So Much for Courageous Columnists.

I imagine columnists, Richard Littlejohn and Amanda Platell -like to think that they are "brave" and "hard hitting", "edgy" etc, when they write their stuff ragging on, often the most vulnerable people in society. People who don't have access to a high circulation newspaper to counter their claims, and the salary that comes with it either. Well I don't buy it, not one bit. I see little evidence of bravery in circulating saloon bar politics, and PC myths to an audience that has many who lap this stuff up anyway. Undercover reporting about crime barons, or foreign journalists uncovering the dictatorships crimes they live under -yes. Daft stories about people sent to prison for 60 years, for putting orange peel in the paper recycling bin, no. At the very least if you want to be edgy, bite the bullet and admit that you support something unpopular or dubious (Let me add the two are often mutually exclusive.) Don't try to lamely fence sit, cause that certainly isn't brave at all. Is it Richard Littlejohn? Who writes this about torture:

"Let them take their claims to the courts in Washington, or Islamabad, and see how It has been stressed repeatedly that no British agent has been involved directly in torture, but knew it was happening and acted on information obtained under duress.

" What are they supposed to do? If MI 5 are informed by Pakistani intelligence of a plot to blow up a shopping centre in Manchester, they would be irresponsible in the extreme if they didn't investigate and do everything in their power to prevent it."

Ooh the ticking time bomb dilemma. But then he adds.

"No, I'm not condoning torture"

You are a bit.

Then there's Amanda Platell, a women so bitchy I have to wear goggles to read her column, lest my eyes are dissolved by the acidy venom of her writing. Here she questions the competence of the women chief constable who headed the Moat standoff in Northumbria, for err... being a bit like an air hostess. But it's nothing to do with her being a women, as Amanda handily points out.

" I'm all for equality in the police force,

but is acting Chief Constable Sue Sim the right person to take charge in the Raoul Moat manhunt?

At a meeting on Thursday to quell local fears, she began the proceedings by performing a health and safety demonstration that pointed out the emergency exits.

To lighten the mood, she jokingly delivered it in the style of a trolley dolly.

I'm sure the residents of Northumbria slept more soundly in their beds that night knowing there may be an armed maniac in their midst, but at least their lady Chief Constable is a good laugh."

It won't stop pithy comparisons to "trolley dolly's" though.

These aren't perhaps the most glaring examples of the "I'm not a racist but..." comments that lead these kind of stories, they are just two in succession that stood out. I always think that kind of back peddling on supposedly condemning what your simultaneously trying to put across is a bit like a kid who says something a bit too tactless about another person and hurts their feelings, but tries to stem the damage done by passing it off as "I was only joking." Or when Bernard Manning used to claim that people shouldn't object to his racist jokes as they were only jokes, and he took the piss out of everyone anyway. Everyone - seemingly 90 percent of the time, meant Asians and Black people. It really is meaningless sentiment, and a lame attempt to distance yourself from opinion brought about by iffy reasoning. It's certainly not what I'd call brave.