Did anyone else automatically assume from reading the headline that this story was referring to the MPs…?

Image nicked from Guido

MPs who blog are being censored by the Commons authorities - if they use the £10,000 Communications Allowance to pay for it.

A Labour MP says he has been stripped of a Parliamentary allowance for making fun of other MPs on his blog.

Paul Flynn was told to remove posts including ones calling ex-Labour minister Peter Hain a “shapeshifter” and Lib Dem MP Lembit Opik a “clown”.

When Mr Flynn refused he had part of his communications allowance removed.

Other MPs have complained of the Commons trying to “censor” their blogs but the authorities say there are rules on using public money for “propaganda”. (BBC)

There is one very very simple way around it for MPs: Pay for your blog yourself!

Blogging is not an expensive activity. It can be done for nothing with sites such as Blogger and Wordpress, or relatively cheaply with a self-hosted package that gives you far greater control over your blog.

It seems that Paul Flynn has had to go down that route, paying the £250 it costs to run his site each year himself, and has posted this at the botom of his website:

This website is NOT funded by the House of Commons Communication Allowance and is free to express uninhibited views that are not censored by Commons officials.

First comments on that: £250 seems pretty steep for running costs, and secondly: welcome to the real world where you have to actually pay for these sort of things yourself, rather than have the taxpayer pay for them.

Paul Flynn is a cock.

As election coordinator I haven’t spoken to Gordon Brown about the possibility of an election…

Not a poster site has been booked - we are getting on with the job of focussing on how we can help families through the difficult times they are facing…

Of course there will be chatter in the newspapers, there may be chatter in the tearoom but I can assure you at the level of the cabinet we are entirely focussed on trying to help people with rising food bills, rising fuel bills and all the concerns they have got.

He’s dusting off the old “getting on with the job” mantra. But he is certainly right that a snap election at the moment would be extremely foolish.

Both for Labour and for the British people: A snap election now would not help Brown hold on to power, but just turn the electorate even more aginst politicians altogether, seeing them as even more sleazy and grasping as ever. They won’t appreciate being asked to make a decison for next four years in the middle of a financial crisis.

Lord Drayson, Science Minister, has a sixth sense.

In my life there have been some things I have known, and I don’t know why… I think there is a lot we don’t understand about human capability.

So Drayson can tell the future, eh? Does Gordon Brown use Drayson’s “abilities” to decide his policies…?

Labour are obviously massively out of touch if they can employ someone who believes he can see the future as, of all things, science minister.

The manufacture of House of Commons envelopes is “to be shifted overseas”.

Diamond Envelopes supplied French firm Arjowiggins with envelopes that included House of Commons envelopes but the contract between the two plants had now been terminated, said Liberal Democrat Malcolm Bruce, who has pledged to take up the case.

Arjowiggins is expected to transfer the contract overseas.

Bosses at Diamond Envelopes, which employs 53 people, fear cutbacks or even closure. (The Telegraph)

My question is more why do we have specially printed House of Common envelopes? Are our MPs so special that they must have specially printed envelopes?!

Parliamentary letter-heads make sense, but I can see no point in special envelopes. Why can’t they just use bog-standard ones like everyone else? After all, who really sees envelopes? Postmen. Everyone else is far more bothered with the letter inside.

Though isn’t accusing someone else of being “party political” rather, well, party political?

The simple fact of this situation is that there has been massive failures that have resulted in the death of “Baby P”, and yet nothing real seems likely to be done about it. Shameful.

It is amusing how times change. Not so long ago, calling for a tax cut, however funded [or not], was viewed as tantamount to taking food from the mouths of babes. But now it is all the rage.

Tax cuts are good for us all. There is only so much money that the State should take from us, and it already takes too much. Cutting taxes would enable us, the people, to spend more and thus lift the economy out of its current malaise.

Tax cuts should be significant enbough to actually make a difference, but also funded - unfunded tax cuts don’t really help in the long term, as they would soon be replaced by tax hikes, which knowing government would take the tax burden above what it was beforehand.

Whilst David Cameron’s tax cut to get the rising number of unemployed back into work is a good one, what we need most in a cut in either (a) income tax or (b) VAT/sales tax. Then we will have more money to spend and hopefully prevent the economy going into the meltdown predicted by Ken Clarke.

A school “hip-hop musical” commissioned by Stonewall has been staged across the country, aimed at telling school children that it is “OK to be gay”. As is simple common-sense.

There is nothing wrong with being gay. And this is a message that should be sent out by all and sundry to our children, so that they understand this and don’t grow up to become Daily Mail readers homophobic.

One quote from a parent shows just how out of touch they are:

When I was 11, I didn’t even know what ‘gay’ was.

Yeah, but I bet your kids do. Kids of 11-14 are obsessed by it, even though they don’t understand it. They have been indoctrinated with the use of the word “gay” as a synonym for “bad”. The meaning of the word has developed so very much in three generations - from it’s literal meaning of happy, to homosexual, to “bad”. But without drooping any of the previous meanings.

Plus, of course, there is the general attacking of homexuality as “different” or “subversive” and the media stereotyping of gay men as weak, feminine and limp-wristed and lesbians as macho and butch. Thus gay men are perceived by impressionable kids as non-masculine and, effectively, wimps. Hence why children use “gay” as an insult rather than as a mere designation of sexuality.

Objections to this appear to boil down to the lines of “it might make my child gay” or “my child shouldn’t be thinking about sexuality at his age”. Which of course is utter bollocks from start to finish.

Projects like this are simply the best, and only, way to remove the issue of sexuality from the classroom and playground bullying.

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