Outrageous Lies

OK, so let's get this straight - a Downing Street spin doctor sends an e-mail to another prominent Labour Party activist in which he makes various unsubstantiated allegations about various Tories, including David Cameron, but the contents of said private communication are somehow obtained by a Tory blogger and leaked to the press. Cue howls of outrage and demands for apologies from the Tories and press feeding frenzy which ensures that this story dominates the news agenda for days, pushing real stories about police brutality, North Korean missile tests and Somali pirates kidnapping American merchant sailors onto the sidelines. Now, bearing in mind that I regularly publish stories making completely unsubstantiated allegations about David Cameron on The Sleaze, I'm somewhat amazed at the attention this e-mail generated. Most of my stories create barely a ripple. Clearly, what I'm doing wrong is actually publishing them - what I should be doing is sending them as private e-mails to a friend or colleague.

I'm not sure why anybody should have thought that the revelation that Labour activists say rude things about opposition politicians surprising. Far from being a sign of the canker lying at the heart of this government, as the Tories would have you believe, smearing opponents has been going on for a long time. It was stock in trade for the Tories throughout most of the last three decades. Indeed, despite the media overkill with regard to this story, it seems that the general public really don't give a fuck about, collectively shrugging their shoulders and asking, 'So what?'. The only people who are remotely interested in this bollocks are those pustules upon the backside of the web, political bloggers. Which is hardly surprising as they were instrumental in fermenting the story in the first place. Still, on the up side, it did generate me some traffic as people searched the web trying to find out what these 'rumours' about Cameron were, and mainly alighted upon The Two Faces of David Cameron. I take solace in the possibility that some people out there might now think that Cameron has an evil alter-ego in the form of a slavering sex beast. Come on Tory bastards - get outraged at that!