Power, pork and principles: A must-read on how the Howard Government is spending our money to benefit itself from Tim Colebatch in The Age today. “Corruption is a strong word, and we need to be clear what we mean by it,” he writes. “I am not talking about secret kickbacks to ministers and officials (thank God!), but what Democrat senator Andrew Murray calls ‘corruption of the system.’ That form of corruption occurs when parties or politicians in government use our money, taxpayers’ funds, to benefit their own interests, not ours. In the US Congress it is rife, always has been, as senators and congressmen use their control of budgetary allocations to give public money to those who give them financial support in elections… Australia used not to be like that. Compared with the US, thank God, it still isn’t.” But there are regional rorts and government advertising and Telstra funds and… Read it.

Squawk while you walk: “2GB.com is your online resource for the ALAN JONES Breakfast show,” the station’s site now boasts. Wazzup? Well, not only can you read the Parrot’s editorials, but you can now podcast his squawks. Imagine: all those 85-year-old ladies with hot pink iPod Minis listening to Gloria’s editorials over and over again.

Multiskilling: Heroism is not restricted to governors and premiers of NSW. “As you were speculating on the skills of our nation’s leaders, it would be lax to miss ACT Chief Minister Jon Stanhope, who pulled the pilot of a crashed water bombing chopper from a muddy dam during the Canberra bush fires,” a subscriber writes. Are any other politicians faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, able to leap tall buildings at a single jump? And, no, beer consumption in the Launceston Casino doesn’t count as heroics.

Value for money: More value for money for taxpayers, thanks to Immigration Minister Amanda Vanstone’s administration skills. “It is costing taxpayers almost $900 a day to keep wrongly deported Australian woman Vivian Young overseas,” Jason Gregory reports in The Courier Mail today .