Tory hypocrisy on public funding of their party.

If the Tories (via Tory TV - [will not let me link direct to page so click on 'funding for two main parties' - bloody typical awkward control freak Tories!]) disagree so much with public funding of parties, maybe they should give back some of the £25m of public funding they have received in the last 10 years (£4.5m in 2005 alone). This is the money that opposition parties currently automatically receive from public funds...

I also notice the Murdoch owned right of centre Times is fuelling propaganda against Labour as usual. Is the following an accidental mistake or a deliberate attempt to make it sound as if only Labour receive public funding? (when in fact the vast majority of public funding goes to the Conservatives as the main party of opposition and most of the rest to the Lib Dems)

Both parties have moved on to a more secure financial footing. Labour received £5,033,964, which included public funding [my emphasis], in the three months to June 30 – the final months of Tony Blair’s premiership — and the Conservatives received £6,323,388 in the same period. The Liberal Democrats received £1,288,062.

The anti-Labour/right-wing bias in the Times has been so subtle and clever of late that Murdoch even felt confident enough to cite the Times as an example of his 'hands off' editorial approach in his takeover of the Wall Street Journal. But if you look hard enough, the bias is always there in the 'Tory press' - some people now claim this Tory bias has disappeared, but a few weeks of nominal half-hearted support from the Daily Mail is hardly worth cracking open the bubbly in Labour HQ. It will quickly change, mark my words.