Yes, but what about donations in kind?
The Labour Party has announced that it spent €1.5 million on its electoral campaign after collecting €1.6 million in donations. The figures are significant – they are there to tell us that Labour can work diligently within a budget and even have some surplus over. Yet they are far from convincing.
The word ‘donations’ is interpreted literally to mean ‘money’, but in any such exercise, donations in kind must be calculated too. If an individual or company pays for a tranche of your print collateral by literally picking up the bill, that is a donation.
And the tranche of advertising that has been paid for by third parties must be included in the campaign expenditure reckoning. To do otherwise is disingenuous and presents a false picture.
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There is no hope now that Inspector Gadget would shed some light as to whom he was referring when he mentioned business people ‘s constant visits to id -Dar tal Hgieg
Certainly the figures are much higher and probably not easily measured. Political parties are largely financed by collections from the faithfull like the church. This is why they are always technically insolvent, but then some of the faithfull are more obliged than others and they know how to barter or speculate the goods delivered for kickbacks.
Daphne, I’m sure you know about creative accounting. It’s a criminal offence, and that’s what I strongly suspect is going on at Labour.
So are we to assume that, for example, with all his connection, e, Kasco Keith did not do anything for free! And they us mentioned all the donations given to the party – what about donations to individual candidates?
I think once contracts start being awarded, we can calculate more or less how much did the campaign cost he PL. BTW, probably they forgot to add “a week” in their statement!
http://zekzik.com/2013/04/26/kemm-dahhal-sissa-tal-karrozza/
.sdrawkcab gnidaer eb tsum yehT. 5.1€-lib nijjeG
1.5 million, is this a joke? They must have spent that of Facebook advertising alone.
I am more convinced that they spent around EUR 1 million per week.
For example, one should monitor how much direct orders will the company that provided and set up ‘it-tinda tal-igloo’ will receive over the next 5 years.
The list goes on and on:
* the air time for the movie clips at the Eden cinemas;
* The SUnday Times inserts;
* the audio visuals at the public events;
* the design and marketing, of the billboards:
* the catering
* events at the estates of Polidano
Sooner or later we will be discussing party financing by the state (i.e. by taxpayers). They will try to make us believe that it will stop corruption and underhand donations.
Judging by what happened in Italy (are we more righteous than the italians?), where party officials were caught pocketing state financing of political parties, we should at all cost resist such a move.
It will definitely be an added burden on the taxpayer with hardly any improvement (if any) in transparency and the actual (or perceived) corruption by interested businesses.
Spot on Daphne. The majority of their campaign bills were paid directly by the sponsors. I have from a good source that the bills for the billboards never made it to the Centru Nazzjonali Laburista but were issued directly to individual contractors.
@ C.Portelli
and sir you speak because you are a qualified accountant of some sort?
If you are so sure or if by any chance you have proof of what you are saying, please inform the Accountancy Board so they can take necessary action against the Labour Party and also RSM (their auditors).
They refuse to publish the accounts. We’re just supposed to believe them.
Would anyone buy a used car from these people?