I lived in Belfast during the early 1980s. Republicans carried out proxy bombings- remember them- 'unless you drive this bomb into town we're going to shoot your wife'. They also kept going on about their rights (fair enough for the times I suppose) but I remember thinking at the time that if they got in there would be no rights for anyone else! It would be a disaster if SF got anywhere near office.

The esteemed Eric Joyce (who was once a guest blogger here of course) has written a very good piece for Labour Uncut on hypocrisy.

However, the Daily Mail have reported it as 'an astonishing rant' and an attack on the middle class, and more drivel in that vein. It was of course nowhere near a rant, it was very well written with a coolly ironic touch.

It's an object lesson in how the right whinge media will pounce on something a Labour MP says and twist it completely. However, it does seem to have backfired on them somewhat, as some comments following the DM article have been in agreement with Eric.

As you say, Tom, shutting your face may be a wise option (for now).

I do understand i once gave up chocolate

LOL!

Tom, you shone like a good deed in a naughty world. Or put it another way, like a sensible, thought-provoking, funny (ha ha I mean - most of the time anyway) Labour blogger in the bedlam that is the UK blogosphere. I think sometimes you've even made some of our Tory friends a bit less sure they were always right.

Will miss you - hope you stay on Twitter!

Ah, it's nice to see Laurie Penny now has something to really get her teeth into. I remember the days when we had a Labour government and she was rather critical about them being too 'authoritarian'. She also had a go at Labour-supporting JK Rowling for what LP saw as a 'fascist undertone' to the Harry Potter books. What a burning issue that was.

Regarding the students' protest, I don't agree with the violence (which was caused by a minority among the 50,000 there). Mrs Pankhurst herself probably would have thought it a bit over the top. But LP does have a point about how angry the students are about broken promises and how they feel their vote (hard won by the Suffragettes, the Chartists and others) was stolen. Yes, you are right, Tom, they should have listened when Labour told them not to trust the LibDems. However, you can't put an old head on young shoulders and all that, and they've learnt the hard way that Clegg isn't the Messiah, he's a very naughty boy. Who can blame them for being as mad as hell about it? That in itself is - in a way - a good thing, because it means they don't just roll over and accept it. This government is a toxic mixture of arrogance and complacency, and they are assuming that the public are too dumb and apathetic to question their mantra that the austerity measures are necessary and that it's all Labour's fault.

It's worth looking at the way the attack on Millbank was viewed in Downing Street itself. According to the Observer's anonymously penned Diary of a Civil Servant:

Ministers and officials watched from their windows, anxious calls went out to staff in Conservative HQ and government froze. Senior Conservative ministers struggled to hide their frustration with the police response.

This is the most telling part:

The protesters washed away the complacent assumption that things were going well and that Britain would simply keep calm and carry on. The smashed windows and burning placards, no doubt the actions of a violent minority, reflected palpable rage that is simmering across the country.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/14/di...

Presumably she doesn't hold it against Cliff Richard that he's a friend of the Blair family.

Great isn't it, that Clegg thinks £80 million is money well spent on his miserable little compromise - and yet he maintains there was no money for a loan to Sheffield Forgemasters. He was still sticking to that barefaced lie in PMQs yesterday.

Do you remember how David Laws, in his short-lived stint at the Treasury, wanted to get rid of the pot plants (which surely cheered the place up a bit, and don't cost very much at all for goodness sake) because he felt they were a waste of money. Now we learn that the Coalition have managed to find £20,000 to spend on artwork for their offices

So far no word about that from the Taxpayers' Alliance .... hmmm ... wonder why that is?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2010/nov/11/co...

Well, exactly. Saw a repeat of PMQs and Clegg's sorry performance. Lies and hypocrisy from start to finish. And what was with the rude and unparliamentary way of his continually referring to HH merely as 'she' in his p*ss poor answers to her questions? I thought the protocol was to say 'the honourable lady'. (Who's "she", the cat's mother? as my Gran used to say.)

Anyway, I thought Harriet did well - she certainly ripped Clegg a new one.

It does all seem to go against a natural sense of justice. I can see where Harriet's coming from, but the bottom line is that whatever high standards the Labour party sets itself, it is never going to get Brownie points for it from their massed enemies in the media and the government.

I took the quiz during my coffee break and scored about the same on the Authoritarian/Libertarian level, although I ended up much further along the left wing scale though (-7).

You also need to factor in that it's an American quiz, and their right wing is rather more hardcore than our right wing - so a score getting close to the midway point is still quite right wing by UK standards! Also, there are issues, for example abortion, which aren't specifically party political issues in the UK. Of course Nadine Dorries is well known for her anti abortion views, but she's regarded as a bit of a maverick by Tory High Command. And there are probably Catholic Labour MPs who have personal views about it.

I thought the question about 'do you support military intervention that goes against international law' was a bit loaded - obviously referring to Iraq. (Why is it right wing to oppose a genocidal dictator?) So my agreeing with that probably upped my right-wing/authoritarian score a little bit.