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Originally Posted by jem
I do get the reasoning behind your post, but the practicalities and unintended consequences are quite a problem.
"We should limit political donations....."
Limit the amount of a single donation or the total that can be donated to a party?
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Up for either. Certainly the first one. I don't really have a problem if a party has a lot of small donations because they're not in hock to any single one of them, but you need to make sure it's not open to abuse. There is already a limit on how much you can spend in an election as well.
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"And our politicians shouldn't take money that could influence them."
Well yes of course not, but how can you prove that a particular donation influenced them?
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You can't, so I think the 'gifts' they are legally allowed to get should be very limited.
Maybe pay them more, but no 2nd jobs unless it's in the public sector (doctors need to practice to maintain their licence, for example), and no personal donations. Not even the fee for being on Have I Got News For You, that has to go to charity.
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Absolutely true, but how to guard against this? I think that the current system of making all gifts to politicians or parties, disclosable, in a register that is freely available to all voters, is the fairest solution. Everyone is free to donate as much as they want to whoever they want, but it's open, everyone can find out about it. Let the electorate decide if they think that the politician was bought, and vote accordingly.
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As I said, you just ban it. There is certainly no good reason to allow politicians to get expensive personal donations as gifts; I doubt they were getting them for being great guys.
They're public servants; they should be paid by the public. If they don't like it and would rather be rich then being in charge of the laws that govern us isn't for them.
I'll admit I don't care too much about the small-ticket items. Not going to lose sleep if someone wants to buy Farage a Wimbledon ticket or some whiskey, but getting millions of pounds is a joke; how is that not dodgy?