| Return to
opening page |
. |
|
Ethos of CorruptionIn the political arena, it is difficult to prove corruption, but impossible to prove its absence. For this reason, there are often rumors about many politicians. Politicians are placed in apparently compromising positions because of their need to solicit financial contributions for their campaigns. Often, they then appear to be acting in the interests of those interests that fund them, giving rise to talk of political corruption. Supporters of politicians assert that it is entirely coincidental that many politicians appear to be acting in the interests of those who fund them.Cynics wonder why these individuals and organizations fund politicians at all, if they get nothing for their money. Such is the perceived threat that funders are simply buying the votes of elected officials. The articles below examine the plight of perceived Western decandence – is our society and our politicians corrupt? Labour's corruption is beyond endurance Please, sir, can I have a peerage? Blair under pressure to strip Levy of academy cash role Decadent world is in the grip of Satan, says Pope See also Daily Telegraph:
15/04/2006
We no longer find it surprising; that's the really shocking thing. Presented with allegations of vile corruption, we shrug our shoulders and mutter: "So what?" Voters have already made up their minds about their politicians. An opinion poll in this newspaper before the last election showed that 59 per cent of people believed that "most MPs make a lot of money by using public office improperly", while only 17 per cent agreed that "most MPs have a high personal moral code". The markets have, so to speak, discounted politicians' malpractice in advance. Yet the accusation that Labour has been selling honours is of a different order to what has gone before. We are not talking here of undeclared mortgages, or technical fibs, or conflicts of interest. The cash-for-honours scandal crosses the line between the shady and the corrupt, between the improper and the illegal. It is true that every political party has its share of shysters. What is being alleged now, however, is not individual venality, but criminal conspiracy: the organised peddling by a political party of decorations and places in the legislature. Since honours are granted by the Queen on the advice of her first minister, the scandal naturally touches on Tony Blair and, by extension, his entire ministry. We ought, in short, to be far angrier about the whole wretched business than we are. Those saloon bar cynics who insist that all politicians are as bad as each other are wrong. Even during the worst of the Major years, sleaze allegations turned on the dishonesty of particular MPs, not of the governing party as a whole. What makes the affair especially rank is that Mr Blair was elected on an anti-corruption ticket. On winning, he introduced a series of new party funding rules in order to keep the issue in the electorate's mind, and now stands accused of circumventing his own rules. Many Labour MPs and Labour-supporting commentators are calling for the Prime Minister to resign. We have so far not added our voice to theirs, for three reasons. First, there should be a natural bias in favour of sitting prime ministers who have a direct mandate from the electorate. Second, as a glance at the benches behind Mr Blair should remind us, there are many worse alternatives. Third, the presumption of innocence applies in this, as in any, case. If, however, it turns out that knighthoods or peerages were offered in return for financial favours, and that Mr Blair knew about it, he will have to go. Simon Heffer: 15/04/2006
They don't make headmasters like they used to. After issuing a stern
rebuke to some stroppy child for a classroom misdemeanour, they now
supplement it with: "Would your dad like a CBE?" Such things are not,
it seems, so far removed from the life of one Des Smith, arrested on
Thursday following allegations that, in his spare time from pedagogic
activities, he touted honours on behalf of the Labour Government.In my profound innocence, two things shock me. The first is that head teachers have gone the way of chief constables, seeing their main function as being to implement government policy. Senior plods now regard catching criminals as a tiresome activity, diverting them from the important business of social engineering and implementing New Labour's increasingly Stalinist philosophy. Similarly, a headmaster like Mr Smith puts educating our children second to ensuring that the Government gets re-elected. The second, and more obvious, thought is why it should be Mr Smith who is having his collar felt. Is this really the best Scotland Yard can do? Oh, I know it is said to be preparing to interview a dozen Labour donors. And, if you read the 1925 Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act - and I think we all should - you will learn that it is not merely an offence to offer an honour, but also one to agree to hand over money on the basis that you might get one. But the corruption of doling out these baubles to rich men purely because they have funded Labour will not be solved by rounding up small fry such as Mr Smith. This does, after all, go right to the top. Let us consider what our learned friends would so charmingly call "the facts". A number of Labour donors (and one Tory) were to receive peerages on a list finally published this week. They did not appear, some because they had withdrawn, others because the Scrutiny Committee had said they were unsuitable. Why were they not suitable? Apparently because it was feared that there might be too direct a relationship between their chequebooks and the smell of ermine. How, then, did that come about? Was it because someone considerably closer to Tony Blair than an obscure Essex headmaster had led them to believe it was not only possible, but routine? As one non-peer made clear from his protests when it became clear that his only route to the House of Lords would be as a tourist, he felt a deal had been done. But with whom? Mr Plod will need his wits about him, for I foresee an obvious difficulty in this case. When and if these 12 donors are questioned, it will not be easy to extract evidence to incriminate any Mr Big - or possibly even Lord Big - in the honours-broking business. Any admission that they were prepared to hand over cash in return for a bauble lines them up for two years in jail along with their supposed business partner. As with cracking any criminal network, the police will have to rely on someone singing like the proverbial canary. Yet, since the alleged donors are all fine upstanding citizens, whose only error was to allow themselves to be seduced by ruthless politicians, no doubt someone with a conscience will emerge to see that justice is done. Oh - and if someone very near the head of the Government gave the order to another to go out and raise money in this way, and guaranteed to ensure the delivery of the appropriate honours at the appropriate time, that is what our learned friends call conspiracy. It carries a heavy sentence of imprisonment. There might even be a case for impeachment. But should that fate befall any of our most senior statesmen, at least they would have the consolation of knowing that things could be worse. As Gary Glitter hasn't been repatriated to serve his sentence, at least they won't end up sharing a cell with him. In particular, questions were being raised about whether Lord Levy, who raised millions for Labour from wealthy businessmen who were later offered peerages, could remain at the head of the academy project. Mr Smith, a head teacher, was released on bail on Thursday night after being detained under the Honours (Prevention of Abuses) Act 1925. He had told an undercover newspaper reporter, posing as an assistant to a potential donor to an academy that businessmen who gave large sums were likely to be rewarded with honours, including peerages. The possibility that police may ask for Mr Smith be granted immunity from prosecution, to encourage him to spill the beans about precisely how Labour's patronage system works, is causing growing alarm. If such an application were made by the Crown Prosecution Service, the ultimate decision would lie with Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, a Cabinet member. It is expected that Lord Levy, who is the president of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust, will be interviewed by Scotland Yard detectives within the next four weeks. He is likely to be questioned under caution - rather than be placed under arrest - as part of the inquiry launched last month into whether parties have handed out honours in return for donations or loans. The possibility that Mr Blair could be interviewed by police has not been discounted but no decision is imminent. If he were to be questioned, it is likely that it would be under caution. Teaching unions said yesterday that the system of relying on wealthy businessmen to sponsor city academies must be reviewed. Mick Brookes, the leader of the National Association of Head Teachers, said the latest revelations must put the whole academy programme in doubt. "The notion of getting on board private finance is an attractive one, but this, I think, has thrown that notion into some question," he said. Asked about the future of Lord Levy, he said it was "one of the questions" that would have to be addressed. Labour MPs said the controversy over the way academies were funded would not only call into further question Lord Levy's future as a fund-raiser but also his position as the president of the Specialist Schools and Academies Trust. Mr Smith stepped down from the trust after his conversation with the undercover reporter appeared in The Sunday Times in January. Steve Sinnott, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, said: "We welcome good links between schools and business. "What we will continue to oppose is people being able to peddle in our education system their narrow beliefs and prejudices because they are prepared to put £2 million into a school. That is wrong and parents know it is wrong." Many Labour MPs have long resented the academies, regarding them as a form of privatisation of the education system. David Chaytor, a member of the Commons education select committee, said the latest developments had raised questions about the programme's accountability. Other Labour MPs said that Mr Blair was now likely to face even more problems pushing his controversial Education Bill - which envisages the creation of self-governing trusts with businessmen involved on governing boards - through Parliament. Margaret Morrissey, the spokesman for the National Confederation of Parent Teacher Associations, said she believed that the police investigation should go wider. "If this head teacher did what he is accused of doing, then I doubt very much whether he took it upon himself to act alone, without instruction," she said. Toby
Helm, Liz Lightfoot and John Steele: 15/04/2006
Pope Benedict said last night that the world was in the grip of Satan and prayed for mankind to open its eyes to the "filth around us". At an Easter ceremony that recreated the passage of Jesus Christ to the crucifixion, Benedict XVI lashed out at man's "decadent narcissism". The Pope: Society values 'immorality and selfishness'. He said "a slick campaign of propaganda is spreading an inane apologia of evil, a senseless cult of Satan". The Good Friday service, held at the Colosseum, showed the 14 stages of Christ's suffering and was designed to allow worshippers to share in the agony of Jesus. During the first and final stage, the Pope carried the cross. The prayers, written by Archbishop Angelo Comastri, the Vatican City's vicar general, were approved by the Pope, and reflected his strongly conservative outlook. "Surely God is deeply pained by the attack on the family," the Pope said. "Today we seem to be witnessing a kind of anti-Genesis, a counter-plan, a diabolical pride aimed at eliminating the family." He also expressed fears about genetic modification, and said it was "insane arrogance" to play with the "grammar" of creation. The meditations were designed to invoke a feeling of man's sinfulness ahead of the dark hours of Easter Saturday. Bodies are "constantly bought and sold on the streets of our cities, on our television channels, in homes that have become like streets," he said. Accumulating wealth was "robbery" when it "prevented others from living". He deplored "the division of our world into belts of prosperity and belts of poverty". The Pope said society valued "immorality and selfishness as if they were new heights of sophistication". The downbeat message echoed the Pope's words at the same ceremony last year, when, as Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, he led the Way of the Cross in place of the ailing Pope John Paul II. In those meditations, he compared the Church to "a boat about to sink, taking on water on every side". He lamented "how much filth there is in the Church", and said that "a Christianity which has grown weary of faith has abandoned the Lord". Since his election almost a year ago, the Bavarian-born Pope has surprised many with his gentle public persona. At yesterday's service, however, his ferocity was a reminder of why he was once nicknamed "Cardinal Rottweiler". John Allen, the author of two books on Pope Benedict, said: "Is this the real Pope Benedict re-emerging? He has projected a very different tone in the last year, but that does not mean that he has changed." On Thursday, the Pope poured scorn on revelations within the recently published Gospel of Judas, a fourth century text which is sympathetic to Judas Iscariot and whose crumbling fragments claim that Jesus instructed Judas to betray him. The Pope celebrates his 79th birthday on Easter Sunday. Mr Allen said he would adopt a lighter tone at an open-air Mass at St Peter's. Malcolm
Moore: 15/04/2006
See also Crime Pays Lords Kaput Reforming the Lords Lord Levy - schmoozing Labour into trouble Sleaze and political corruption Arthur Maundy Gregory Berlusconi & Blair Bankrolling New Labour David Mills |
||
| meditations |
top |
|