When I agreed to write this monthly round up of Labour and Tory blogging I said I would aim to “keep a balance between pointing to interesting postings that we Lib Dems may have missed and laughing at the folly of our opponents”.

So here goes.

Labour

Somebody help me yeah,
Somebody help me now”

So sang the Spencer Davis Group, getting to number one in April 1966.

And can somebody please help me find some Labour blogs that are worth reading? The ones I come across are neither outrageous nor interesting, and are obsessed with David Cameron and his supposed gaffes. Several prominent Labour blogs seem to have shut down altogether.

But if Labour bloggers are no use if you want to be outraged, there are still Labour MPs. I was planning to have some fun with apologists for the Castro regime in Cuba, but then I watched This Week late on Thursday and heard Diane Abbott. Not only did she defend Castro, she defended Chairman Mao too. Yes, he had been responsible for 20 or 30 million deaths, but on the other hand…

NorthernMonkey, writing at Labour Home, takes her to task but seems to regard her real crime as “embarrassing the Labour Party”. And you can find some unreconstructed socialism to laugh at in the comments.

On his Fruits of Our Labour blog, Dave Semple reminds us what Castro’s rule has really been like. Authors banned there include George Orwell, Vaclav Havel and Alexander Solzhenitsyn.

Kerren Cross comments on Nick Clegg’s interview in The Big Issue, thinks he is being clever but rather misses the point. Nick, it seems, complained about the gloomy view from his Westminster office.

This puts Kerren into sententiousness overdrive: “I wonder if sitting in that armchair supping tea whilst looking at drainpipes is more or less depressing being completely homeless and not having anywhere to sleep on a cold winter’s night? I am sure The Big Issue sellers feel your pain.”

Yes, but The Big Issue isn’t written for its sellers. The idea is that people buy it and… Oh, never mind.

More usefully, Recess Monkey publicises a new Daily Mail scheme. Make up a damaging story about someone from Eastern Europe and win £100.

Spare a thought for a couple of colleagues of Stephen Cowan, who writes The Cowan Report, who have had a chunk of their ward transferred to another London borough. You would think someone would have mentioned it to them.

And Newer Labour has a novel way to defeat those evil mosquito machines

If you do something on your land or property which deprives from others the ability to enjoy theirs, it’s quite likely that you will have committed the tort of nuisance, or even the crime of public nuisance. Calling all rich kids: social justice needs money from Mummy and Daddy. Be sure to procure it.

But there must be more to the Labour blogosphere than that. Mustn’t there?

Conservative

There is no shortage of the outrageous, at least, on the Tory side of the street.

A Very British Dude shows the sort of attitude that is doing so much to win back working-class support to the Conservatives:

Now there are advantages to council housing. Because everyone else drives a car, scum shovel routes are easier to plan – from the centre of the estate, via the job-centre plus to Iceland and back. Much like the original concept of concentration camps, they co-locate undesirables for easier management, so the police know where to look for stolen goods

And Mad Nad (aka Nadine Dorries, Conservative MP for Mid Bedfordshire) writes about Gordon Brown:

It is becoming scarier and scarier sitting so close to Gordon Brown. The fixed maniac-esque grin on his face is so un-natural and frankly his pallor was a really odd shade today.

I really would pull my children close to me if they were sat on the green benches.

That’s right, she is an MP — not some lonely blogger eating baked beans from the tin and raging over piles of dirty laundry — and thinks that is a suitable way for her to write.

Meanwhile, Dizzy Thinks that bugging MPs is a really good idea in case they turn out to be terrorists themselves.

Back on planet earth, Shane Greer has something very sensible to say about current moves to tighten up the rules on absenteeism from work: “Perhaps before putting the blame entirely on the doorstep of employees it might be worth asking why employees want to take sickies?”

Iain Dale has fun with a particularly fatuous public sector job. The Government Office for Science is looking for a Head of its Horizon Scanning Centre who will ensure that “the UK Government is positioned increasingly at the cutting-edge of the field“.

Do fields have cutting edges? Still, it might keep Lembit out of mischief.

Finally, a cause which can unite people of good will from all parties. Conservative Home calls on all the MPs who think the Speaker should resign to have the courage to tell him so.

* Jonathan Calder blogs at Liberal England and for the New Statesman.