Talk:Shirley Porter/Archives/2014
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Lord Mayor
" and served as Lord Mayor in 1991-92"
Lord Mayor of....?
-FZ 16:02, 27 Jul 2004 (UTC)
Political surcharges
WP:NOTFORUM Nothing here is constructive in relation to article content. BlackberrySorbet 16:22, 3 October 2011 (UTC) |
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The following discussion has been closed. Please do not modify it. |
"In 1996, after much complicated legal investigation work, the District Auditor finally concluded that the 'Building Stable Communities' policy had been illegal, and ordered Porter and five others to pay the cost of the illegal policy, which were calculated as £27,000,000. This judgement was upheld by the High Court in 1997 with liability reduced solely to Porter and her Deputy Leader, David Weeks." Penalties on politicians for abuse of public office vary all over the world. Surcharges are rare - especially of such magnitude. For example, should politicians be surcharged for spending a country's blood and treasure by flouting the global rule-set - the UN Charter? The answer seems to be no. Surely Dame Shirley was discriminated against.
But sticking with local government in the UK, Parliament complains that they can't get the Government to cut back on waste. On the basis of calculations by UK political parties the Taxpayer's Alliance reckon that around £80 billion of taxes are wasted annually. No one has been surcharged for the refusal to cut back. Perhaps Dame Shirley should get a refund. The rules are definitely in need of attention.
Firstly, government is sovereign in many matters. Secondly, the decision to penalise so severely a public servant for wasting public money is astounding. Finally, I note from all the comments that this gross injustice can't easily be defended. Incidentally, nobody was surcharged for the losses on 'Black Wednesday', when tens of billions of taxpayers' funds went strangely missing; most national Treasuries are easy prey.
No counter arguments? There seems to be agreement in this forum that it's a disgrace one public servant was victimised so severely when others were let off for wasting billions of public funds.
Public servants have lost the UK taxpayer billion of pounds of public funds and, for some reason, they haven't been surcharged. Lots of emotive language is being used to distract attention from this uncontested fact.
Thank you for the comments. I'm glad that the "talk" page has highlighted the spectacularly harsh and unfair punishment meted out to one public servant (the reason for the article in Wikipedia?), and not to the countless others who were hugely more wasteful of UK public funds. At present the article demonises 'Shirley Porter', when instead the key issue is the victimisation.
And thanks also for your various opinions. NOT Sirley, Lady Porter. Dame Shirley Porter. Shirley, Lady Porter would be a daughter of a peer, or wife of a Knight, at least. She earnt her honour herself.
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Content taken from gerrymandering article
I removed the content below from the gerrymandering article, perhaps it can find a place here. The gerrymandering article is getting very long and this example doesn't involve changing district boundaries, so while called gerrymandering it seems like a separate topic. Scott Ritchie (talk) 09:21, 10 March 2008 (UTC)
The Dame Shirley Porter case
An interesting, albeit unusual method of achieving the effects of gerrymandering is to attempt to move the population within the existing boundaries. This occurred in Westminster, in the United Kingdom, where the local government was controlled by the Conservative party, and the leader of the council, Dame Shirley Porter, conspired with others to implement the policy of council house sales in such a way as to shore up the Conservative vote in marginal wards by selling the houses there to people thought likely to vote Conservative. An inquiry by the district auditor found that these actions had resulted in financial loss to taxpayers, and Porter and three others were surcharged to cover the loss. Porter was accused of "disgraceful and improper gerrymandering" by district auditor John Magill. Those surcharged resisted this ruling with a legal challenge, but, in December 2001, the appeal court upheld the district auditor's ruling. Despite further lengthy legal argument Porter eventually accepted a deal to end the long-running saga, and paid £12 million (out of an original claimed £27 million plus costs and interest) to Westminster Council in July, 2004.
Subjective Article
This article seems to be particularly biased without sources - terms like "The most morally disturbing aspect...." should not be part of this - needs to be flagged 81.137.194.254 (talk) 15:39, 9 February 2009 (UTC)
Lacking Citation
I have removed all of the tags stating 'citation needed'. All the citation required is to be found within the judgement of the House of Lords in Porter v Magill, [2002] 2 AC 357, as now described in the footnotes. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 129.67.113.253 (talk) 18:10, 30 March 2009 (UTC)
And have done so again. When all the facts are in a court judgement, you don't need any more citation. The judgement is online. 18:11, 14 August 2009 (UTC) —Preceding unsigned comment added by 80.176.227.248 (talk)