Madelaine Bunting said in an Radio 4 interview a couple of months ago that there are some UK bloggers who are currently being done for libel.

As for Ian Dale and Tory morals, you're being very unfair. Both of us know only too well how various people in within the Labour hierarchy have f***ed others over. I don't see any objective difference between the morals of either side. To use examples in the public domain:-

[1] Blunkett's demand to machine-gun prisoners is something you would expect from Presidents Bush, Pinochet or Franco.

[2] John Prescott's various shenanigans over the last year.

[3] When the Tories were in power they threw tons of money at HIV/Aids. Frank Dobson cut it. HIV/Aids services in the UK plummetted. Let's not even go into the way that asylum seekers are no longer entitled to Antiretroviral treatment.

Need I go on?

I seem to remember that Iain apologised in the comments to the post (Once it had been pointed out - to much amusement - that the article was in fact a spoof... "I've been had" were I believe the words he used.)

Iain is a big boy and can be quite nasty enough without having to resort to making things up!

Accuracy, from a Labour MP. Ha ha hahahaha. This Labour government are the most mendacious bunch of serial liars, cheats and crooks to have ever held office. A couple of examples:
[1] The obvious - the union cash isn't coming through, give me some ££, let's call it a loan (but it never has to be repaid) as loans don't have to be declared, and I'll see you right for a lordship
[2] We have this embarassing dome thing over in the docklands that we wasted eye-popping susm of cash on. The only way to offload this is as a "super casino" . Hey John can't you go and see that Anshulz guy and see if we can swing a deal?
[3] Today's example. Brown says that the level of spending in state schools should equal that in the private sector. The education select committee says this is an "Aspiration" i.e. bullshit. The government i.e. Brown responds with a deceitful "we have rectfied decades of underinvestment in education". a) how do you invest in education (it's not an ISA)?
b) Most education spending is salaries/benefits for teachers and support staff, so how do you rectify decades of underSPENDING here? If you raise teacher salaries (my wife is one and it hasn't happened!) how does this raise educational outcomes?
c) Any increase in education spending hasn't raised attainment has it. Yes you have dumbed down exams to help your stats but that can't hide the fact that you have simply failed a whole generation of our children and for that the whole Labour party should be taken out behind the house of a parliament and shot.

Can't wait for you lot to be thrown out of power. You have a near 10,000 majority in West Brom East but even that may not be enough to save you given how much NuLab is now hated. But I suppose you and your sleazy mates will just use the Labout postal-vote fraud as usual. Vote often, vote as your mum, vote as your neighbor, vote as that bloke up the road on holiday, vote labour. You should be ashamed after a decade in power as to the mess you have made and that you only achievement of note is a pile of dead Iraqis

"This Labour government are the most mendacious bunch of serial liars, cheats and crooks to have ever held office."

Not counting, errmm, Jeffrey Archer, who has a number of other offences to take ito account (his writing is murder) or Aitken, or the Hamiltons.

MikeA is John Pilger and I claim my £5.

Bob don't you think that before you start slagging off the Tories that you should get your own party in order? I'm old enough to recall an instance when Thatcher openly challenged Kinnock to put up or shut up about similar allegations he made about the Tories. Kinnock backed down with his tail between his legs.
May I also suggest that if the Labour Leadership had more integrity they wouldn't be trailing the Tories in yesterday's ICM polls.

Let's just take one example of a major porkie that a senior minister recently said. John Reid claimed the soldiers going to Afghanistan may not need to fire a single shot. I attended a briefing on the situation days after Reid's announcement. It emerged that just prior to the UK re-engaging in the Helmand, US Special Forces in Helmand were being pulled out as they were exhausted by the relentless 24/7 onslaught from the Taliban*. Since our soldiers became involved they have been experiencing some of the most intense combat since Korea or even WW2. The situation in Helmand is ghastly. A Secretary of State being "economical with the actualitié" to the British public significantly outweighs the behaviour of an insignificant weasel like Jeffery Archer.

*Strictly speaking the Taliban are not the key players. It's a broad anti-western coalition that includes the Taliban.

irritant (how very apt), I'm not so sure I was 'slagging off the Tories' really, just correcting the chap's lack of historical perspective. If you really think a single rogue opinion poll three years or more before a general election has any meaning at all... keep taking the tablets, they will help you calm down.

You may have an opinion about Reid, and Archer, but in terms of a lying crook, Archer did time. The idiot above wasn't talking abour Reid and the Taliban in any event, but twittering on about education, casinos and trade union funding in his eccentric rant.

I feel I went a bit overboard and I regret it.
Yet everything in my comments is entirely valid and holds up to scrutiny. Labour has been in power for a long time and anyone with a political memory can find plenty of examples of acts done by this government that are just as bad if not worse than the Thatcher/Major administrations. Like I said previously Reid and Archer are in different leagues. Reid didn't tell the truth on a life and death issue.

Your coment on polling is entirely correct but let's be clear, every party (and most major companies) commission them. Granted we may be a couple of years from an election but once a party becomes unpopular there is no logical reason to imply that they will recover. Especially when they are no longer trusted on one of thier core issues the NHS (see Wednesdays Guardian p6, 7).

Sorry that last entry should say the Guardian Thursday p6 & 7.