Labour flunky, Matthew Taylor, has criticised bloggers for a crisis in politics by exposing shitty politicians, government stupidity and making unreasonable demands.

Taylor says that politics and the internet aren’t necessarily a bad partnership of course, citing Traitor Blair’s recent online interview and David Milliband (the cretinous minister in charge of DEFRA that has overseen mass bankruptcy of English farmers because of the incompetence of his department in paying farm subsidies) who has his own propaganda blog.

Political bloggers, Taylor says, are responsible for a “shrill discourse of demands” that dominates politics and specifically criticises those bloggers that see it as their job to expose venal, stupid and mendacious politicans.

It’s people like Matthew Taylor who spout this self-serving, holier-than-thou bullshit that convinces me that politicians are increasingly in need of a damn good virtual thrashing at every opportunity.  We elect politicians to run the country for us.  For us, not for them.  Why shouldn’t I, or any other citizen, be allowed to expose incompetence, corruption, ineptitude or any other inappropriate behaviour by a public servant?  Why shouldn’t I be allowed to question their motives and actions or demand that they act in the interests of me and my country rather than themselves or their party?

Taylor said “We have a citizenry which can be caricatured as being increasingly unwilling to be governed but not yet capable of self-government”.  This attitude is what gave rise to the illiberal ID card scheme which will have the state tracking our every move because we can’t be trusted.  It gives rise to undemocratic legislation that deprives us of our right to privacy, free speech, free assembly and many other rights and priveleges that we have had for centuries because we can’t be trusted.

We are all sick to death of being like Matthew Taylor telling us that we can’t be trusted to make our own decisions and that it’s wrong to criticise the government.  A million people – 1/60th of the entire population of the UK – decended on London to tell the British government not to invade Iraq and they did it anyway.  Over 400,000 people marched on Parliamen in protest at the hunting ban.  Tens of thousands of people have signed petition after petition calling on the British government to take us out of the European Federation, to end health apartheid and change countless illiberal and undemocratic policies but do they listen?  Do they buggery.  Government knows best.

Blogging isn’t new – it’s merely a new way of doing something that’s been done for hundreds of years.  Until recently, those of us who wanted to publically voice our opposition to the government would write in a newspaper or try and get on the radio or TV.  The internet has provided a way – via blogs – to get your point across to an audience of millions.

Instead of slagging us off, people like Taylor should be looking to bloggers of all leanings for examples of what real people are thinking and what real people want.  Labour’s precious pressure groups like the Muslim Council of Britain and the Countryside Alliance don’t reflect the views of the public, they exist only to perpetuate their own existence.  Rather than seeing political bloggers as a threat, the British government should see them as a means of engaging with the public.

It’s not easy trying to describe just how contemptuous people like Taylor are without resorting to traditional Anglo-Saxon words so I’ll leave it to the expert.