Blogwatch

Bump! Grind! Oooh! Aaah! It seems it's Sex Week over at Troubled Diva, and it's proving to be quite an education for a naive straight young man like myself. Thanks to Danny and Martin, I am now no longer under the impression that gay clubs have "darkrooms" so that the more artistic revellers can disappear off to develop their own photographs during the course of the evening.

Casino Avenue has commemorated Iain Duncan-Smith's sacking by reprinting in full his speech outside Tory Central Office. Here's an excerpt: "My sister knows someone who works with disturbed teenagers, and my experience here was, well, probably 20 times worse than that. I have never known such a bunch of ignorant, backstabbing, lying, deceitful little shits in my life. I ask the parliamentary party - look at you. You bunch of little mummy's boys, beholden to an England which is dead, still in love with Margaret Thatcher, the only woman who reminds them of the nannies they all had. " Ah, if only politicians were always that honest, eh?

Meanwhile Vaughan has been getting stuck into another Tory MP, Oliver Letwin, "an objectionable, toadying, upper-class prick" who takes self-satisfied smugness to a whole new level.

More inspired ranting on The Yes / No Interlude, this time directed against American right-wing radio: "Every other word is "elite" -- the liberal elite, media elite, Hollywood elite. If I listen long enough there'll probably turn out to be a lefthanded elite and gardening elite. Fifty (or less) years ago it would have been "Jews" but now it's more convenient to make the scapegoat more amorphous. It's truly shameless, cynical stuff, pandering to the seething, inarticulate resentments of all those who need a big bulling voice to tell them that it's all the fault of someone else, guying up the most primal of gut-level philosophies, the infantile yammer of "me, me, me" wrapped in the flag to become "US, US, US". God is a stern old white guy whose retribution is righteous but is inately on our side, foreigners are only any good if they do exactly what we say, the economic miracles of Bush have saved us from the Clinton/Gore recession, understanding is for saps, anyone still going on about not finding WMD is anti-American, the California fires are all the fault of the environmentalists -- why, they probably started them so that Schwarzenegger would have to raise taxes and look back.... " Great to see that despite time spent living in Austin, Texas Nigel hasn't yet succumbed to the bludgeoning of the right-wing hammer, and continues to fight the good fight.

And finally... On a lighter note, Sarah has developed a fascination with football mascots of all shapes and sizes, and Razorhead expresses surprise that people still seem to think that Slendertone machines might be a good way of managing to eat deep-fried lard and yet avoid having to do anything remotely sweat-inducing to stay fit. A shame: tightly-fought games of 'Countdown' are enough to give me clammy hands and a racing pulse these days.