egafd.com

"Yes, I would say that the Guardian and the comparatively small percentage of the population who read it do have a disproportionate say on the way this country is run. How so? Well, The Guardian is the favored organ of Labour party supporters, quango committee members, public sector workers (admin, and professional, not manual workers) media journalists, program makers and general luvies (bet Glenda Jackson reads it) These are the key people in national, and local government. These are the people who put the spin on the news, current affairs, dictate how programs are made and put over to the viewer. They can and do have a huge effect on the national consciousness."

Do you have any evidence at all for this or is it guess work. Do you think that Guardian readers have more influence on society than readers of the other 3 broadsheets combined?

By your reckoning everything was going well until the Labour party, backed by devious hordes of public sector admin workers, local government officials and luvvies, came into power. Thats odd, because to everybody else the Labour party is simply a mirror of the Tory party and very little has changed.

For the real behind the scenes power in society, look to the judiciary, cbi, city institutions, multinationals etc - not exactly packed with Guardian readers.

"but if you meet a politically correct hand-wringing tosser I?d lay a pound to a penny that he or she (mustn?t be sexist, hey?) will be middle class."

Well given that hand-wringer and tosser are both terms of abuse then all that is left is politically correct - & how on earth do you define this?
We are probably all politically correct to some degree or another, use of words such as nigger or cripple are generally avoided because they cause offence. Nearly everyone would agree that a woman or a member of an ethnic minority should receive the same pay as a white man for doing the same job.
Then of course there are the Daily Mail stories of "political correctness gone mad" that show the idiocy of extreme political correctness.

So if its a question of degree, then some extremists will even regard Dibble as politically correct. So, by his own definition, he must be a middle-class hand-wringing tosser - hey Dibble, welcome to the club!!

Blimey Arnold, you'll be asking for Lottery funding next.

Well, thanks very much Spook. Very gracious of you. A confirmed freeloader and ligger like The Officer never turns free membership of any institution down. Wheyhey! Cracked it again!

Dibble.

You could try the Independent.

Newspapers are not deemed to be potentially harmful to the morals of society or the individual (yes, I know....), and TV news can show scenes of horrific violence pre-watershed. Porn, on the other hand....
The provisons of EU law are still subordinate to UK law in certain circumstances (witness the current attempt to opt-out of portions of the asylum conventions), which is the loophole our Great and Good continually exploit in their power-games.
So who's gonna stick their heads above the parapet in an EU test-case? If it was a Tory government a concerted campaign of blackmail might do the trick, but this current lot seem to think, like the Pope, that sex should only be for reproductive purposes, and even then you're not supposed to actually ENJOY it.
New Labour? New Puritans, more like.

Positively reasonable, compared to some of the things the money's been wasted on........