A few days ago I shamelessly exploited a report by a think tank for some easy blogging material. It was about “International Development” money being given to trade unionists (amongst other things) right here at home. Knowing trade unionists one finds it hard to believe they’ll be using the money to enthusiastically promote Free Trade (the one thing that does lift people out of poverty).

So it was a bit of throw-away blogging – mostly I was curious about whether the Tories really understood what it was they’d agreed to fund, but I didn’t think any more about it.

So imagine my amusement to see this complete FAIL defense of the TUC over on some lefty blog. It’s worth linking to as a beginner’s guide to Political Fallacy Spotting.

The theme of the post is very simple: Bloggers writing about this profligacy proves the Tories are going to cut International Development funding.

Er. No. No it doesn’t. The Tories policy, as I understand it, remains in place no matter what bloggers say, and frankly the fact that they’re silly enough to agree to maintain International Development funding even though I know, deep down, it’ll be killing them to do it is somewhat depressing and amusing at the same time.

The writer supports his argument by pointing out that it’s Tory Bloggers that wrote about the post.

Er, again. No. I wrote about it too, and I’m a Liberal. Another blog that covered it was the Libertarian Party’s official Blog. Fact Fail, TUC! Speaking of which, the author singled out Iain Dale, as the doyen of nasty right wing blogging. Christ! If Iain’s the pinnacle of right wing evil, imagine what this guy would make of a repulsive swear blogger like Old Holborn? I suspect heads would explode. Picking up bits of brain would be involved.

He also complains about some technical detail about one thing the money might have been spent on – okay, cool – but then makes absolutely no effort to explain what the money is used for or why it might be necessary to dump millions on the TUC, who, let’s face it, if they’re interested in International Development at all it’s in the service of preventing jobs being exported overseas – in other words, they’re against Free Trade, they’re against poorer countries competing against their members on wages and more favorable regulatory and tax environments.

So yes, as a retort or defense of the Government’s profligacy, I’m afraid it’s a fail. The fact that people are attacking something doesn’t make the attack any less valid, the source of the attack doesn’t matter… all that matters is whether or not the argument holds up – the Government is spending money on International Development (which people are likely to support) and the money is going to local Trade Unionists and other NGOs in the UK for the purposes of propaganda (which people won’t).

Winning hearts and minds is something that anyone involved in politics has to get involved with, even bloggers. When the Government uses our money to give themselves a leg up – whether they dump money on ITV to promote their ideas directly, or dish it out through sympathetic organizations to do their dirty work for them – they are cheating and it’s not on.