Just for the record, I did not write this.

That is all.

I’m confused about this latest ad ban. Which character is meant to be gay? The one who is walking peculiarly, or the one wearing lots of gold jewelry, referring to pride in the “man race” and chomping down hard on phallic shaped object demanding that we “get some nuts”?

If this ad is meant to represent the ultimate hetero bashing a homo, I’m Mad Murdoch.

The confusion over whether the government is or isn’t going to support moves to scrap the blasphemy libel laws has reminded me of the ongoing debate over the government’s plans to make it illegal to incite hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation.

In a bad case of wanting to have it both ways, Peter Horrocks of the Evangelical Alliance told the Today programme this morning said that while he accepted that “everybody knows it’s not really going to be used again,” he was concerned that scrapping the law would “send out a signal.”

Much of the debate over the proposed law against inciting hatred of gay hatred has been characterised in similar terms, and of course we had people arguing against scrapping Section 28 in the recent past on the grounds of symbolism. Gordon Brown is a big fan of symbolism. His plan to re-reclassify cannabis has nothing to do with changing a failed policy (it’s arguably been successful, which is why he may have to overrule his own advisory body in order to do it) and everything to do with sending signals. Brown could save himself all this parliamentary time simply by installing two large neon signs outside Number 10 - a thumbs up and a thumbs down - and light up each one at various times depending on the issue of the day.

The symbolism issue is key when it comes to the gay hatred law. I accept David Heath’s argument that the law isn’t fundamentally illiberal; I’m more sceptical about his insistence that it isn’t symbolic. As Gavin Whenman points out, we already have legislation against incitement; what is so peculiar about gay hate that requires specific legislation? I’m prepared to be convinced here, but my sense is that at the heart of the Lib Dem’s reluctance to oppose this law is a fear that Labour will simply throw it in our faces in the puerile manner that they regularly do over our limited opposition to their (failed and again largely symbolic) anti-social behaviour legislation.

The sad fact is, such symbolism works. It gives the media something they can communicate easily; it makes it look as if the government are keeping themselves busy. But just as Labour’s gimmickry about crime hasn’t actually made anyone feel safer, exploiting prejudices through symbolism ultimately just makes people feel more and more divorced from the political process.

I really have veered a lot in my views in this leadership election. I’m not used to this phenomenon of genuinely not having made my mind up about something - it’s giddy stuff!

So it was that while my default position at the beginning of the campaign was that I’d be voting for Clegg, by the middle of last week I was more or less in the Huhne camp. But now I’m starting to move back to the centre again.

The reason is this row about school vouchers. First of all, as I’ve already said, I simply don’t accept the arguments put forward in Chris Huhne’s manifesto that a voucher system would be bad in all cases. If he’d limited his argument to opposing health insurance, he’d have been on safer ground: his arguments about the inherent bureaucracy of such systems are stronger (in my view).

But secondly, that ought to all be irrelevant because if Chris Huhne is truly committed to local control then he ought to accept that different Liberal Democrat council groups might come to wildly varying conclusions based on their local circumstances. I can see, for example, how a school voucher system could work very well indeed in inner London. I’m not wedded to the idea but I can see none of the disadvantages that I would foresee if the same system were introduced in a rural area.

Thirdly, the implication that Nick Clegg has a secret agenda for introducing school vouchers simply doesn’t hold water for me. It appears to be based on a Rachel Sylvester interview in the Telegraph where the simplest, most Occam’s Razor proof explanation is that she simply chose what she wanted to hear. I’ve noticed that one of Clegg’s unique characteristics is that he manages to convince Tories that he is one of them. Last night on 18 Doughty Street Iain Dale and Timothy Barnes were both utterly convinced that Clegg was a conviction Tory, while seconds later being equally convinced that Clegg was about to uncritically support Labour’s “illiberal” proposed homophobic hatred legislation. It doesn’t appear to be rational, more a kind of Derren Brown style mind trick.

(Side point: Barnes and Dale were waxing lyrical about how the Tories were going to oppose this while the Lib Dems would support it. I would merely point you to when it was debated in the Commons last month. Nick Herbert essentially welcomed it notwithstanding concerns about free speech, but it was both Evan Harris and David Heath who dealt with the freedom of speech issue in depth. Lib Dems 1, Tories 0 - sorry chaps)

Back on topic, one of my biggest complaints about Nick Clegg is that he has been playing for safety and that it may cause him and the party trouble in the long run if he then decides to start proposing major changes after he gets elected. To be precise, he won’t be able to and will merely have lots of acrimonious rows that get nowhere if he tries. So I can hardly then worry about a secret plot of his to introduce school vouchers as policy by the back door when he has now stated for the record on several occasions.

And then there’s this article summarising a pamphlet by Direct Democracy about introducing school vouchers. What is significant about this pamphlet is that Direct Democracy are very much on the right of the Conservative Party and they don’t think the argument for school vouchers is winnable in the short term. If they think that, then why on earth would Nick Clegg be so foolhardy as to position himself to their right?

In short, the school vouchers debate is complete puff. I’m annoyed at Chris Huhne for making such an issue of it for what appears to be cheap political capital. And though it saddens me to admit it, I’ve seen him make too much cheap political capital in this campaign so far. The Trident debate went on for two long weeks and also alienated me. The constant references to “not being another Cameron” (which admittedly Clegg can’t entirely absolve himself of blame for) grate; why no attacks on Brown in this campaign?

It is one thing for Huhne to overreach himself occasionally, but it is beginning to look like design rather than accident. His challenge in this campaign as the underdog is to make the political weather. But too much of this comes across as too divisive, too cheap and generating far more heat than light.

Huhne’s manifesto pegged him out to be the strategist, yet he’s the one that has been fighting a tactical campaign. I may be desperately uninspired by Clegg’s campaign, but at least it has an internal logic to it. Being able to maintain a steady course under fire is not in itself a bad thing, even if it is unclear which direction you are going.

I still rate Huhne as the candidate best able to articulate what the Liberal Democrats are for. Clegg continues to fail to inspire me and has been oversold as the “great communicator”. But he is at least now starting to come up with messages of his own. Some I agree with. Some I think are utterly ridiculous. But he’s setting the agenda now. It’s time that Chris Huhne, who has a whole manifesto to keep relaunching bits of over the coming weeks, followed suit.

I never got around to bemoaning the government’s plans to make homophobic attacks a new “hate crime”. Ever since the idea of religious hatred was outlawed I’ve become increasingly sceptical of this new type of legislation; in most cases it does little more than add a little more public “tut-tutting” to something that is already a crime. In some cases (though in practice not often) it can interfere with freedom of speech and the right to criticise. In many more cases it creates a culture whereby people self-censor rather than risk opprobrium and possible legal action. And even where homophobia is endemic - specifically schools and the problem of homophobic bullying - it is hard to see what such a law will do since it is an issue which affects heterosexual kids as much as young lesbians and gays. Do we lessen the sentence because the victim happens to not be gay? Is the clunking fist of the law the best way to solve what is at heart a problem of discipline in schools?

The bullying aspect raises its ugly head again in the announcement yesterday to legislate against inciting hatred against disabled people. The article refers to levels of bullying directed at disabled people appears to be on the rise, but quickly apportions the blame on “happy slapping culture”. It doesn’t seem to be a deep-seated hatred of disabled people, just a general human tendency to pick on anyone who is different. We simply can’t go down a list of differences and make incitement of hatred against them illegal. Where to red-haired people and extremely freckly people fit into all this for example? Anyone who has ever had a childhood can attest that these two overlapping groups are, one of the main, possibly the main, victims of bullying. Yet I can’t see any serious politician legislating against the incitement to ginger hatred.

Bullying isn’t about hatred; it’s about fear - of both parties - and control. I know from personal experience that the line between victim and bully is an extremely fine one: gain a couple of inches in height and you stop being the fat kid everyone picks on and transform into a walking brick shit house that no-one messes with. It’s a cycle of violence and one which I only just broke free of (I like to think). But all too often it is about lashing out at anyone rather than face up to your own feelings of inadequacy.

None of that can be dealt with by hate crime legislation and we would be foolish to attempt to do so. We would criminalise unsympathetic but nonetheless vulnerable people and lose all sense of proportion.

Another in my occasional series about the BBC (which may well have been corrected by the time you read this):

Now, innocent until you’re proven guilty on all that: I’m not commenting on the case itself. But since when does accusing someone of paedophilia count as a “gay slur”? If a straight man was accused of paedophilia, would the BBC call it a “hetero slur”?

It’s fascinating to speculate the psychology behind Alan Duncan’s decision to publicly call Jo Swinson MP a “shit” for inconveniently pointing out the Tories’ lamentable record on gay rights.

As I pointed out a couple of months ago, the Conservative Parliamentary Party response to Cameron calling for his party to support the Sexual Orientation Regulations was to do the opposite. This isn’t a dead issue, it is a very much live one - particularly at a time when Cameron, via his predecessor Iain Duncan Smith, is reintroducing Back to Basics. With the appointment of Sayeeda Warsi, the fact is that when it comes to gay rights, a vote for the Tories is a vote for a pig in a poke. As we’ve seen over the last ten years, civil liberties won hundreds of years ago can be removed by a government with minimal debate - who knows what would happen to comparatively recent civil liberties outlawing discrimination on the basis of homosexuality if people like Eric Pickles were in charge?

It isn’t just legitimate for the Lib Dems to point out their voting record; as the only overtly liberal party in the UK, it is incumbent on them.

I don’t just make this stuff up, you know:

THE floods which claimed seven lives and deluged thousands of homes were the result of “moral degradation”, claims the Bishop of Carlisle.

The bishop, who is a leading evangelical, said that people should heed the stories of the Bible, which described the downfall of the Roman Empire as a result of its immorality.

“We are in serious moral trouble because every type of lifestyle is now regarded as legitimate,” he said.

“In the Bible, institutional power is referred to as ’the beast’, which sets itself up to control people and their morals. Our government has been playing the role of God in saying that people are free to act as they want.”

The bishop also alleged that the introduction of recent pro-gay laws highlighted its determination to undermine marriage.

He said: “The sexual orientation regulations (which give greater rights to gays) are part of a general scene of permissiveness.

“We are in a situation where we are liable for God’s judgment, which is intended to call us to repentance.”

More in the Mail.

This can only mean that Sheffield is a den of vice, while us Londoners are morally virtuous in comparison.

Makes me wonder who all those people on the tube waving inflatables around were on Saturday evening. Maybe they were a new prayer group.

Seriously though. The weather was great last year - it must be a judgement from God. Whatever you were doing last year, do that. Or develop and interest in watersports.

UPDATE: I mean don’t develop an interest in watersports. That is wrong. This religion lark is so confusing!

UPDATE 2: A further thought strikes me. If you live at the top of a thrusting, cock-like hill or mountain, you are immune from flooding. Yet if you live in a more heterosexually inclined, vagina-shaped flood plain, God Punishes You. Maybe He’s telling us we ought to be more gay, not less? I wonder if the finest Anglican theological minds have looked into this?