Clegg, Cable and hypocrisy

In my profile I had written about myself "Dislikes hypocrisy". One of several reasons for my not voting for the Liberal Democrats next week is the fact that they have demonstrated their particular hypocrisy big time. This all relates to questionable sources of funding that all the three main parties have secured prior to the election. In the video above the BBC's Jon Sopel does a very good hatchet job on Vince Cable. Sopel absolutely correctly makes Cable wriggle over the hefty donation the LibDems received from a now convicted fraudster, Michael Brown. Naturally Cable and Co are finding excuses not to return the money which effectively had been stolen from other people. Of course the LibDems aren't exactly awash with funds and seeing their bank account depleted by two and a half million pounds would be really bad news for them!

That the party is holding on to this money is both legally and morally questionable. But what really infuriated me was the 'holier than thou' attitude of Nick Clegg in, I think, the first of the leaders' debates in which he castigated the Tories and Labour over receiving money from Lord Ashcroft and the UNITE union. What rank hypocrisy! At least Ashcroft has benefited the country by using some of his money to set up 'Crimestoppers', a very different man indeed from the disgraced Michael Brown.