. It’s taxpayer money going direct to unions and their activities, and some being recycled back to the labour party.

Then we have the “pilgrims”. Public sector workers paid for by taxpayers, but working full time for the unions. It turns out there are thousands in the UK.

How is this democratic in any way? This is enormous amounts of taxpayer money going to unions. They then either directly or indirectly can use this money for party political purposes. Youy say unions are mass membership and represent large poirtions of the electorate, but where do I and people like me get a chance to say its unfair that taxes are going to unions, and I don’t want it to happen. There are far more taxpayers than union members.

Then there is the topic of the union donations themselves. Am I righgt in saying that union members have to opt out of political donations, and get no choice in which party to donate to? So union bosses choose the donations recipient for them?

Doesn’t sound very democratic to me.

No wonder George Osborne is so eager to cut the top rate of 50p tax.

I think this is more easily explained by Labour’s halfway-house espousal of the FTT – which would eradicate a pretty hefty proportion of hedge fund activity in the UK. £14.5m is cheap at the price…

“but where do I and people like me get a chance to say its unfair that taxes are going to unions, and I don’t want it to happen. ”

I don’t like subsidies to the arms trade. Where do I get a chance to say that is unfair and I don’t want it to happen?

@ planeshift

That’s very different, the arms trade being a business. Whatebver you say about them, they don’t almost singly fund a political party and more do so effectively out of the taxpayers purse.

Without the UMF or “pilgrims” there is no way the unions could fund the labour party to the amounts they currently do.

I don’t like subsidies to the arms trade. Where do I get a chance to say that is unfair and I don’t want it to happen?

Answer to both questions is the same – at the ballot box.

Hence the fact that union funding from government is being cut now – two parties which do not claim the unions need government funding are in power.

@ Tyler

“The tory party have more idividual donors than any other party, but of course the sdamll donations don’t make headlines like large donations from headge fund managers.”

…and in just the same way, you immediately draw attention to the large donations the Labour Party gets from the unions. Which all seems fair enough to me: if we’re worried about particular individuals or interest groups having an undue influence on party policy, it’s their large donations we need to focus on.

“Unions get subs from their members, but by far the biggest source of income for them is the union modernisation fund”

Really? The unions’ biggest source of income, bigger than the subs they’ve always received and continue to receive, is a fund that only existed from 2007 to 2009?

“It’s taxpayer money going direct to unions and their activities, and some being recycled back to the labour party.”

If you’ve got evidence of this criminal activity, I suggest you take it to the police. You could do some serious damage to Labour and the unions. As far as I know, though, the ringfence around unions’ political funds has been observed.

“Then we have the “pilgrims”. Public sector workers paid for by taxpayers, but working full time for the unions. It turns out there are thousands in the UK.

How is this democratic in any way?”

It doesn’t seem unreasonable to me that a (very) small proportion of public sector workers are paid to represent the interests of their colleagues via their union. It’s no different from student union reps being allowed to take a (taxpayer-funded) sabbatical. (But maybe it strikes you as ‘undemocratic’ that students, as well as public sector workers, have elected representatives to speak for them?)

“Youy say unions are mass membership and represent large poirtions of the electorate, but where do I and people like me get a chance to say its unfair that taxes are going to unions, and I don’t want it to happen.”

Right here? On your blog? In a letter to your MP or the press? At the ballot box? You know, all the usual places that people like you, and me, and everyone else get a chance to say they disagree with government policy.

The crucial point is this: the whole argument could be turned around on the Tories, because their donors *also* stand to benefit financially when ‘their’ party is in office via favourable tax arrangements, deregulation, state-provided or state-backed loans, investment in favoured infrastructure projects, opening up of markets, provision of unpaid labour through welfare-to-work schemes, etc., as well as in the form of direct subsidies and government contracts.

It’s all rather unseemly, and personally I think there’s a strong case for state funding of political parties based on their share of the vote. But I still fail to see any way the Tory individual-donor model can be painted as preferable to the Labour union model. At least unions have *some* sort of claim to speak for *some* significant portion of the electorate. The Tories’ individual donors are just that: individuals with private financial interests in securing subsidies, tax breaks, government contracts etc for particular companies.

@ 8 Tyler,

One correction: The Union Modernisation fund isn’t the unions’ biggest source of income. I don’t know how much the UMF was, but a TPA briefing claims it was £10m (it’s closed now anyway). It was spread over three rounds, I think three years. There are a couple of hundred registered unions that could have applied (though only around 60 significant sized ones I think). Now look at UNISON’s accounts for example. 2010, they had £165 million income from their members, so even if they got a larger chunk of the UMF than other unions as is probable as they’re second biggest, that’s a few factors away from a majority!

I don’t know of any unions that offer a choice of party to support – I think RMT branch members voted once to give a little to the Scottish Socialist Party, but that’s only other party support I’ve heard of besides Labour. Sticking with UNISON tho (as it’s one of the only ones I know anything about) members have 3 options on the political fund – not paying, paying it including an affiliation due to Labour (giving members individual, albeit reduced, voting rights in the party), or paying a levy toward political issue campaigns, but without funding Labour.

@ Richard Blogger. I do not think they can fail, actually.

http://thosebigwords.forumcommunity.net/?t=47582789&p=339665101

@6 – And when a few rich individuals do this for the Tories, it’s not a problem either! Ya?