Making a Difference

This is one of the most interesting and difficult prompts for quite a while. I had to decide whether to be light hearted or serious. That wasn’t easy, because I don’t want to turn my blog into a polemic but equally I want to talk about things that matter.

The law I would change would be to do with elections at all levels. I would ban donations to individuals or parties over £50,000 per annum. It would, at a stroke, remove a huge amount of power from vested interests like financial institutions, oil companies, media tycoons, tech companies and unions to control political decisions. I have included unions here not because I am antagonistic towards them, quite the opposite in fact, but because you cannot make an exception for anyone or any organisation no matter how much you agree with them. If, for example, David Attenborough wanted to donate £1 million to the Green Party, he should be prevented from doing so. He could, of course, set up a trust to donate £50,000 per annum for 20 years.

Huge donations have led to a huge level of corruption throughout the world. Look at the last decade or so in just about every country for proof. Hardly anyone believes in or trusts politicians to do the right thing because we know that they are, pretty much without exception, dependent on and corrupted by their paymasters. They are in politics for what they can get out of it not for what they can do for society. These huge donors are allowed to distort the political system and buy influence and until they are stopped the political system will get worse and worse worldwide and continue it’s current course towards cruelty affecting as many people as possible and power and influence for the few who can afford it.