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SLG

New Labour scam

Pretty astonishing stuff...  Does anyone have a list of MSPs who are involved?

Quote:
Labour’s Scottish chief in new cash row

Jason Allardyce

WENDY ALEXANDER, the Scottish Labour leader, faces a new crisis after it emerged that she and senior colleagues have given thousands of pounds of taxpayers’ money to a company that helps with campaigns for the party.

Alexander is already under pressure to resign after she admitted receiving an illegal donation for her leadership campaign from Paul Green, a businessman based in Jersey who is not a UK voter.

Now it has emerged that she, along with eight senior colleagues, used parliamentary allowances to pay £5,000 to Computing for Labour (CfL), a company owned by the party and based at its London headquarters. It provides IT services that are offered free by the Scottish parliament.

CfL provides software which helps politicians to organise files on individual constituents.

It is used not only by 13 Labour members of the Scottish parliament (MSPs) but also by 260 Labour MPs and 16 Welsh assembly members. Between them, they pay the organisation an estimated £68,000 a year from their parliamentary allowances.

The money is paid even though similar software has been available free to MSPs of all parties through the Scottish parliament’s IT department since 2003. Westminster politicians said the only other systems available to them had to be paid for.

CfL helps Labour to campaign during elections, designing candidates’ websites and software that allows them to send text messages directly to voters. Its website states that it is “a membership organisation set up to encourage and support the use of computers so that they contribute to achieving the party’s aims”.

Parliamentary authorities prohibit the use of office equipment paid out of allowances to be used for party purposes but have permitted payments to CfL on the grounds that MSPs require support to help to deal with constituents’ problems.

However, a former CfL employee said that income from elected representatives made the company’s election campaigning work possible. “Basically it pays for the salaries of the same employees who help out with political support at the time of election campaigns ? so in that sense it is all the same. It cross-subsidises it.”

Murdo Fraser, deputy leader of the Scottish Conservatives, said it was “astonishing” that taxpayers’ money appeared to be used to subsidise Labour campaigns.

He is demanding an investigation by the parliamentary authorities and calling for the practice to be banned, adding that Alexander has made “another serious misjudgment”.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article3056768.ece
Economist

No mention in the Scottish media either, who are clinging on to the every word of tongue tied Nicol Stephen as if it were gospel truth. Has he become the proxy leader of unionism in Scotland and hammer of the SNP because of Wendy's problems?
macnumpty

And as a former user of CfL software back in my less mature - and stupider - days, I can tell you that the software appears to be little more than an Access database. The only thing it does that Access might not be able to do automatically is assign Case Reference Numbers other than just '1', '2', etc. And even then it's basically 'SMITH001', 'SMITH002', and so forth.
SLG

I think it's pretty outrageous that this has merited almost no mention in the Scottish media.  It's not as if they don't normally jump on the smallest excuse for a story.

I'd still be really interested in finding out who these MSPs are, if anyone can help me out.  I think this is something that would be very useful to spread about it it's one of my Labour MSPs.
Hendry

The SNP government has so far exceeded all expectations and has been superb.

However, the administration is set to last 4 years, so we need an effective opposition to keep the SNP on their toes.

Where is it?  What we certainly do not need is the kind of moral meltdown of Labour we have witnessed of late. Indeed, they seem to be rapidly running out of feet to shoot themselves in.

OK, they have so far been saved by a loyal press core, but this cannot go on indefinitely and as accusators the Labour party are now effectively impotent.

Meanwhile, the much more savvy Tory leadership, the otherwise natural second placed bastion of the Union,  is hampered by the fact it, perhaps with some reluctance, acknowledges the merit in most of the SNP policies enacted.

This leaves only the witless and banal LibDems.   That so chameleonesque of parties that it has witnessed a transformation of policy from ' an unashamed penny on tax for education' to a promise of tax cuts within 10 short years.  Sadly, that and many other demonstrations of  'flexibility', whether geographic or temporal, leaves them with little if any credibility.

Who is to provide the effective opposition?

We can't leave it all up to Margo.
Aventinian

Hendry wrote:
The SNP government has so far exceeded all expectations and has been superb.


Are we living on different planets here? They're currently being accused of acting improperly over the Trump affair, have failed to deliver half their promises and now it looks like their abolition of the graduate endowment, which they shouted from the rooftops as a done deal and was plastered all over the newspapers, isn't going to happen at all. Meanwhile don't even mention police numbers - they've demonstrated quite ably that they don't have a clue.

I even drove over the Tay Bridge yesterday - and guess what, I was charged a toll! Can't even get that done.

So, pray tell, what have they actually accomplished? Anything? At the moment, their "National Conversation" is about the highlight, and that was a massive failure.

The fact that the Labour Party is doing rather worse is irrelevant; the SNP promised the world and have delivered nothing.
George

Aventinian wrote:

They're currently being accused of acting improperly over the Trump affair....


I accuse you of  secretly conversing with Unionist fanatics.
UNIONIST IN SECRET CONVERSATIONS SHOCK

I accuse you of being a liar when you say that you are charming.
PRESSURE MOUNTS ON UNIONIST AS HE IS ACCUSED OF LYING

I suspect that you visit sleazy websites when you are alone on your computer.
UNIONIST NOW MIRED IN 'SLEAZY WEBSITE' ACCUSATION

I suspect that you may have broken the law when using your computer.
UNIONIST MAY HAVE BROKEN THE LAW

I am afraid to say that I have lost confidence in you, you have brought the forum into disrepute. We must set up an inquiry to get to the bottom of these allegations, if you are innocent then you will have nothing to fear.

Evidence?, just like the Unionists I have none, I just don't like you.  However the inquiry will allow us to see if there is any substance to my completely unfounded allegations and perhaps some of the mud will stick.

DID YOU SEE WHAT I DID THERE?
Maol.Chaluim

I'm sure he did, but he would never recognise it.
Maol.Chaluim

Aventinian wrote:
Hendry wrote:
The SNP government has so far exceeded all expectations and has been superb.


Are we living on different planets here? They're currently being accused of acting improperly over the Trump affair, have failed to deliver half their promises...


OK, I'll humour you...

They have another three and bit years to implement their policies.  You know this.

They do not have an absolute majority in the Parliament, therefore implementing their policies depends on cross-party cooperation.  You know this.

Do you think the SNP are peforming better than the previous administration, worse, or about the same?
Aventinian

Maol.Chaluim wrote:
They have another three and bit years to implement their policies.  You know this.


It wasn't me who imposed a 100-day timetable for implementation of certain policy objectives.

I don't think anyone is seriously going to wait until the end of the Executive's tenure before asking, quite legitimately, why x and y are not being done...

Quote:
They do not have an absolute majority in the Parliament, therefore implementing their policies depends on cross-party cooperation.  You know this.


I also know fine well that in most occasions they are not bothering to negotiate with the other parties for these objectives.

Quote:
Do you think the SNP are peforming better than the previous administration, worse, or about the same?


That wasn't particularly the matter at hand. If I had to assess them independently of any other considerations on their performance thus far I'd say it's more or less the same as the last lot.

However the difference here is what brought about the situation. The SNP promised the world, in the full knowledge they could not deliver. They misled.
SLG

Aventinian wrote:
I even drove over the Tay Bridge yesterday - and guess what, I was charged a toll! Can't even get that done.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/scotland/7153021.stm
SLG

Aventinian wrote:
It wasn't me who imposed a 100-day timetable for implementation of certain policy objectives.

Have you actually read the "first 100 days" document?  I'd be interested to hear what promises made in that document that you think they've failed to keep and that you think they could have met (given their position as a minority government).

Aventinian wrote:
The SNP promised the world, in the full knowledge they could not deliver.

The are not in a position to deliver on all their promises.  That was the prerogative of the electorate.  I think most recognise the reality of the situation and will judge accordingly.  Of course those with such entrenched views as yourself to do so.

As for the "last lot", in the election campaign, they concentrated on threatening disaster should the SNP gain power in the full knowledge that nothing of the sort would occur.
doodells

Aventinian wrote:
Hendry wrote:
The SNP government has so far exceeded all expectations and has been superb.


Are we living on different planets here? They're currently being accused of acting improperly over the Trump affair, have failed to deliver half their promises and now it looks like their abolition of the graduate endowment, which they shouted from the rooftops as a done deal and was plastered all over the newspapers, isn't going to happen at all.


Done!
Maol.Chaluim

Aventinian wrote:
Maol.Chaluim wrote:
They have another three and bit years to implement their policies.  You know this.


It wasn't me who imposed a 100-day timetable for implementation of certain policy objectives.

I don't think anyone is seriously going to wait until the end of the Executive's tenure before asking, quite legitimately, why x and y are not being done...


Neither do I, but we're just over six months into a four year term.  If, at the end of that term any policy objectives haven't been fulfilled, in many cases it will be due to the SNP not having an absolue majority.

Aventinian wrote:
Quote:
They do not have an absolute majority in the Parliament, therefore implementing their policies depends on cross-party cooperation.  You know this.


I also know fine well that in most occasions they are not bothering to negotiate with the other parties for these objectives.


How do you know this?  Do you have any proof, or are you just supposing it?

Aventinian wrote:
Quote:
Do you think the SNP are peforming better than the previous administration, worse, or about the same?


That wasn't particularly the matter at hand.


And..?

Aventinian wrote:
If I had to assess them independently of any other considerations on their performance thus far I'd say it's more or less the same as the last lot.

However the difference here is what brought about the situation. The SNP promised the world, in the full knowledge they could not deliver. They misled.


No they didn't.  The manifesto, as you know, is a list of policies a party would implement if it were given power.  The SNP doesn't have the power to implement it's policies without support from other parties.

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