Flying in the face of everything that is proper and decent, I'd like to say that Dizzy is absolutely right in saying that The Standards Board wastes its time and our money. (OK, it's an old post, I missed it the first time, but still...).
Between 2004 and 2008, the Standards Board for England investigated a total of 2937 complaints. Of those 2344 either had "no evidence of breach" or "no further action".
That means that 80% of the complaints that were made were, for want of a better word, spurious and/or baseless. The total cost of investigating these complaints was £21,024,225 of which £16,274,604 was spent on the spurious or baseless complaints.
Is there, or can there be, a justification for the existence of quango that spends 80% of its time investigating things with no outcome at a cost of £16.2 million? I'd say there isn't.
Me neither. And all of this really does throw complaints by right-wingers about how democracy is all a waste of money, and that politicians are doing politics (and lavish lifestyles to boot!) on the rates.
If you were to argue that £21 million should be spent on state-funding for political parties over a four year period, I expect that you'd get the usual barrage of abuse from the anti-politics hardcore that we all (and most readers of this blog - yes - I do mean you) give an easy ride to most of the time.
But £21million to fund a group of bureaucrats with a brief to create an effective rival for politicians? No bother. Not a squeak. Or not until Dizzy squeaked, anyway....
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