Time to dump Harman, Ed!

Anyone who watched this debacle on Newsnight can be under no doubt that Miliband has the wrong deputy, and that she is a liability.

It is rare for me to post twice in a single day, but to listen to Harriet Harman blaming the riots on tuition fees really is beyond the pale!

Full marks to Michael Gove for putting her in her place...



I have sympathy for Miliband in that he was not allowed to pick his own deputy, but after this performance she really must go!

Time to dump Harman, Ed!

Anyone who watched this debacle on Newsnight can be under no doubt that Miliband has the wrong deputy, and that she is a liability.

It is rare for me to post twice in a single day, but to listen to Harriet Harman blaming the riots on tuition fees really is beyond the pale!

Full marks to Michael Gove for putting her in her place...



I have sympathy for Miliband in that he was not allowed to pick his own deputy, but after this performance she really must go!

Rotten Boroughs : South Tyneside

It has to be said that there are some real idiots out there masquerading as Councillors like, for example, Cllr Bartlett of Stony Stratford of whom I wrote recently. But if you really want to scrape the bottom of the barrel, there is unlikely to be anywhere better to look than South Tyneside.

Cllr David Potts is a controversial figure in South Tyneside, often accused by the Tyneside Independent Alliance - a coalition of independent councillors and candidates - of being an ineffective local councillor. He came under fire in November last year when he spent three months in South Africa while still claiming £1,003 a month in expenses - without giving a clear reason for the trip. He said at the time: 'I'm here on a mixture of business and pleasure' - so you would be justified in asking exactly why he was being funded by ratepayers?

But more recenty, Cllr Potts decided to have a jolly good rant when his local MP - none other than David Miliband - was offered a job a non-executive role at Sunderland football club with a reported salary of £50,000 a year.

So incensed was Cllr Potts at this move that he launched forth with a tirade of abuse on Twitter. I quote : "Miliband takes on Sunderland football role. If I knew he was that cheap I'd have offered him 50K years ago. What a wanker!"

Not content to stop there, he went on to offer Miliband £1,000 to teach his girlfriend to cook. Now Miliband might have been on the look out for a job or two since losing the Labout leadership election to his brother, but I doubt even he is that desperate!

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "Football often raises strong emotions, but language like this is clearly unacceptable in political debate." In his own party, leader of South Tyneside Council Iain Malcom said last night: "The comments are clearly outrageous from a senior public figure like Cllr Potts, he should withdraw them from his Twitter account and apologise to David Miliband."

Now you might think that this is a little hypocritical of me as I am about to declare that I think they are both a couple of wankers - but then, I'm not a holder of public office....

....and if I was, then I'd know better!

Rotten Boroughs : South Tyneside

It has to be said that there are some real idiots out there masquerading as Councillors like, for example, Cllr Bartlett of Stony Stratford of whom I wrote recently. But if you really want to scrape the bottom of the barrel, there is unlikely to be anywhere better to look than South Tyneside.

Cllr David Potts is a controversial figure in South Tyneside, often accused by the Tyneside Independent Alliance - a coalition of independent councillors and candidates - of being an ineffective local councillor. He came under fire in November last year when he spent three months in South Africa while still claiming £1,003 a month in expenses - without giving a clear reason for the trip. He said at the time: 'I'm here on a mixture of business and pleasure' - so you would be justified in asking exactly why he was being funded by ratepayers?

But more recenty, Cllr Potts decided to have a jolly good rant when his local MP - none other than David Miliband - was offered a job a non-executive role at Sunderland football club with a reported salary of £50,000 a year.

So incensed was Cllr Potts at this move that he launched forth with a tirade of abuse on Twitter. I quote : "Miliband takes on Sunderland football role. If I knew he was that cheap I'd have offered him 50K years ago. What a wanker!"

Not content to stop there, he went on to offer Miliband £1,000 to teach his girlfriend to cook. Now Miliband might have been on the look out for a job or two since losing the Labout leadership election to his brother, but I doubt even he is that desperate!

A Conservative Party spokesman said: "Football often raises strong emotions, but language like this is clearly unacceptable in political debate." In his own party, leader of South Tyneside Council Iain Malcom said last night: "The comments are clearly outrageous from a senior public figure like Cllr Potts, he should withdraw them from his Twitter account and apologise to David Miliband."

Now you might think that this is a little hypocritical of me as I am about to declare that I think they are both a couple of wankers - but then, I'm not a holder of public office....

....and if I was, then I'd know better!

Those Miliband policies in full...

Following his address to the recent assembled cuts protestors in London, here's a list of the Mighty Milipede's policies in full...

1. Slag off the Tories
2. Slag off the LibDems
3. Slag off the Tory led Coalition
4. Complain about cuts
5. er...........
6. ........................that's it.

Those Miliband policies in full...

Following his address to the recent assembled cuts protestors in London, here's a list of the Mighty Milipede's policies in full...

1. Slag off the Tories
2. Slag off the LibDems
3. Slag off the Tory led Coalition
4. Complain about cuts
5. er...........
6. ........................that's it.

New Balls

He's at it again! It really is time that the Milipede put the muzzle on his Rotweiller, especially if he is going to sink as low as this...

Yesterday, Balls decided that the best way to attack the Chancellor ahead of next week's budget was to play the Japan card. This what he said :

It won't be good enough if George Osborne stands up next week in the Budget and says the reason he has to downgrade his growth forecast is the cold winter, or the Irish bailout or because of the spike in world oil prices or the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake.

Frankly Ed, this is bad taste even for you.

Balls has a reputation for putting his foot in his mouth pretty much every time he opens it. His comments have been called 'insensitive' and 'insulting to the Japanese people'. It's hard to disagree.

Tory MP Aidan Burley summed it up nicely : "It seems very distasteful to be pre-empting a comment George has not made and almost certainly won't make. It must be a new low for a shadow Chancellor to think the Chancellor would blame an 8.8 earthquake in Japan as in some way responsible for a decade of Labour mismanagement of the economy."

Labour of course said they had made a fair point about not been distracted by external events and that Balls had said 'nothing wrong'. The Milipede has kept a low profile on the matter. Frankly appointing this man as his Shadow Chancellor hardly shows good judgement...

New Balls

He's at it again! It really is time that the Milipede put the muzzle on his Rotweiller, especially if he is going to sink as low as this...

Yesterday, Balls decided that the best way to attack the Chancellor ahead of next week's budget was to play the Japan card. This what he said :

It won't be good enough if George Osborne stands up next week in the Budget and says the reason he has to downgrade his growth forecast is the cold winter, or the Irish bailout or because of the spike in world oil prices or the aftermath of the Japanese earthquake.

Frankly Ed, this is bad taste even for you.

Balls has a reputation for putting his foot in his mouth pretty much every time he opens it. His comments have been called 'insensitive' and 'insulting to the Japanese people'. It's hard to disagree.

Tory MP Aidan Burley summed it up nicely : "It seems very distasteful to be pre-empting a comment George has not made and almost certainly won't make. It must be a new low for a shadow Chancellor to think the Chancellor would blame an 8.8 earthquake in Japan as in some way responsible for a decade of Labour mismanagement of the economy."

Labour of course said they had made a fair point about not been distracted by external events and that Balls had said 'nothing wrong'. The Milipede has kept a low profile on the matter. Frankly appointing this man as his Shadow Chancellor hardly shows good judgement...

New Balls!

"iTalk" has been at it again - a full blown attack on George Osbourne in the Daily Mirror. Let's look at what he had to say :

What matters most when times are hard is whether the government is trying to shield you from the storm, or leaving you to fend for yourself.

When Osborne or his Lib Dem lackeys say: “It’s all Labour’s fault, we inherited a mess” .... what they’re really saying to the British people is: “We’re not ­responsible: don’t ask us for help.”

Well, that's all very well, Binky, and it makes a nice soundbite. Where was your government when the shit was hitting the fan? Oh, out spending money we hadn't got because you emptied the coffers. You created this mess. You were responsible or we would not have the scale of problems we have, so to accuse the coalition of not trying to sort it shows a distinct lack of grip on reality.

And "LibDem lackeys"? That's just downright insulting. Name calling is the last resort of an immature mind.

The Tories say that because Labour was not tough enough in regulating the banks, the economic crisis is our fault.

They forget that every time the Labour government tried to tighten regulation, it was the Tories who protested we were strangling enterprise with red tape, and David Cameron who accused Gordon Brown of being The Great Regulator.

There goes that grip on reality again. Labour destroyed regulation of the banks. Balls himself was the very man calling for a 'light touch' in dealing with financial regulation. The regulation Labour tried to tighten was on small and medium size business who were destroyed by a sea of red tape. It was this red tape that Cameron was referring to, not the banks. Labour let the banks get away with murder. In fact, the first thing Tony Blair did when he left office was to join the board of a merchant bank.

The Tories want you to believe Labour spent too much money on services like schools, hospitals and the police, and that is why we have today’s budget deficit.
That way they can justify drastic cuts in those services in order to bring down the deficit, and say it is all Labour’s fault.

If you define 'too much' as money we don't actually have, then that's exactly what Labour did. Cutting spending and raising taxes is the only way to reduce a structural deficit.

Cameron has been forced to match some of Labour's spending plans in some areas because this is a COALITION, Ed. The LibDem 'lackeys' do actually have some say and are actually more left wing than the Conservatives. It's called prioritisation and compromise, something you seem to know little about.

When the financial crisis hit, we were badly affected by the loss of tax revenues from the City, and we had to inject huge sums of money to protect people’s mortgages and savings and stop the British banking system from collapsing.

On top of that, we cut VAT for a year, introduced the car scrappage scheme, funded apprenticeships and job ­creation schemes, and subsidised mortgages – all to stop people losing their jobs, homes and businesses.

That is what caused the deficit, not spending on schools, hospitals and the police.

You didn't regulate the banks properly, then you had to bail them out. The money you threw at the economy was to buy votes. Spending actually did make the deficit worse. That's not even economics - it's called basic housekeeping.

Every time they take an unpopular decision, the Tories say the same thing: it’s not our fault, we inherited a mess.

In reality, they inherited an economy which was beginning to recover strongly, with unemployment falling, interest rates at historic lows, and the public finances better than the Treasury’s forecasts

Actually, the Coalition say that we need to sort it out. The economy was recovering, but not strongly and interest rates at historic lows has crippled the very people who have the disposable income to boost the economy - people living on their investments. It has also helped inflation to rise. It appears we learnt nothing from the Japanese experience of punitively low interest rates.

And just because the public finances outperform the Treasury forecasts doesn't necessarily mean that they are performing well, does it?

The Labour Party has a responsibility to stand up for millions of Mirror readers across the country who are already being hit by rising unemployment, rising inflation and the rise in VAT.

Bank lending has strangled investment and caused job losses. That includes the banks you bought and then failed to control. Low interest rates and taxes introduced by you have cause infation to rise, coupled with the false readings in the figures when VAT went back to 17.5% - and let's not forget that you were intending to raise it to 19%. Oh, and then there's those fuel tax rises you introduced. They had no effect on inflation, did they?

You can read his full article by clicking here, but in the words of the song "You say it best when you say nothing at all"...

New Balls!

"iTalk" has been at it again - a full blown attack on George Osbourne in the Daily Mirror. Let's look at what he had to say :

What matters most when times are hard is whether the government is trying to shield you from the storm, or leaving you to fend for yourself.

When Osborne or his Lib Dem lackeys say: “It’s all Labour’s fault, we inherited a mess” .... what they’re really saying to the British people is: “We’re not ­responsible: don’t ask us for help.”

Well, that's all very well, Binky, and it makes a nice soundbite. Where was your government when the shit was hitting the fan? Oh, out spending money we hadn't got because you emptied the coffers. You created this mess. You were responsible or we would not have the scale of problems we have, so to accuse the coalition of not trying to sort it shows a distinct lack of grip on reality.

And "LibDem lackeys"? That's just downright insulting. Name calling is the last resort of an immature mind.

The Tories say that because Labour was not tough enough in regulating the banks, the economic crisis is our fault.

They forget that every time the Labour government tried to tighten regulation, it was the Tories who protested we were strangling enterprise with red tape, and David Cameron who accused Gordon Brown of being The Great Regulator.

There goes that grip on reality again. Labour destroyed regulation of the banks. Balls himself was the very man calling for a 'light touch' in dealing with financial regulation. The regulation Labour tried to tighten was on small and medium size business who were destroyed by a sea of red tape. It was this red tape that Cameron was referring to, not the banks. Labour let the banks get away with murder. In fact, the first thing Tony Blair did when he left office was to join the board of a merchant bank.

The Tories want you to believe Labour spent too much money on services like schools, hospitals and the police, and that is why we have today’s budget deficit.
That way they can justify drastic cuts in those services in order to bring down the deficit, and say it is all Labour’s fault.

If you define 'too much' as money we don't actually have, then that's exactly what Labour did. Cutting spending and raising taxes is the only way to reduce a structural deficit.

Cameron has been forced to match some of Labour's spending plans in some areas because this is a COALITION, Ed. The LibDem 'lackeys' do actually have some say and are actually more left wing than the Conservatives. It's called prioritisation and compromise, something you seem to know little about.

When the financial crisis hit, we were badly affected by the loss of tax revenues from the City, and we had to inject huge sums of money to protect people’s mortgages and savings and stop the British banking system from collapsing.

On top of that, we cut VAT for a year, introduced the car scrappage scheme, funded apprenticeships and job ­creation schemes, and subsidised mortgages – all to stop people losing their jobs, homes and businesses.

That is what caused the deficit, not spending on schools, hospitals and the police.

You didn't regulate the banks properly, then you had to bail them out. The money you threw at the economy was to buy votes. Spending actually did make the deficit worse. That's not even economics - it's called basic housekeeping.

Every time they take an unpopular decision, the Tories say the same thing: it’s not our fault, we inherited a mess.

In reality, they inherited an economy which was beginning to recover strongly, with unemployment falling, interest rates at historic lows, and the public finances better than the Treasury’s forecasts

Actually, the Coalition say that we need to sort it out. The economy was recovering, but not strongly and interest rates at historic lows has crippled the very people who have the disposable income to boost the economy - people living on their investments. It has also helped inflation to rise. It appears we learnt nothing from the Japanese experience of punitively low interest rates.

And just because the public finances outperform the Treasury forecasts doesn't necessarily mean that they are performing well, does it?

The Labour Party has a responsibility to stand up for millions of Mirror readers across the country who are already being hit by rising unemployment, rising inflation and the rise in VAT.

Bank lending has strangled investment and caused job losses. That includes the banks you bought and then failed to control. Low interest rates and taxes introduced by you have cause infation to rise, coupled with the false readings in the figures when VAT went back to 17.5% - and let's not forget that you were intending to raise it to 19%. Oh, and then there's those fuel tax rises you introduced. They had no effect on inflation, did they?

You can read his full article by clicking here, but in the words of the song "You say it best when you say nothing at all"...

The Snot Gobblers Guide to the Galaxy

This is a first for this blog. I couldn't have put this better myself, so I'm not going to try

What follows is an excellent review of Gordon Brown's new book by Supertzar.

When you read Tony Blair's response to the coalition's plans, when you consider the ideas Frank Field had to transform welfare in Britain, when you look at the spectacular growth in ultimately ineffective tick-box City compliance, when you consider the £6bn the UK Exchequer lost from selling the country's gold reserves or the decimation of private sector pensions, when you consider which country alone had a run on its banks or look at the level of indebtedness and structural defecit in the UK, you begin to notice a thread.

It's quite clear that the country has paid a high price for the grandiose delusions of Gordon Brown. Whether delaying welfare reform, jacking up taxes with precious little to show for it, reducing the UK's competitiveness, increasing spending in huge (Labour voting) swathes of the country to Soviet levels or crushing incentives to create the wealth we need to both close the defecit and pay down the £1 in every £4 spent that we currently borrow, this deranged, abusive, out-of-control lunatic has his hands all over the crime scene.

Having failed the first test of democracy he has faced outside of his constituency, one might expect Gordon Brown to have spent his time reflecting on his 'contribution' to the UK. Or perhaps make amends by devoting his time to serving his constituents. Not a bit of it. At the date of publication, the poor deluded folk of Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath have been represented in parliament for a mere handful of the 200 odd days for which their MP has been paid. Instead, Gordon Brown has devoted his time to knocking off this 300-page exercise in personal exculpation.

As he notes in his introduction, Brown is neither a financial expert nor an economist. Which might explain, but does not excuse, his lamentable diagnosis of the causes of the financial meltdown he fomented. It was all bankers paying themselves too much apparently. If only they'd paid themselves 10% less, all would have been fine. What about if public sector payrises had been pegged to inflation or a certain Chancellor hadn't raided - and thus destroyed - private sector pensions or what if the banking regulation system that had worked for hundreds of years had been left in place or what if the asset bubble had received some attention by, say, increasing the banks' capital adequacy ratios?

You can take your pick of brilliant hindsight-derived ideas, Gordon, but ultimately, you were in charge and your delusions about abolishing boom and bust meant you spent so much of our money, we now have to borrow just to pay off the interest. Your diagnosis is utter delusion from start to finish.

Nurse, the screens please...

The Snot Gobblers Guide to the Galaxy

This is a first for this blog. I couldn't have put this better myself, so I'm not going to try

What follows is an excellent review of Gordon Brown's new book by Supertzar.

When you read Tony Blair's response to the coalition's plans, when you consider the ideas Frank Field had to transform welfare in Britain, when you look at the spectacular growth in ultimately ineffective tick-box City compliance, when you consider the £6bn the UK Exchequer lost from selling the country's gold reserves or the decimation of private sector pensions, when you consider which country alone had a run on its banks or look at the level of indebtedness and structural defecit in the UK, you begin to notice a thread.

It's quite clear that the country has paid a high price for the grandiose delusions of Gordon Brown. Whether delaying welfare reform, jacking up taxes with precious little to show for it, reducing the UK's competitiveness, increasing spending in huge (Labour voting) swathes of the country to Soviet levels or crushing incentives to create the wealth we need to both close the defecit and pay down the £1 in every £4 spent that we currently borrow, this deranged, abusive, out-of-control lunatic has his hands all over the crime scene.

Having failed the first test of democracy he has faced outside of his constituency, one might expect Gordon Brown to have spent his time reflecting on his 'contribution' to the UK. Or perhaps make amends by devoting his time to serving his constituents. Not a bit of it. At the date of publication, the poor deluded folk of Kircaldy and Cowdenbeath have been represented in parliament for a mere handful of the 200 odd days for which their MP has been paid. Instead, Gordon Brown has devoted his time to knocking off this 300-page exercise in personal exculpation.

As he notes in his introduction, Brown is neither a financial expert nor an economist. Which might explain, but does not excuse, his lamentable diagnosis of the causes of the financial meltdown he fomented. It was all bankers paying themselves too much apparently. If only they'd paid themselves 10% less, all would have been fine. What about if public sector payrises had been pegged to inflation or a certain Chancellor hadn't raided - and thus destroyed - private sector pensions or what if the banking regulation system that had worked for hundreds of years had been left in place or what if the asset bubble had received some attention by, say, increasing the banks' capital adequacy ratios?

You can take your pick of brilliant hindsight-derived ideas, Gordon, but ultimately, you were in charge and your delusions about abolishing boom and bust meant you spent so much of our money, we now have to borrow just to pay off the interest. Your diagnosis is utter delusion from start to finish.

Nurse, the screens please...

I'm back - and so's Gordon!

Well, I'm back. Totally shagged out after two 11 hour flights, so you'll hopefully forgive me if I am a little lethargic in picking up the reigns again...

Meanwhile, here's a little I-Spy that I spotted out of the window at LA airport :

My God, I thought Blair had some money making ideas, but getting your face painted on the tail fin of every jet in the Air Alaska fleet? No wonder they got rid of Sarah Palin!

(Note for Ian Hislop : You can have this one for the I-Spy section in the Eye, but rest assured I will deal with you later. Watch this space...)

I'm back - and so's Gordon!

Well, I'm back. Totally shagged out after two 11 hour flights, so you'll hopefully forgive me if I am a little lethargic in picking up the reigns again...

Meanwhile, here's a little I-Spy that I spotted out of the window at LA airport :

My God, I thought Blair had some money making ideas, but getting your face painted on the tail fin of every jet in the Air Alaska fleet? No wonder they got rid of Sarah Palin!

(Note for Ian Hislop : You can have this one for the I-Spy section in the Eye, but rest assured I will deal with you later. Watch this space...)

Lying Eyes (The Miliband mix)

This one was, frankly, too obvious to miss so I just had to do it!

Here's a version of the Eagles' classic "Lyin' Eyes" suitably adapted to take account of Red Ed's piercing stare...

Video hosting by

+++ UPDATE +++
This video was also available on YouTube, but the humourless bastards have blocked the audio due to copyright infringement - despite the fact that the music track is NOT the Eagles original and that the LYRICs are originals.

So fuck 'em - watch it on EyeTube instead!

Lying Eyes (The Miliband mix)

This one was, frankly, too obvious to miss so I just had to do it!

Here's a version of the Eagles' classic "Lyin' Eyes" suitably adapted to take account of Red Ed's piercing stare...

Video hosting by

+++ UPDATE +++
This video was also available on YouTube, but the humourless bastards have blocked the audio due to copyright infringement - despite the fact that the music track is NOT the Eagles original and that the LYRICs are originals.

So fuck 'em - watch it on EyeTube instead!

Get ready for the winter of discontent

Apparently, Ed Miliband thinks it is OK for his party to support strikes to defend against the forthcoming budget cuts and privatisations.

Well that's fine, Ed. Except that it's easy to talk bollocks when you're in opposition.

Let's look at the one inalienable fact that no-one seems to be able to understand in your new Old Labour party : It is cheaper to outsource services than it is for local councils to do it themselves. Otherwise, they would not be doing it.

On the face of it, this is patent nonsense. How can it be cheaper to employ companies who build in profit margins? Surely, if the council uses it's own resources on a non profit making basis then it must be cheaper? But it isn't...

So why is this? Well, the simple fact is that council services are very inefficient because they are tied down by the restrictive practices that your marvellous Trade Union movement has saddled on local government.

So when you are standing out on the picket line protesting, remember - you brought it on yourselves...

Get ready for the winter of discontent

Apparently, Ed Miliband thinks it is OK for his party to support strikes to defend against the forthcoming budget cuts and privatisations.

Well that's fine, Ed. Except that it's easy to talk bollocks when you're in opposition.

Let's look at the one inalienable fact that no-one seems to be able to understand in your new Old Labour party : It is cheaper to outsource services than it is for local councils to do it themselves. Otherwise, they would not be doing it.

On the face of it, this is patent nonsense. How can it be cheaper to employ companies who build in profit margins? Surely, if the council uses it's own resources on a non profit making basis then it must be cheaper? But it isn't...

So why is this? Well, the simple fact is that council services are very inefficient because they are tied down by the restrictive practices that your marvellous Trade Union movement has saddled on local government.

So when you are standing out on the picket line protesting, remember - you brought it on yourselves...

Bastard!

Whatever happened to the good old days when this word meant something completely different ?

bastard [ˈbɑːstəd ˈbæs-], noun
"a person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate baby, child, or adult"

Straightforward stuff. Some bloke knocked up an unmarried woman. Legal consequences followed. The overseers for the poor of the parish hunted down the father and made him support the child. Often this involved putting considerable 'pressure' on the woman to reveal who he was. Stigma was attached to the dastardly deed.

Some of us might even be old enough to remember when women were bundled off by their parents to live with relatives far away while they had their bastard baby. After the birth it was unceremoniously adopted so the mother could return home with her reputation unblemished.

Now I'm not advocating that we should return to these draconian times, but I do think we should regard unwanted pregnancies in unmarried women as just a little more than a minor inconvenience.

OK, so it has become socially acceptable to not bother with even civil marriage. However, when you bring a child into the world it carries certain obligations. If you are working on the basis that marriage is not for you because you regard your relationship as transitory, then why are you having children?

Our new Labour (no pun intended!) party leader claims to escew family values and wants to support the family through the welfare system, and yet he has one bastard child already and is in the process of producing another.

Children are being born today with no hope of ever tracing their roots because either the mother doesn't know who the father is or because the father - as in Miliband's case - is so disinterested he doesn't even bother to get his name on the birth certificate.

If this is you, then you are a selfish bastard - in the other sense of the word...

Bastard!

Whatever happened to the good old days when this word meant something completely different ?

bastard [ˈbɑːstəd ˈbæs-], noun
"a person born of unmarried parents; an illegitimate baby, child, or adult"

Straightforward stuff. Some bloke knocked up an unmarried woman. Legal consequences followed. The overseers for the poor of the parish hunted down the father and made him support the child. Often this involved putting considerable 'pressure' on the woman to reveal who he was. Stigma was attached to the dastardly deed.

Some of us might even be old enough to remember when women were bundled off by their parents to live with relatives far away while they had their bastard baby. After the birth it was unceremoniously adopted so the mother could return home with her reputation unblemished.

Now I'm not advocating that we should return to these draconian times, but I do think we should regard unwanted pregnancies in unmarried women as just a little more than a minor inconvenience.

OK, so it has become socially acceptable to not bother with even civil marriage. However, when you bring a child into the world it carries certain obligations. If you are working on the basis that marriage is not for you because you regard your relationship as transitory, then why are you having children?

Our new Labour (no pun intended!) party leader claims to escew family values and wants to support the family through the welfare system, and yet he has one bastard child already and is in the process of producing another.

Children are being born today with no hope of ever tracing their roots because either the mother doesn't know who the father is or because the father - as in Miliband's case - is so disinterested he doesn't even bother to get his name on the birth certificate.

If this is you, then you are a selfish bastard - in the other sense of the word...