Dodgy Bag
Red Rag - It seems tonight that the richest MP in the country and very close pal of The Sham has used accounting of Ken Doddesque scales to keep his spending on his election below the legal maximum. Zac Goldsmith, the ex-non dom who is worth £200 million, used every dodgy trick in the book to stay one step ahead of the Electoral Commision and succeeded in winning his seat with what some might say....buying it with his wealth.
There is a legal maximum that can be spent on the last 23 days before polling day.This figure for his seat Richmond Park was £11,003 and according to Zac he spent £10,783.The Richmond Park seat was being held by the Orange Tories and I remember virtually every poll taken there before the election said that Goldsmith would fail to take it. Obviously the polls had an effect on the Goldsmith campaign because they spent money on it in those last few weeks like it was going out of fashion. How they got around the law is detailed below:
According to Goldsmith he ordered 272,000 leaflets and window posters which cost £14000 which on it's own is way over the limit. He got around this by saying he did not use 62,000 which reduced th expenditure on them. However there is no proof that he did not use the 62,000 of them....so he could have said he didn't use 200,000 of them if he was struggling to get back under the maximum limit.
He bought 200 top quality jackets and emblazoned "I back Zac" stickers on them for 200 of his workers at a cost of £2168. However when accounting for it with the Electoral Commission he didn't include the cost of the jackets and said he didn't use all the "I back Zac stickers", so according to Zac he managed to get 200 jackets with I back Zac on for £170.....or put it another way he managed to get the best quality jackets, well you wouldn't want you supporters strolling around leafy and affluent Richmond Park in the scruff, with his name on them for £8.50 each....yeah right.
He also bought signs for supporters to put outside their houses at a cost of £2800 for 600 of them. However he only told the Electoral Commission he spent £262 on them. How did he get around it? Well he decided to put £700 cost of them on the expenses of the local councillors who were also being elected that day. He has also said that another campaign used the posters, but he will not say which one. Who would campaign to win a seat using a poster with someone else's name and face on it?So posters with his name and his face on it were having there expenditure pushed on to people who have absolutely nothing to do with them. In fact out of the £2800 that he spent on posters with his name and his face on them, £2540 of it was paid for by using other peoples expenses when reporting them to the Electoral Commission.
If you have been found to have gone over the limit is is counted as breaking the law. The Electoral Commission should at very least investigate the matters at Richmond Park, and if found guilty he should be charged.Zac Goldsmith is one of David Cameron's closest friends and is in Cameron's inner circle of friends......TELL US AGAIN DAVE HOW YOU ARE GOING TO CLEAN UP BRITISH POLITICS.
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