What an interesting story, apparently, a significant donor to the Conservative Party, called Fidelity Investment (a financial services company) chooses to invest some of its clients money in another company called PetroChina which deals with the Sudanese Government. Given that the Conservative Party, including David Cameron have publicly said companies that invest and deal with the Sudanese Government are acting unethically, therefore a join the dot game has taken place and cited hypocrisy. Peter Hain has been on Channel 4 News saying that the Conservative Party should give the donations back.
Let's just get this straight though. A donation was received from a non-Sudanese international investment company that has invested its clients money in another non-Sudanese international company, and that company chooses to carry out some of its work in area which means it faces accusations of being unethical from certain political quarters. So the donation is, at the very least, three times removed from the actual point of questionable ethics.
This sort of reasoning is very dangerous, and actually quite silly though. If we were to take it seriously and apply it to all the decisions we make about how we spend money, then we may as well all stop buying gas because the chances are it comes from the Urals oligarchies, where it is well known that the companies operate in a virtual mafia world of organised crime and corruption. It's a bit like the bollocks that if someone buys some weed they are funding terrorism.
If it were actually possible to make a direct link between the money received from one company and another company three times down the line then the reasoning might apply. If it cannot though, then claiming a causal link is little more than a bit of political playing - which is of course to be expected in the cut and thrust of it all.
3 comments:
The reasoning is not that bad. the firm are investing their profits in political donations. they are making a good part of those profits from a dodgy investment. The Co-op Bank wouldn't have them so why should the Tories?
the reasoning is rubbish Chris, and yours is even worse because you're making an authoritative statement of causal links between specific profit and specific investment. Where the join the dot ethics fails is that the "evil act" is three times removed. Where yours fails is that you've just made stuff up on the basis of an assumed reality.
As to the Co-Op bank, frankly who cares what they do? In fact, I reckon that if you three times removed some of their investments you could probably find something that someone would find questionable.
I'll give you a better example of why the reasoning sucks, basically it's fallacious logic. It's a bit like finding yourself in a specific situation and blaming it all on you great-grandparents because they had your grandparenst who had your parents.
A better question is why an investor like Fidelity is making party political donations in the first place. For one, most institutional investors will vote against companies seeking authority to make political donations - it's a common corporate governance policy. Secondly, why are Fidelity's clients effectively having their money used to fund a political party?
At the very least Fidelity should disclose to clients and potential clients that they donate to the Conservative Party, so that non-Conservative supporters can invest their money elsewhere.
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