Is there’s anyone, anywhere, still in any doubt about my fitness to escape from the cosy playpen of the blogosphere into the dirty, nasty world of real politics?

Yesterday, a friend came round. He lives in Leeds. We got talking about the bins, as you do, and he forwarded me an email and told me the tale of what’s going on.

I said, “we should do something” and so, lo, a facebook group was created, and that was all there was to it until more time could be found for a properly researched post.

But no, nothing’s ever that simple. Spent the day battling with someone determined to portray this ‘campaign’ as something called Astroturfing, which apparently means organisations creating fake grassroots campaign.

I’m not quite sure what it is I’m supposed to have done differently in order to avoid this. There was no group on the side of the people against the strikers, so one was created… we just happened to be Lib Dems. Does that make you evil now?

Politics, it turns out, is a dirty business. Who knew? I sort of get a sense of the kind of pressure that turns politicians into frightened drones terrified of risks (and the internet, and saying anything definitive).

For the record, apart from some arrests that were reported in the paper, most of the rest of my evidence is word of mouth from other Lib Dems. People are right to question that evidence (I certainly do), so, again, I stress, until I’ve done some homework you should regard it as nothing more.

In the meantime, I love the irony of writing a post standing up to bullying, only to find myself getting bullied too. Why am I surprised?