What’s the point? No really, what is it? Most mornings, I have to draw on hidden reserves of strength just to get out of the bed in the flat that I cannot afford, in the neighbourhood I don’t even like because it is plagued by gun crime and knife crime and every other sort of crime.

And, as I sit on the bus because the Tube isn’t working, the traffic emitting the carbon dioxide that will one day return as a tsunami to wipe out the grandchildren I won’t have because I am probably infertile, I think of the chavs and the hoodies having underage sex outside the window and also of the al-Qa’eda plot to finish me off and I think that, if it doesn’t, I will probably just develop a lifestyle cancer and the health service will refuse to pay for the drugs to cure me of it.

And a solitary tear falls from my eye, smudging my mascara. And when I finally get to work - where I must toil for hours to pay for the benefit scroungers who are sitting on their obese bottoms watching The Jeremy Kyle Show - I open the newspaper and I discover that the country once called Great Britain cannot even manage to binge-drink properly.

Well, that’s it, I think. We’re going to the dogs. We’re over. If you missed the story (and you may have done, because, for some strange reason, most newspapers decided to hide it on page 765), it is my sad duty to report that, according to this year’s Economist Pocket World in Figures, we are not one of the world’s biggest beer-drinking countries.

There is not even a derisory nod to us on its list. In terms of litres of lager per head, the Japanese drink more beer than us. Mexicans drink more beer than us. Vene-bloody-zuelans drink more beer than us. This is absolutely shocking news. And it just gets worse: neither do we feature in the list of nationalities that smoke the most. In Lebanon, they’re puffing away. Seems that, in South Korea, they can’t get enough of nicotine. But us? Pah! We don’t even smoke enough fags to scrape into the top 22. It wasn’t like this in my day.

This book - which makes for extremely uncomfortable reading - also says that the number of people getting divorced has fallen. Male suicide rates have gone down. Not very many of us are being murdered. We have one of the highest life expectancies in the world and have the fifth-biggest economy. The United Kingdom has the second highest number of Nobel Prize winners on the planet, and the third-largest haul of Olympic medals.

More tourists want to come here than almost anywhere else in the world. What are they: insane? “We are not as badly off as people think,” said Stephen Brough, the book’s editor, to gasps that could be heard from Land’s End to John o’Groats. He did not reveal if the next edition will include a list of nations most prone to bouts of hysteria and over-reaction, but I think it is safe to say that is one we would top with great ease. ‘So then I got chucked off the bus at London Bridge and had to walk to Liverpool Street, and then I got the bus to Hyde Park Corner and got chucked off again and walked the rest of the way into work…”

If there is one thing more tedious than listening to someone talk about their dreams, it is listening to someone witter away about how they journeyed into work during Tuesday’s shutdown of the Underground. Londoners do the latter with such gusto that I have decided that, secretly, we love a good Tube strike. It’s a bit of an adventure, you have an excuse for being late for work and nothing beats walking through Hyde Park to the office on a bright, sunny morning. So I know that this isn’t something that is often written but, thanks, Bob Crow.

What is particularly telling though - is the reaction she gets from Tory readers posting comments simply refusing to believe things aren’t hellish.

Tony Hannon

1. There are five million people of working age not in work
2. The poorest people in Britain have got poorer under Labour
3. There are more young people not in work or full-time education than ten years ago
4. We have one of the highest rates of family breakdown in Europe
5. Most European countries recognise marriage in their tax system; Britain doesn’t

This is the most despicable - and entirely predictable - scaremongering that the Tories have come out with in recent years, except perhaps perhaps their “immigrants are evil” recitative to which they return every time their polls dip a little.

So - 5m working age people not in work. Well what does the Office for National Statistics say about this? The best figure to use is perhaps the number of jobs as an indication of the health of the working economy.

So according to ONS data - and these stats above start at the beginning of the Major Government, we have more jobs in this country than ever before.

Yes, there should be more Dave, but not broken, and a lot better than any Tory government ever achieved - ever.

I have to go to work now - and play my part in the factual triumph over Dave’s lies - but I shall be back to look at the rest of Dave’s “Broken” Britain. In the meantime Dave, don’t be gloomy - “Let sunshine rule the day!”

Blaney goes into a description of Mandela’s support for armed struggle against apartheid. He writes;

“In recognising what Mandela has sought to achieve since his release from prison, one must not forget that he raised funds for the ANC’s armed wing, arranged paramilitary training and led an armed struggle against apartheid. He was no Gandhi.”

He continues;

“And maybe when visiting Mandela’s statue, you might want to reflect on those killed by the ANC - including by the barbaric method of the “necklace” - whereby a rubber tire, filled with petrol, was forced around a victim’s chest and arms, and then set on fire. Instead of laying a garland at the feet of Mr Mandela’s statue or about his neck, maybe someone should be placing a rubber tire there instead?”

Well Donal, we can’t all be Ghandi.

Nelson Mandela became a global figure of inspiration and international attention on the evil South African regime helped civil rights campaigners all over the world to achieve successes in their own countries.

If Donal had lived in South Africa in that period, maybe he too would have suported armed struggle against the racist ruling class. But then again, Donal’s no Mandela.

For a more articulate article click here - but only if you’re on Facebook.

He said:

“I believe in marriage. I believe in people making a commitment to each other and staying together and trying to bring up their children properly… We have got to sit up and realise we are running things by the wrong values. We need to support families.”

Today’s papers must really annoy him then, telling everyone that the divorce rate is at 30-year low.

But Dave, if those “green” taxes raise any worthwhile money, they will have failed to make people stop flying / recycle etc.

So either;
1. These green taxes will not benefit the environment in which case you’re bullshitting the green lobby
or;
2. The green will benefit the environment, but raise little money, in which case you’re bullshitting those married people that you think are gagging for a tax break.

Which is it Dave?

And if the green taxes are effective, will you then find the money for “family tax cuts” by cutting services or putting up other people’s taxes?

While we all know there’s a serious discussion to be had, I can’t help thinking this is just racist dog-whistle tactics to calm down those back-bench MPs who didn’t mind Dave being so soft when he was ahead in the polls.