Here’s the hot new phrase for the chattering classes: “Atheist Extremist” Laugh, now, while it’s still funny. If there’s one particular American import I really don’t want to see in the UK, it’s the word “Atheist” becoming a pejorative. I think, perhaps, it’s too late already. It’s getting there.

In the US the relationship between “Atheist” and “Marxist Pinko Homosexual Abortionist” appears to be rather concrete, unsettlingly so. “Of course you don’t believe in God” says the Republican. “You’re going to hell for your Marxist Pinko Homosexual Abortionist ways!” I honestly don’t know if the Church wrapped itself in American style Capitalism to protect itself from Marxism, or if American Capitalism wrapped itself in Jesus for the same reason but the link is there. This is a well poisoned well.

So imagine everyone’s astonishment and bafflement at the Pope’s insistence that “Atheist Extremists” need to be fought in order to prevent another Holocaust. I mean, it felt rather like some arsehole turning up at the bar on the Enterprise in Star Trek: The Next Generation and trying to get everyone to join in with a chant of “Queermo! Queermo!” It’s just.. you know… kind of lame and embarrassing to see someone trying to bully a victim who has no comprehension that they’re supposed to be embarrassed and ashamed about X, Y or Z.

Atheist isn’t supposed to be an insult in the UK. We don’t have an “Atheist problem”. We haven’t got the papers foaming at the mouth about “Atheist Extremists”. What does an Atheist Extremist actually do? Really, really really not read Bibles? Really really really not believe? See, there’s no Atheism Player’s Handbook to refer to. Eg:

Godlessness (Level 1, Human Atheist)

+2 Smugness

After using Godlessness, you make anyone with a faith feel moderately uncomfortable for a few minutes.

Hand Of Dawkins (Level 29, Human Atheist)

+100 Smugness

Casting Hand of Dawkins causes impressionable young Atheists to go suicide bomb Mecca and the Vatican.

No. Richard Dawkins – whom many regard as A (of not Thee) Leader of the Atheist “Movement” and, presumably, the Atheist equivalent of Osama Bin Laden – has a problem, and his problem is that people think the Catholic Church and the Pope are easy targets (they’re not at all… it’s nearly 2000 years old and it’s proven itself resilient enough to survive pretty much everything the world throws at it, and there’ll probably still be a pope 2000 years from now) and that to bash them is somehow unfair or insensitive to the feelings of ordinary Catholics, that it’s just plain rude.

That’s because it is. Dawkins’ entire point, entire modus operandi is to deny the religious the normal protection that cultural norms provide and confront them with the stupidity of their beliefs directly. That’s fine, and he’s entitled to do that but they’re still cultural norms. He’s still being rude, better or worse.

So long as Dawkins comes to be regarded as the Boss Of Atheists (“I BELIEVE IN YOU, RICHARD! SHOW US THE WAY”) then Atheists slowly come to be regarded as rude, insensitive, quasi-sectarian dicks. When this happens, people start trying to find ways of describing themselves as non-believers without using the word “Atheist”, or perhaps they’ll add, “I’m an Atheist but I’m one of the good Atheists, not one of those Extremists” or something like that. As soon as that happens then Atheist becomes a pejorative, an insult, and suddenly we’re living in the Parallel Universe of the Holy See where, next time he comes to visit and slags of Atheists we won’t be shocked at all. We’ll almost expect it… after all, those bloody Atheist Extremists DID kill all those Jews!

Sadly, at this point, it’s all so horribly inevitable. The Pope bashing of late has, in many ways, explained why those cultural norms of tolerance and politeness in the face of other people’s beliefs are largely preferable to religious hatred and sectarianism.

If history tells us one thing, is that religions have to clean up their own mess. Seriously, if setting people on fire or setting lions on them doesn’t destroy a Church, calling them a bunch of Paedophiles on Twitter won’t do the trick either.

Have you noticed it, yet? I admit, it’s subtle. This Coalition… the noise coming from it isn’t deafening. The constant stream of not announcing initiatives, not unveiling schemes and not revealing shiny new policies… it’s all a bit unnerving.

Having cut my blogging teeth mostly laughing at the exact opposite from the previous Government this new state of affairs is troubling. How can you poke fun at the Government if they’re not announcing that they’re going to be lobotomising political opponents on Monday, creating a special Gerbil Tax on Tuesday, a “George Michael’s Law” on Wednesday, a scheme to put razor blades in McDonald’s food on Thursday to “get the fatties” and a multi-billion subsidy for the Holland’s Pie Factory so long as they move next door to John Prescott and, preferably, have a door between the two homes so that John can move freely between the two.

See, that’s easy to write about. Actually actually actually getting on with the business of running the country makes it very difficult to write about this blasted Coalition. Not very… media friendly, really. They’re a bit rubbish at spin… I wondered if I was just bad at keeping up to date but, no, they’re really just quite happy to carry on doing what they said they would do a few months ago, without the constant need to tell us shiny new things.

It’s… heaven.

So this means, I think, the Conferences are going to be attracting a lot more interest this year. The media’s starved and need new things to write about. Clearly when attending a Conference, writers begin by creating a narrative. So, for example, let’s say “The Lib Dems are very unhappy with the Coalition and intend to battle their Leader”. Is it true? Who knows?! Who cares?! Let’s just pop along over to Liverpool and ask every bugger wearing a yellow lanyard wot they reckon until you find someone who’s unhappy with the Coalition… and disagrees with Clegg. Go back to the hotel, typey-typey-typey and bob’s your totally made up uncle!

Or… or maybe write about the Labour Leadership Election. I mean, that’s exciting and awesome, right? You all love that topic, right?

How all this will go down with the public is another thing, though. People are used to having daily announcements from the Desk of the Supreme Leader. Maybe… maybe they’ll start to feel lonely. A bit unloved and insecure, now that the Government isn’t trying to be the biggest news story of every single day of the year, or trying to control every single aspect of every single part of their lives.

It feels… like…. hmm… freedom.

Losing my touch. Something about the Labour Leadership candidates has been making me angry since the contest began, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what it was. At first I thought it might have been the Received Pronunciation or the media training or just not being very naturalistic in their presentation (some refer to this as ‘punchable’ but we don’t condone violence at Gore Towers).

Another bugbear is David Miliband’s habit of firing out his lines so quickly that even 3 seconds later you’ve forgotten what they were which is incredibly irritating, but it wasn’t that either.

The answer, at last, came from the BBC’s Question Time Special and their answers to the question, “Why did Labour lose?” and, bing! There it was. Turns out the ‘thing’ is something I’ve whinged about many times before: Labour had an excruciatingly annoying knack of volunteering their own ‘failure to communicate’ as an alternative to throwing their hands up and apologising, and they’re still bloody doing it.

It sounds like they’re being open and honest, but in reality they’re still saying that they’re brilliant and any fault, if there is a fault, is yours. Yours for not getting their point. Yours for not understanding their bigger picture.

There was no hint that they accept any responsibility for the economic situation, or any sense that their domineering, controlling, centralising authoritarian instincts were in error or that their attempts at social engineering have been a divisive and unpleasant disaster.

No, Labour’s never accepted that the reason they lost the last election was that they were tired, incompetent, arrogant and, in the end, shovelling bags of money into fires with one hand and printing money with the other. Is it really so hard to admit that and then, moving on, explain how you’d repair the damage and do things differently in the future?

Okay, so, perhaps an internal election is always ‘preaching to the converted’ time. Perhaps once they’re talking to real people things’ll be different… I just don’t see it. If being able to say, “We’re shit. We’re sorry. We’ll do better” was easy it wouldn’t have taken Labour 18 years to get back into power last time, it wouldn’t have taken the Tories 12 and it wouldn’t have taken the Liberals several Ice Ages. As so many others have discovered, it’s hard to become the leader when your message is “This party is shit.”

It’s very early days but I’m not seeing Labour troubling the Coalition in 5 years times at this point. Where it really matters, when it comes down to the fundamentally broken parts of the Labour machine that lost them the election, Labour hasn’t changed a thing. Shame really.

It’s the season of blogging introspection and mutual appreciation. After all, after spending the last year writing so many words, sentences and clauses and having little to show for it but bigger heads and missed opportunities to sound barking mad when explaining this hobby we need a bit of self love.

Oh yes indeedy.

So yes, Total Politics and Iain Dale have been doing their annual popularity contest. This year I’m no longer THE ULTIMATE LIB DEM BLOGGER because I’ve been inconsistent, flakey, not really posting very often, sloppy with grammar and spelling, didn’t whore for votes and… oh yeah… not actually a Lib Dem. Knew there was something!

Instead I’m just on other charts, which is plenty lovely for all concerned. Thank you for the votes wot you done, that was very kind considering how abused and neglected you’ve been.

Featuring on the Libertarian list was very welcome, but the Right Wing too? Crikey. Not sure how I feel about that. A year ago I would have been okay with it, but now?

Since then I have discovered that ‘Right Wing’ is basically understood (outside of crazy political circles) as synonymous with, basically, being a racist arse and that whether or not one is racist is the ultimate and most important indicator of one’s alignment on the Good/Evil Lawful/Chaotic axis. My political beliefs, socially and economically, put me on the opposite end of all spectrums from the BNP and yet, the BBC, being chumponauts, will continue calling the BNP ‘Right Wing’ causing an astonishing amount of confusion.

I guess the question should be asked of Iain and Total Politics: Do we really need these additional charts? Shouldn’t us funky new breed of political gobshites do our own thing and not feel like we should be constrained by the same backward limitations and conventions of the mainstream media?

Oh well.

In more joyful and amusing news those terrible fiends over on Lib Dem Voice have shortlisted me as “Non-Lib Dem Blog of the Year”. It’s a loophole in the system! I thought I’d escaped! Ah well, gives me an excuse to scoot on over to Liverpool and lurk around the Lib Dem Conference being a nuisance. Again.

This particular category is open to a public vote, so basically you can go over there and make your opinion on the matter perfectly clear but to be honest I’m tickled enough to have been shortlisted.

So, that’s nearly it for this year’s introspection. This year I’ve quit, started again, got paid and both mellowed out AND gone more crazy. I’ve left the Lib Dems and discovered that being Independent is actually rather lonely. I discovered that I actually care about this blogging business more than I realised. I want to do more about the hidden politics in the everyday things around us and less party political rubbish. I want to continue to pretend there’s some sort of political nerd identity that transcends party affiliation or political beliefs, mainly cos I think that we – that’s me and the people reading this rubbish – actually have more in common with each other, despite our political differences, than we have with the people reading Pop Bitch or The How To Sew Awesome Looking Bears blog. Just sayin’, like.

One of the more enlightening encounters had in America (this time in San Francisco) was being presented with the following question as we were traveling through the Golden Gate Park.

Did I prefer to a) Go watch Hippies having an impromptu bongo jamming session to the right or b) Go watch children playing on the playground to the left?

The question was sincerely asked, no joke, no clever ironic statement about the state of the world today. Those were the choices.

My friend and I looked at each other in surprise, and explained to our guide that, in Britain, adults can’t just hang out at playgrounds watching children play, that essentially someone would probably call the police on you if you tried. “Pedophiles”, I said. There’s peedos everwhere! Even suggesting hanging out at a playground to watch kids play made me feel a bit squirmy.

Our guide was baffled and confused and couldn’t quite believe what we were saying. I felt like I’d learnt something… important. Something.