“Leftie do-gooders”, “the PC brigade” and “the human rights nutters” are phrases you commonly come across on website discussion boards. They seem to be blind and meaningless insults fired off by people who have run out of decent verbal ammunition. These comments bring to mind Rick from the Young Ones, the stereotypical leftie student without an ounce of sense (played by the vile rich Tory Rick Mayall). Of course, there are a few token “lefties” around throwing copies of the Socialist Worker at students and telling you not to swear at demos as their copy of Marx sticks strategically out of their pocket in case a passing socialist female may wish to discuss bedroom politics following the march against Iron Bru. But this are few and, thankfully, far between. More often than not such phrases are aimed at people who genuinely loathe racist scum and don’t mind pointing out that all the world’s problems aren’t caused by immigration, that animal experiments really don’t work (anyone heard the phrase “lentil munchers” recently?) and that killing foxes isn’t a sport but is nothing less than murder for fun.

Internet message boards are funny. They are no longer the refuge of the geek, and are now inhabited by people from every walk of life. Therefore, they’re great for debate, but one look through the comments left on newspaper sites will prove that the “righties”, “the BNP brigade” and the “anti-immigration nutters” have also learned to use a PC and they haven’t lost the ability to be complete cunts either.