The Paddy McGuffin Column: Backtracking backstabbers

The politicos have been falling over themselves to deny responsibility for their words

Weasel words and abject backtracking have been very much the order of the day recently.

First we had the nauseating spectacle of former Sun editor Kelvin MacKenzie attempting to squirm his way out of responsibility for THAT headline ... 23 years late.

Oh how decent of him!

While claiming the rag he infamously helmed had printed the smears against the Hillsborough dead in "good faith" - which would have been a first - MacKenzie then grudgingly conceded that the odious headline "The truth" should have said "The lies."

Though that could be the title of every story the Sun has ever printed.

If MacKenzie told you it was raining you'd check to make sure he wasn't urinating on your head. Which is pretty much what he did to the memory of the innocent victims that died.

But the hateful hack was not the only one attempting a bit of retrospective revisionism this week.

The Lib Dems were out in force. On a related theme Vince "the bosses' shill" Cable became the latest mouthpiece to roll out that hoary old Tory-inspired chestnut and claim health and safety legislation is a "burden on business."

The answer of course is to slash that pesky life-saving "red tape."

You see, it's all these silly workers' faults for getting themselves killed and maimed and causing such a nuisance for their benevolent bosses. It's just pure selfishness.

If he carries on like this he could get a job with the Yorkshire Police. I understand a vacancy might be coming up soon.

Then, just for a moment, it felt like the seemingly impossible might just happen - that the infamous invertebrate Nick Clegg might find a backbone - but no.

The Lib Dem capitulator in chief had been preparing to launch an attack on those rabid headcases in the Tory party and the clergy who opposed the introduction of same-sex marriage and his aides, as is common in these matters, distributed the text of his speech to the media ahead of time.

This was truly the one chance the Janus-faced Clegg had to partially redeem himself but at the 11th hour he bottled it.

Yet again it would appear, as the song almost goes, that sometimes "bigot" is the hardest word to say.

Since when did criticising homophobia, or in the case of the ill-fated Gordon Brown xenophobia, become a taboo?

Clegg once again displayed his craven side by recalling the speech and removing the "offending" article and replacing it with the asinine "some people."

He then went even further and claimed that he had not been responsible for writing it.

Now this was a particularly stupid gambit because not only has he shown himself to be pathetically pusillanimous but he has also basically admitted he is nought but a puppet mouthing the words of his spin doctors.

Everyone knows politicians don't write their own speeches. Its an emperor's-new-clothes style conceit perpetuated by the media.

As when Ed Miliband took all the plaudits for his attack on Osborne's budget. He's not that witty.

No self-respecting svengali is going to let those idiots loose on their own. Because when they do this happens...

Former Ulster Unionist (UUP) MP Ken Maginnis recently quit the party after it refused to back him when he referred to gay marriage as "unnatural and deviant behaviour."

Accepting the resignation UUP leader Mike Nesbitt bizarrely stated of Maginnis: "He was the sort of progressive unionist I admire."

Which gives you some idea about the rest of the party...

Maginnis insisted he stood by his remarks, referring to "unnatural physical acts" by "deviants" and adding with reference to the Gay Pride March in Belfast: "These are people that seem to take some pride expressing their particular rights. I disagree with those rights and that deviance."

This from a representative of a party many of whose members dress up in sashes and bowler hats to march through nationalist neighbourhoods, spew anti-Catholic hatred and antagonise the locals, claiming it's their God-given right as it's a "traditional route."

If that's not deviant and unnatural what is?