Fun ding-dong

In today's column, Polly Toynbee says:

Party fundraising did for Chancellor Kohl, the man who united East and West Germany at great political and financial risk

Actually, the scandal broke in 1999 (source), over a year after he was 'done for'.  He lost a general election in 1998, when the issue wasn't at all current (source).

-o0o-

Polly also says of the Tories' proposed cap on donations of £50,000 that:

The unions this week gave indignant evidence that the cap would cut their annual contribution to Labour from £8m to £800,000.

Actually, these figures refer only to affiliation fees and not the total contribution, as this article in the Guardian makes clear:

The proposals would mean the unions, Labour's chief source of funding, would only be able to provide £800,000 annually instead of the present £8m annually in affiliation fees alone.
[emphasis added]

Indeed, a bit of digging on the part Electoral Commission's website dedicated to funding (here) shows that in 2005, unions gave the Labour Party £11.8m in cash alone, of which £2.8m was in donations below the proposed cap of £50,000 (though some of these may be multiple donations from the same union).