Chris Carter is a 2nd Year Politics Student and Labour Councillor for Loughborough Ashby. His new regular column for Label Magazine will be republished Online once a fortnight.
Okay, time for a boring politics rant. I’ll at least try and make it entertaining.
For those of you who are normal human beings you probably won’t know that Liam Fox, the Defence Secretary, resigned over allegations regarding lobbying this week. Many members of the current and previous government allegedly took money in exchange for influencing policy.
Some kinds of lobbying are good. The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds for example regularly lobbies parliamentarians. However, they don’t pay them.
The real scandal here is Liam Fox; his best man, Adam Werrity, who held no official role but was present at a variety of high-level meetings across the globe, regularly accompanied the Defence Secretary on foreign trips.
Recent figures published by the Guardian show the current government met with lobbyists a total of 1,409 times within 10 months of the coalition forming. In contrast, ministers have only met charitable organisations 833 times. Am I the only one worried that the people we vote for don’t necessarily have the interests of the wider public at heart?!
This shows, well to most people with a shred of interest in current affairs, corporate interests are clearly getting privileged access to ministers over charitable organisations. Why? I’ll let you decide, but honestly now readers, we need to ask who should run and influence the leaders of this country, because this scandal has only really just begun.
Do you agree with Chris? Give us your view: Leave a comment at the bottom of this page or email labeleditor@lufbra.net
