Arthur and Martha

I was recently told that a certain Tory MP, in whose constituency I once lived, swings between Arthur and Martha. That is to say that whilst his wife and family live in a big house out in a village, he keeps another house in the constituency's largest town, which he allegedly shares with a young man. Now, apart from the fact that this MP represents a party which is forever banging on about family values (and whose former leader has just published a study telling us we'd all be much happier if we were married - although he doesn't mention whether a same sex lover on the side is permissible), one might ask, why would anyone think this information was of any value? Well, it would be if I was a political blogger, it seems. Partly for professional reasons, partly out of boredom, I've looked at a few of these lately. Now, just to make things clear: I'm not talking about the 'official' political blogs kept by parties, politicians or journalists. No, I'm focusing on the 'independent' ones put out by all those would-be political correspondents who couldn't make the grade in proper news organisations.

Many of these have been vaunted in the press as being cutting edge, and the places where the hottest political news is broken. Perhaps I've just been looking at them during a fallow period, because they all seem to be dominated by the kind of tittle-tattle I discussed above. They also seem to be written by people with a political axe to grind, often from the right (the fact that they're resorting to blogging underlining, I suppose, their sheer impotence in terms of pushing their disinformation out through conventional news channels). What this means, obviously, is that the MP I mentioned earlier would, being a Tory, be fairly same from exposure on any of these sites (unless he was to take a clear public position either supporting or opposing David Cameron, depending upon the sympathies of individual political bloggers). If he was a Labour or Lib Dem MP, they'd consider him fair game. I'm sure they'd argue that as long he isn't actually running for, or holding actual political office, his private predilections aren't relevant (and anyway, he isn't paying for gay sex like that nasty Mark Oaten, this is love, apparently).

I guess the point I'm groping toward is that one should beware of giving too much credence to these political bloggers. From what I've seen, they've got just about as much of a finger on Britain's political pulse as Sleaze Diary. Damn it all - even I've managed to scoop them on the Arthur and Martha Tory MP!