HERE WE GO AGAIN - ANOTHER WEEK OF POLITICAL GAFFS

Prominent MPs certainly seem to have a knack of putting their feet firmly in the mire. While this might raise some public anger, it might even give some of us a rare cause to chuckle at their gross stupidity – but you know, the worst part is that they never seem to learn from any of this.

Brown’s monumental gaff when he called 66-year old widow Gillian Duffy a ‘bigot’ after spending some time having a perfectly reasonable conversation with the lady was unforgivable. That cost Brown dearly; and not only in terms of dear Mrs Duffy's vote. Yet, Harriett Harman seemed to have forgotten how her prime minister had exposed himself (in a non-literal sense) to reveal his character flaws when she referred to Danny Alexander, the Chief Treasury Secretary, as a ‘ginger rodent’ at the Scottish Labour Party Conference. Perhaps Harman considered it amusing to say: “Now, many of us in the Labour Party are conservationists – and we all love the red squirrel, but there is one ginger rodent which we never want to see again – Danny Alexander.” This was quite pathetic really.

But it was even more of a surprise when Prime Minister David Cameron appeared to have forgotten how we are all being expected to tighten our belts again amidst his promises for greater transparency and accountability when it was announced that his private photographer was being funded by us. The tale refers to a former Conservative Party employee, Andrew Parsons, once a Press Association photographer, who has been given a civil service post. In a rare moment of comedy, opposition leader Ed Milliband broke from his normal moribund quizzing of the PM to announce: “There’s good news for the Prime Minister – apparently he does a nice line in airbrushing” referring of course to the election campaign poster that showed Cameron as having been ‘touched up’.

Nothing much changes then in Parliament? It looks as if we are about to embark once more on the silly season when the opposition can do no better than to trade insults with the coalition. At least it helps fill the newspapers.