Some bloggage

Bryce Edwards continues his excellent series of posts on party funding. In his 14th post he argues:

State funding actually weakens political parties and encourages them to be ideologically bland. This very long, but crucial blog post argues that such funding plays a dramatic role in divorcing parties from civil society, leading to much reduced civic participation in politics.

I don’t agree with everything Bryce has said in his series, but it is one of the most well supported and researched pieces around.

In an unusual occurence, No Right Turn attacks the Greens for “pulling numbers out of their arse” by advocating an annual $1.6 billion spend on righting climate change. He concludes his post saying:

The Greens need to go away and do some rough costings of what they want to fund. Otherwise, it just looks like they’re pulling numbers out of their arse purely for rhetorical effect – which doesn’t do a thing to convince people that you have serious, sensible, well-thought-out policy.

And this is from one of the leading supporters of doing more to mitigate climate change.

The (NSW) Daily Telegraph has some famous Australian political sledges:

Keating was the master:
* “I am not like the Leader of the Opposition. I did not slither out of the Cabinet room like a mangy maggot …”
* “He is the greatest job and investment destroyer since the bubonic plague.”
* calling Andrew Peacock a “painted, perfumed gigolo”.

Also worth reading Nick Cohen from the Observer about the damage done by eco-zealots.