So, no blog from you then? Can’t decide whether to shit or get of the can I see…

In fact other forms of political participation (single issue campaigning for instance) has been on the rise and yet no one is running around blaming blogging for that.

If Hazel Blears wants to really look at things that have undermined politics in this country she could look no further than her party in power, it’s illegal war, it’s pandering to the Daily Mail, it’s chumming up to Rupert Murdoch, it’s compromising of it’s values all to gain and then cling to power.

And seriously, we PP writers don’t have to produce a fucking manifesto every time we dare question the political order. If you really haven’t a clue what we’ve been talking about, campaigning for and hoping to see on here over the last three years you need you eye balls checking!

I’d like to throw down the down the gauntlet to you, you have an enough time and opinion to write some substantial comments on here. Isn’t it time you started your own blog and got in the game instead of sniping from the sidelines?

If you want to prove us wrong or even Hazel Blears (if you dare!) then I say it’s time you went for it.

You say internet comment is not that powerful. True, but I would argue that is not the same as without influence. What I am saying is that the professional malcontent atmosphere on the web has fed into wider debate making cynicism, assumption of guilt and even hate a knee-jerk reaction. More than that, the reaction is rarely accompanied by anything constructive. Your article being a pretty good case in point.

Not that long ago, this was the preserve of a few oddballs in the Mail. Now it’s mainstream.

Are you saying that the atmosphere created by web comment has not fed into and influenced wider debate and influenced it for the worse. If so, I would suggest that you are being fanciful.

You also say discontent existed previously – I totally agree and I imagine you agree with my earlier remakrs on this. But again, I am not sure what you mean more generally. Are you saying that the situation we have where cynicism feeds on and reinforces itself is good?

Overall I still am not too sure what your prescription is either. Let me be clear, I am not saying that politics in general has much to be proud of. But that does not somehow mean that I have to like the loudmouths, never-will-bes and hatemongers that make up the internet chatterati.

Does it?

Note: I may have made up that statistic.

I reckon the top answers would include homeopathy, pixies, intercessionary prayer, reincarnation, Elvis lives!, Noel Edmonds’ has harnessed the power of positive thinking, and Jeremy Clarkson should be sacked…

Those things are not mutually exclusive are they?

A couple of things, bloggers just aren’t that powerful. We’re being used [by what's known in the political sphere] as a ‘scapegoat’. Also, the disillusionment and distrust with/of politics, political parties and politicians existed long before social media came on the scene.

Why can’t it be at least a bit of both? Those things are not mutually exclusive are they?

Leon, which ever way this issue is presented, the impact of the internet can not, to my mind, be seen as neutral. This is the first crop of politicians to be exposed to the febrile internet chat-room atmosphere and that IS a legitimate point. I suspect that just about any government of the past would have been subject to similar internet sentiments had the technology been around at the time.

Can you imagine the CiF reaction to any of Attlee taking Brtian nuclear or partitioning India? Eden and Suez? Wilson and the IMF? Heath and Northern Ireland? Wilson/Callaghan and industrial unrest? Thatcher and just about anything? Major and the first gulf conflict? There are any number of other examples.

The sentiments one sees on the internet today have always been around I suspect but in this day and age they have been given a higher (some would say too high) prominence.

More than that though, as the internet has become strident, so concurrently has political debate. It has infected the print media, TV interviewing the lot. Journalists have had to become ever more loudmouthed to get noticed directly due to internet stridencey. Disinterested presentation of current affairs is well down the list for journalists, internet contributors and the like. The only priority is scoring points.

Yes – it’s great that the internet has given all a voice, but there needs to be an acknowledgement that it has come at a price. The wild conspiracy theorising, failure to understand compromise and one-eyed self indulgence spawned by the internet has not been good. Essentially the internet has brought about a near de facto assumption of guilt, and yes many internet warriors have lapped it up unthinkingly.

Go and read the CiF comment on Glenrothes’ by-election. It can basically be summarised as, ‘we know best, the voters are wrong.’ Not healthy.

Now we can go on all day about standards in public life. It may well be that there has been a decline, I don’t know. But let’s not pretend that the atmosphere for comment today makes for good quality scrutiny (eh Leon?).