Taking us all for idiots

Yes, that's right, the coalition has had yet another wheeze. It has decided to recategorise penury, presumably to label it as merely slightly less affluent or fiscally challenged.

Rather than actually do anything about poverty and in fact while making the problem significantly worse, all they have to do is revise the definition a bit and bob's yer destitute auntie.

What rectal orifice came up with that idea?

Iain Duncan Smith, that's who - the coalition's answer to forcible sterilisation.

"This new measure will span different indicators," he chuntered before throwing the following staggering line in for good measure - "drawing together our knowledge of what it means for a child to live in poverty."

Riiight... This would be the overwhelmingly public school-educated cabinet of multimillionaires, so that shouldn't take long.

"Daddy didn't buy me a pony! I know what suffering is."

The arrogance of these scumbags. Condemning poor parents who work their fingers to the bone AND raise their kids rather than packing them off at the age of four to be sexually abused at Eton or wherever.

Then they brought in the obligatory Lib Dem stooge in an attempt to give a patina of liberalism to the plans.

Unfortunately the one they picked was multimillionaire expenses fiddler David Laws who, you will recall, was forced to quit in total humiliation only a month into the coalition. Good choice!

All of which gives rise to the philosophical question - if a politician gives a speech in a forest and there's no-one around do they still lie?

What these spin doctor types always seem to forget is that for every Snickers there's a Consignia, the Royal Mail's risible attempt to jazz up its image.

Or, to put it another way, for every Ramone there's a Spice Girl.

And speaking of blatant lies and media manipulation it's time to move from the amateurs to the professionals.

Israel - with the connivance of its western cronies - has yet again had the chutzpah to rebrand a blatant act of aggression as self defence.

Arch war criminal Benjamin Netanyahu attempted to justify the murderous onslaught on Gaza and the slaughter of women and children to boost his election prospects as necessary and proportionate.

Now where have we heard that before?

Israel is the only country in the world which consistently claims the right to pre-emptive retaliation and everyone else reacts like the three wise monkeys.

The assault on Gaza was in response to rocket attacks, we were told ad nauseam by all the western powers and their tame media who wasted no time in pinning the blame squarely on Hamas.

No mention of the fact that the rocket attacks are themselves a response to the oppressive siege which has turned Gaza into the world's biggest concentration camp.

Allowing the Israeli regime to continually propagate this innocent victim shtick and declaring its war crimes to be righteous vengeance is like answering the old question regarding chickens, eggs and their relative genesis by screaming "Omelette" and smashing one of them with a hammer.

But as usual that's exactly what the world has done, none more so that cheerleader nonpareil the Beeb.

You might have thought that after recent events the corporation may have been wary of reporting blatant distortions, erroneous information and unfounded rubbish, but no.

Lord Haw Haw would've blanched at some of the coverage.

If you'd been subjected to BBC News 24 over the last couple of days you could be forgiven for thinking that the Palestinians occupied Israel and then built a big wall round themselves, they are all terrorists, rockets only come out of Gaza but don't go in, and the Israeli Defence Force is a humanitarian NGO.

Normal service resumed in other words.