DPF demonstrations another of the reasons I’ve cut back on blogging – the tendency of bloggers to beat a very, very dead horse, make up “facts” etc. It’s also why I’m not going to read any left wing blogs anymore – they’re just riddled with this sort of junk and it winds me up.
Another reason is the sure knowledge that I’ve done it myself 
In a tribute to Jeanette Fitzsimons, Idiot/Savant says:
But I also like her because she’s an unashamed wonk who seriously knows her stuff. It’s a rare quality in a politician – Bill Birch reportedly didn’t even know how to read a graph
Now I have no idea where the hell that comes from, let alone why I/S would repeat something so stupid, but I can’t let it go unchallenged that Bill Birch was some sort of lightweight politician who had no grasp of policy or detail.
Quite the opposite in fact. It is well known that when he was the (junior) Finance Minister to Winston’s senior role as Treasurer, Birch took care of all the detailed stuff, and Winston read the executive summaries.
But his eye for detail went far beyond that. I used to flat with Treasury staff, and I remember one story of the first time they had to sit in on a Birch bi-lateral.
The general rule of thumb at Treasury was that a vote analyst should only worry about stuff greater than $2 million.
Anyway in the first bilateral, not only does Birch go into every line in detail, demanding it be justified, he recalled the previous year they had stuck away $500,000 in some contingency account, and asked if that was still needed, and if not, he wants it back.
Written by scrubone
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