A blog by Luke Akehurst about politics, elections, and the Labour Party - With subtitles for the Hard of Left. Just for the record: all the views expressed here are entirely personal and do not necessarily represent the positions of any organisations I am a member of.

Thursday, December 06, 2007

Legal advice

According to this Guardian article Peter Watt accepted the Abrahams donations on the basis of legal advice. The article actually says "the arrangement was technically legal". There's no such thing as "technically legal" - what that means is "legal".

Not a fashionable thing to say then, but if we were able to find lawyers in the past who thought it was legal, we would be able to find barristers who could make that case in court, and rather than him resigning and us all running round screaming mea culpa we should have stood by our original judgement and defended it through the courts. Who knows, we might actually have won.

5 Comments:

Blogger Hughes Views said...

The only certainties are that many lawyers would have become a lot richer and the story would have run on for much longer....

5:36 pm, December 06, 2007

 
Blogger Merseymike said...

And would it not have been better to say - no, we wish to be open and we will not accept this sort of gift.

Incidentally, something needs to be done about these fake organisations which the Tories shovel money through as well.

I still feel you are very half-hearted when it comes to cleaning up these seedy deals.

10:08 pm, December 06, 2007

 
Blogger Steve Horgan said...

So, you think that there is nothing wrong is disguising the origins of donations to the Labour Party?

10:11 pm, December 06, 2007

 
Blogger Kris said...

When people start crowing about their "counsel's advice", I like to ask them to show it.

Show it it it's so airtight.

Do that and watch people squirm "we don't have to disclose it".

No, of course, counsel's advice is confidential- but if you're so sure of it, show your cards or shut up.

Silence.

ps I'll let you in on a secret: No counsel gives unequovical advice. That's not the way the world turns.

11:02 pm, December 06, 2007

 
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Akehurst said ...

"us all running round screaming mea culpa"

Huh! You, say "sorry"? That'll be the day!

(One needs moral fibre to say sorry and I suspect you don't have a moral fibre in your entire body).

11:31 pm, December 06, 2007

 

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