I don't normally single out comments...

... but this one from Polly Toynbee's excellent rebuttal of Call Me Dave's Guardian comment piece is so stupid in a 'clearly this person has some intelligence' kinda way.

Unlike a lot of BBC Have Your Say comments, it is properly punctuated and readable, but still monumentally wrong in almost every way

Taking it from the beginning...

So not such bad chaps really. If only they could get rid of "Dave" and give us someone else. David Davis perhaps. These policies are just sensible. There is no reason to be anything other than skeptical of the climate change case, bankers' pay caps are asinine, regulation is the problem and the 50p top tax rate is just idiotic.

Wow. Where to start? The ludicrous climate change denial, lack of commitment to cutting wages the wages of and taxing the very top earners, on to the most astonishing thing ever... 'regulation is the problem.' I pray you're not talking about the unrestrained financial sector which got us in this mess in the first place. Maybe they're just talking about regulation in general,  something which makes it even stupider.

Continuing the stupidity... Thatcher was a progressive. Right, that makes sense.

I assume that in her rush to get words that press all her readers' buttons - fundamentalist for instance - Ms Toynbee has sacrificed common sense and logical coherence. If it is a return to Conservative roots - and it isn't - then of course it is a change. It is progress, of sorts. Thatcher was a radical and a progressive. Dave is not. Just because you don't like the direction she took the country doesn't mean she did not bring about real change.

Progress does not mean going backwards you utter tool! 'Just because you don't like the direction she took the country .' You mean backwards right? 'doesn't mean she did not bring about real change.' Change in a backwards direction is regression you rhetorically challenged buffoon.

The worst thing about all of this is, that this is a typical Tory voter who demonstrates why Cameron's 'caring conservatives' are not the progressives they claim to be. It's enough to make you go and smash your brains out on a wall.

Paul Wiffen - The UKIP racist standing in my constituency

It has been said many times before that UKIP are the BNP for middle class people who aren't openly racist, but harbour those sort of thoughts, and it appears that this may actually be true.

The Telegraph reports that Paul Wiffen - the London UKIP chair and PPC for Ilford South - has been suspended from any party positions (but still allowed to campaign for UKIP in his constituency) for this racist rant on the website Community Care...

Britain is full, you prat! Even your scummy, illiterate Grauniad admits it!

In the circumstances, I think "get lost" is positively polite. "Go forth and multiply" elsewhere would be my wording.

You left-wing scum are all the same, wanting to hand our birthright to Romanian gypsies who beat their wives and children into begging and stealing money they can gamble with, Muslim nutters who want to kill us and put us all under mediaeval Sharia law, the same Africans who sold their Afro-Caribbean brothers into a slavery that Britain was the first to abolish (but you still want to apologize for!)

Worry about where we are going to live and grow food, you wanker, not the UKIP policy that might just save your worthless skin! 

I shouldn't be surprised that this sort of idiocy has emerged from UKIP, but this is a colossal mistake just before an election. 

Digging deeper it seems surprising that this story first broke in Hugh Muir's Guardian diary almost a week ago yet it took until today for the Telegraph and BBC London News to pick it up. Muir commented that...

The end came quickly. We rang Ukip, and though he seemed quite defiant when we rang him, they last night suspended him from any party position with a view to disciplinary proceedings. He was a character. But he hardly seemed very nice.

Still the question remains, if UKIP aren't a racist party, why aren't they stopping him standing in Ilford South and why isn't any of this on their website.

Perhaps the funniest part of the whole this is his apology...

Explaining what sparked his outburst he said: “I was very surprised to see such a party political piece on a website called Community Care, and when I read the lies about Ukip being a racist party, I just saw red and fired off an angry email.

So he saw someone saying that UKIP were racist, and proceded to prove them right... some things are beyond satire.

Cameron - Burglars have no human rights

Conservative Home reports what will be a massive clanger for David Cameron to drop on the politics show, the tory leader saying...

"The moment a burglar steps over your threshold, and invades your property, with all the threat that gives to you, your family and your livelihood, I think they leave their human rights outside."

This is the sort of rubbish that the tory party will lap up, but reading further in, it's obvious he doesn't know what he's talking about. Do they lose this human right perhaps?

No one shall be held in slavery or servitude; slavery and the slave trade shall be prohibited in all their forms.

So, if a burglar enters your home you have the right to hold then as long as you like and force them into your servitude. 

No one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment.

So, people are allowed to torture burglars now. Great, I'll get the rack out.

There are many other examples, but I won't go into all of them. The point is, Cameron should be more careful about what he says, saying something like that chimes in many ways with UKIP and the BNP. 

Maybe the quote has been taking a little out of context by Montgomery, but if it hasn't this is worrying news indeed

Just A Minute

I'd be very grateful if anyone could watch my A2 media coursework short film and answer the evaluation questions. Thanks.

Are you interested in politics?
Would you choose to watch a political drama or comedy usually?
What did you think in general about the film?
Were there any obvious flaws with the film?
Did you empathise with the prime minister character?
Did you find that the film had comic value?
Did you understand what was happening in the film?
Did you see the editing enhancing or damaging the film?
Did you feel the writing was of a high quality?
Did you feel that the camerawork was professional?

People banned from being naked near children - IT'S HEALTH AND SAFETY GONE MAD

Right, I haven't plumbed the depths of idiocy contained within the Daily Mail website for weeks now, so I have a double dose of rubbish from the last couple of days for you to enjoy... starting with a familiar case of double standards.

This story of the local pool where people were asked not to shower naked is full of the usual Mail hypocrisy. The headline is:

"Swimming pool users banned from showering naked in case children are offended"

This seems to suggest that it was a pre-emptive PC gone mad type of banning, done 'in case' people who may or not be offended are. However in the second paragraph it goes on to say that...

"Bathers have been told to keep their swimming costumes on while using the showers following complaints from local schools that pupils were offended by 'open nudity' and needed 'a certain amount of privacy.'

Which clearly states that the ban was enforced AFTER complaints not IN CASE OF complaints.

Still the Mail continues with its dog whistle journalism, even managing to stick in this gem.

Swimmers who regularly use the Torridge Pool in Northam, Devon, described the rule as 'health and safety gone mad.'

Surely it's PC gone mad, you've got your 'gone mad's' mixed up there because I can't see any way this is a health and safety issue.

"Local councillor Hugh Bone said the decision was 'ridiculous' and vowed to fight the ban by continuining to showering in the nude.

Grandfather-of-four Hugh said: 'This surely is ridiculous. People should not believe that we are all perverts.

'Boys and men as well as girls and women have always changed in front of each other and this is part of the growing up experience."

Apply this quote to another Mail article, say this one... and we have a paedophile, ready to be vilified for exposing himself to children. You see, the Daily Mail are brilliant at taking quotes out of context.

Nadine Dorries is wrong (again)

It's with little surprise that I read Nadine Dorries latest blog postand concluded that she is stupid and wrong.

It's all about the Tories confused and frankly pointless marriage tax credits policy and this time she really out does herself, defending Cameron's botch job of a policy.

She starts by saying...

It is a statistical and evidence based fact that couples who are married try harder at keeping a family together

No it isn't, what is statistical and evidence based is the fact that less people who are married break up. That's a totally different thing. She's got the causal relationship the wrong way round, people who are married break up less not because they've made the commitment, but because they are in more stable relationships regardless of the commitment. You could argue that Dorries point is correct, but it isn't based on evidence and statistics.

Only 1:11 married couples split before their child’s fifth birthday whereas that figure is 1:3 for co-habiting couples.

Again a case of 'lies, damn lies, and statistics.' The age of five seems to have been plucked from the air, and what follows is even worse...

Sadly, when marriage or relationship breakdown occurs, it is often the children who are caught in the middle. Would any child, when asked the question ‘would you prefer it if your mum and dad stayed together rather than split up’, answer ‘no’? 

What she says in the second part seems to directly contradict the first. In many cases the parents divorcing may be the best thing for the kids, if the parents are creating a bad environment with the bad feeling towards each other. A quite pointless over generalisation based on spurious evidence.

Even those children in dysfunctional families still love both parents and the fact that the "togetherness" of two parents provides them with double the security and parenting.

In most cases the parents don't care or parent any less when they have got divorced. In fact many make more of an effort to try to overcome the barriers of divorce.

We are all aware of the problems we face in the society within which we live today.

Yes, there are some bad things going on in society. I'm sure you won't over-generalise or scaremonger though.

Having spent a week on a council estate, where marriage is not even a part of the vocabulary, where literally thousands of single mums fail to control teenage boys and where stabbings, shootings, drugs and all level of general crime are a part of the fabric of council estate life, I am even more resolved in my own commitment to the fact that we absolutely have to return to the values which we know once kept our society stable and law abiding.

Was I being too hopeful? I think so. 'Marriage isn't even part of the vocabulary!' Now that's just plain bollocks. This is starting to read like an article from the Daily Mail. Especially with the harking back to the golden era where everything was fine and nothing bad ever happened to anyone.

If not least because it’s those who struggle to bring up a family and do the decent thing that pick up the bill for the rest.

Oh, 'doing the decent thing' again. What are single mothers whose husbands have left them supposed to do? Struggle along on their own as not to burden everyone else?

That bill may be financial, as we all have to pay extra taxes to fund the benefit system, the police, social services, security within schools, and the entire public service cost of a society in meltdown, or for some people the cost is more personal and real.

'Society in meltdown!!!' Stop being so fucking melodramatic Nadine.

My law abiding hard working constituent, who was attacked in London on New Years Eve by a youth who had no father he knew of and had been released from a young offenders institute just before Christmas, has some very strong opinions on this.

'law abiding hard working'... God this is starting to sound like a Littlejohn column, Not all people on benefits commit crime.

The values which we know provide the framework for a decent and law abiding society have to be championed once again. I’m delighted that David Cameron has picked up the gauntlet and I know that if he becomes Prime Minister we will at the end of his first five years be able to look at the family and say, ‘yes, it’s in a much stronger place than it was five years ago’, and that has to be a good thing for us all.

Bollocks.

If everyone else is doing them...

... I suppose I should do some predictions for the year ahead. Some in the world of politics, some in the media and a bit of sport to add to the mix. Let's go:

1) The Conservative party will win a small majority at the general election and tear themselves apart over Europe.
2) After losing the general election, Labour will elect David Milliband as their new leader.
3) My football team Leyton Orient will get relegated from League 1
4) England will get to the semi-finals of the World Cup and lose to Germany
5) Peter Mandleson will be parachuted into a safe Labour seat at the General Election
6) Jan Moir will leave the Mail after another huge twitterstorrm against another poisonous article.
7) The Lib Dems will get a new leader at some point during the year
8) I will get 50 comments on my two blogs combined.
9) England will draw the Ashes series in Australia 1-1
10) Lewis Hamilton will win the Formula 1 world championship by less than 5 points from Jenson Button