state political funding, bad idea

The political parties have decided that because everybody is so disappointed with them that they are no longer willing to give money voluntarily that they should be allowed to get the government to steal money from us for the political parties. Apparently there is a consensus (amongst the political parties) that this is the best way for future of funding politics and it is only the details that need to be worked out. This consensus does not include me, and probably many other people, as personally I would rather the cunts buggered off and drowned themselves in putrefying yak vomit rather than give any of them any of my hard earned money.

Of course the large political parties are going to like a system that means the large parties get handed large slabs of other peoples money without having to lift a finger. The proposal is similar to the POWER Report, except that it misses out on the most important part as you cannot nominate a party other than the one you are voting for to get the cash. This ignores the fact that with a first past the post voting system people will often be voting for a party they don't like simply because they like an other one likely to get in even less. This is not a system for making funding fairer but a system for maintaining the position of the major parties while staving the smaller ones of the money that they would need to stage a breakthrough. So no wonder they are all generally in favour, it reduces the work they have to put into getting money while also reducing their competition from the minor parties.

The only fly in this particularly slimly ointment is the Labour party and their desire to maintain their link with the unions, the original cash for legislation scam (cash for legislation being the one Labour tradition that New Labour was not willing to ditch). Not that this will stop them for long, the lure of all that money will simply be too great.