From the Lebanese elections:
The Angry Arab quotes an opposition figure as saying that the Syrians and Saudis had come to a deal for each not to spend money, but the Saudis went ahead anyway. Sour grapes, I guess. You just can’t outspend the Saudis if they really want to pile in. That’s around £1200 per vote. Jesus. Or rather: Allah.
Wouldn’t it be terrible if the Saudis started to take the same interest in British politics? In fact it would be so terrible that I kind of hope they do, so I can have the chance to spurn their money in person. My bank manager feels the same way.
As a matter of interest, I wonder if you really could buy a British election at 1200 quid a vote, cash down? My guess is that you could, and if you limited it to key marginals you could probably do it for under £10 billion, even including the necessary bribes to officials, cops etc. That’s a good deal given the size of the tax base and the general legislative opportunities
Why bother buying the electorate when you can buy the Prime Minister for £125k?
http://d-squareddigest.blogspot.com/2002_08_01_archive.html
"I have that much equity in my house. Any one of our fine British banks would probably lend me 125 grand with only a short delay for the paperwork... Lakshmi Mittal swung a hugely profitable privatisation deal for a Romanian steelworks for less than the price of a fully loaded Porsche Boxster. The return on investment on these political contributions is just fucking unbelievable, even by Internet standards. What's keeping me awake at night is that I can't think of any reasonably discreet ways in which the government could make me rich, because I know that if I had that idea, I could pay them to do it..."
Posted by: ajay | June 09, 2009 at 02:08 PM
I was thinking more of a long term tap into GDP or political operation (like the Saudis in lebanon)rather than a score. Obviously this would be more likely to come from a country or institution than an individual.
Posted by: jamie | June 09, 2009 at 02:16 PM
Typo there, Jamie - you wrote 'lebanon' when you obviously menat to write 'Britain'. HTH!
Posted by: Chris Williams | June 09, 2009 at 02:40 PM
I remember reading that, Ajay, at about the time I found out how much Piers de Cuntbubble [(c) Viz] had paid for the Press Gazette... Let's put it this way - the transaction price/press coverage ratio was an incredible outlier.
Posted by: Richard J | June 09, 2009 at 02:57 PM