by Dick Puddlecote
http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/DickPuddlecote/~3/ts_G9e4Otok/government-lobbying-government.html
Government Lobbying Government Confirmed By Alcohol Concern Last week, fake charity Alcohol Concern released their latest accounts.
Reporting to the Charity Commission for their year up to 31st March 2012, they declared an income of £920k, over two thirds of which was consumed by salaries of £612k for 16 staff. At an average of £38,000 per annum, it would seem that being a professional bansturbator is quite a lucrative career.
But who pays for all this? Well, you taxpayers mostly do. The Department for Education chipped in £209,336, the Welsh Government £234,810, and – if you give to Comic Relief – you also helped to finance their £68,726 contribution too.
With at least 48% of Alcohol Concern’s ingoings directly sourced from the taxpayer, they could arguably be termed an arms-length government body (they are often described as a ‘national agency’ which is unsurprising since they were formed by government in the 1980s).
In which case, these statements within their annual report would count – I humbly suggest – as a cast-iron case of government lobbying government.
Objectives for 2012-13
In terms of our campaign and lobbying work we have two immediate priorities. Firstly is to ensure that measures in the Government’s Alcohol Strategy are resourced and implemented, including a minimum price through legislation.
More damning still …
Our remit is to change drinking culture and the way alcohol is sold and marketed by influencing Government policy.
Well, that seems pretty unequivocal to me.
As a certain high profile politician once pointed out:
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles said it was wrong that taxpayers’ money was being spent on political lobbying.
Too bloody right! It’s perhaps well past time this government stopped giving our taxes to Alcohol Concern, then.
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I think that any incoming Libertarian administration would of course shut down all these outfits in the first few seconds of power.
However, that is not enough. We are always being told that “lessons need to be learned” or “lessons have been learned”. The point is to make some lessons stick, so that our distant descendents don’t have to repeat this awful history.
It’s worth making a point that, if I had any part of this Libertarian administration, it would be as the Principal Secretary of State for War. The title will be revivied. We call spades, spades. War is what it is, and it will _begin at home_ , like charity does.
The persons who have worked in these lobbying outfits have decded so to do because they took the decision to do so. It was conscious. They took the jobs on purpose. It’s like crime. The only motiviation for a crime is the decision to commit one. therefore they will be held cuplable and liable financially.
The least that is likely to be “asked” of them is that all the treasury-monies paid to their outfits be reimbursed. The next step will be to demand interest, at whatever rate is deemed correct, given the timescale and the rates paid on Gilts over the times involved.
The next device, rather important, is that if they have died in the meantime, their “heirs and successors” will be gone after for the same monies. A “class action”, or whatever lawyers will advise me that it’s called, will be launched against them all, since their families will have converted the monies earned as “salaries” into “assets”, which they may well, being state employees, have protected by “tax avoidance schemes”. As it’s often needful in a war to use the enemy’s weapons against him before having them destroyed, this will occur.
We cannot allow people, eternally, to continue to continue to believe that, by going under the unbrellas of socialism, they can escape the whirlwind to be reaped by sowing the wind. Therefore, exemplary, debilitatory and retributive punishments will have to be executed, and publicised.
I propose an Act of Attainder with several thousand names on it. According to Macaulay, the last person put to death by attainder was Sir James Fenwick in 1696. This being said, I rather think several Scotch traitors were hanged by attainder after the 45, and I know that Bolingbroke was attainted after the 15. It was the wisdom of our ancestors to provide a device to pull down those unreachable by the ordinary laws. I commend that wisdom.
Intersting comments, the poor old tax payer seems to be carrying the cross at the moment, are they trying to crucify him perhaps, it comes at quite a shock to find out yesterday, the government are actually monitor and record how much alcohol the british public consume, what ever sort of breach of privacy and basic freedom is that, one question we all might ask, are we free civilians, No, we all appear to be living within the status of an kindergarden, where “Nanny Totaliterian” controls our every move and controls all free will
over out lives, However, today some good news, the FOI act brings some good tidings, Cameron may have to ditch the plan in veiw of all out revolt in his own cabinet, the law has got rediculous, it now gives hospitals the power to shut down pubs, or night clubs, what about the rights of private busniness, where do they fit into all of this, britain is turning into a communist state, with a handful of state “Dominatrix’s controling our every move, I say this, come quickly, “Witchfinder General” we are in dire need of your services!