Shock! Horror!
Well, I think this is shocking, even if you don't:
Hedge funds, financiers and private equity firms contributed more than a quarter of all the Tories' private donations – which this year poured in at a rate equal to £1m a month – the study by the Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found. The figures show an increase in the proportion of party funds coming from the financial sector, raising fears that the City's financial influence over the Tories is on the rise as key pieces of legislation are discussed by the coalition government.
Blackmail I call it, akin to Mafia Dons muttering "nice business here, be shame if someone ruined it, wouldn't it?"
Of course contributions to politicians from a sector increase when reforms to that sector, to the laws that apply to that sector, are mooted. That's why changes in the law are mooted: to make sure that the sector coughs up the donations to keep the political parties on the road. It's a shakedown pure and simple.
PJ O'Rourke once asked "When will we be done?", when will we have made all the laws we need to and can stop? The answer is of course that for politicians the answer is never. For without being able to change the law, to the advantage of some and disadvantage of others, how would they be able to shake loose the cash that pays for them?
The thing you have to remember about the political process is that it's not always entirely evident who is paying who to screw whom. It's not, as the naive think, our politicians protecting us from their ones, us fighting the good fight against those nasties. It's politicians extracting a juicy lifestyle from the rest of us.