You know you've got them rattled when the insults start to fly

The only conclusion I can draw from the current spate of insults thrown at people who don't share some views, is that the approach must work. And I find this both a devastatingly sad reflection on our society and an overpoweringly scary prospect for the future.

It also makes me incandescent with rage, to the point where swear-words, expletives and blind vitriol are in danger of taking over from rational thought.

So, because I think some of the things that Mr Farage and UKIP have to say about uncontrolled immigration and having control of our own national destiny are good and worth thinking about rationally for the good of our country, I am labelled a swivel-eyed loon.

Because I think we'd be better off making our own rules, controlling our own borders and having some democratic connection with our elected government instead of handing over powers and our tax money to unelected bureaucrats in the EU, I am a 'little Englander' with no wider view of the world.

Because I think that climate change is something we cannot control, that the science is not clear or settled or even credible, I should be dismissed as an anti-science 'denier' when the so-called science and its predictions have failed to equate to any kind of reality...

Because I am fearful of muslim communities being established in the UK and operating not within the laws of the land but their religion and thereby precluding some indiginous groups (gay men, women not covered up from head to toe, inoffensive revellers) from walking the streets in their own country, I am a racist?

This is England in 2013. And these insults are being thrown around not by radical groups but by the established government and the media and many of us are accepting them, being made to behave in a certain way by them. Is this really what we want for our country?

Are we all sheep?

Thanks for reading