The Special Government Advisor Paid To Influence Herself.

In 2004 Ian Duncan Smith, having been ousted as leader of the Tory party because his insane ideas made him unelectable, set up the Centre for Social Justice (CSJ) as a right-wing lobbying group dedicated to the idea that poor people are better off the more you take from them. Recognising that being the head of such an organisation was not compatible with being the head of the DWP at the same time, he resigned from the group in 2010 when he joined what is described in Britain as a "government". His special advisor Phillipa Stroud, she with the eyes of a dead shark, however, continued to be paid by the CSJ as the co-chair of its board of advisors. Now the rules governing such things are fairly clear; "Holders of public office should not place themselves under any financial or other obligation to outside individuals or organisations that might seek to influence them in the performance of their official duties." It is particularly strange that Ms.Stroud should be taking money from a lobbying group of which she is a member to influence her own thinking and that of her boss who founded the group in the first place. Of course it is entirely understandable that IDS would need his thinking to be influenced if he didn't understand his own thoughts or didn't know what they are by a group that he founded but had no idea what they thought either. Under those circumstances it is completely understandable that the lobbying group would pay one of their own members to explain to herself what she and her boss were thinking already. Understand? No, me neither.