Smearing over debating, adulation for England's Lionesses and Americanisms in football - Toby Neal on politics

So much for sensible and reasoned debate about the merits or otherwise of the bill. Why bother when you can smear those who don't agree with you?

There will have been people like Peter Kyle about in the days of burning witches on the stake. If he heard any doubting murmurs in the crowd he would have pounced on the offenders and said: "If you disagree with burning witches, you are being soft on witchcraft."

There are lots of ways in which this approach can be deployed to stifle burdensome criticisms. 

Not sure that invading Iraq was the right thing? You must be a supporter of Saddam Hussein.

Uncomfortable with Israel's actions in Gaza? You have identified yourself as an anti-Semitic supporter of Hamas.

A councillor who questioned why 300 Afghans had been housed at a hotel in Bracknell, Berkshire, when “many of our own veterans remain homeless” has been reported to police for "stirring up hate" with "far-right propaganda".

Peter Kyle has invoked Jimmy Savile. I imagine he was one of the Labour MPs who was outraged when then Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Sir Keir Starmer had not prosecuted Savile when he was Director of Public Prosecutions.

Oh how they demanded an apology. Shock and disgust all round. The BBC was indignant too, reporting on its main news bulletin that Boris had "falsely said" that Sir Keir had not prosecuted Savile. 

Despite the Beeb's steer to the viewing public about how they should regard Boris's political jibe, as a matter of fact nobody at all prosecuted Savile ­- not Sir Keir, not the Crown Prosecution Service, not me, and not you.

When the actor David Niven returned to Britain at the start of the Second World War, Churchill said to him: "You did a great thing in giving up your Hollywood career to fight for your country." He then paused before adding: "But had you not done so, it would have been despicable."

And so it is in football, where the distance between adulation and opprobrium is the width of a goalpost. 

Case study: England v Poland, 1986. Sports journalists had got their obituaries of English football written and ready as the underperforming team were on the brink of being knocked out of the World Cup.  

Thirty-five minutes later they were quietly ripping them up after Gary Lineker scored a sensational first half hat-trick in the must-win final group game.

Congratulations to the women's team on their Euros victory. They have returned heroes - but definitely not heroines as we shouldn't use sexist gender-specific terms to describe the Lionesses.

In a parallel universe in which Spain knocked in one or two of their roughly six million goalscoring chances there would have been hard questions asked about why the England manager (n.b. not manageress) fielded one player with a broken leg and another who would have been a doubt even in a walking football match due to an ankle injury.

It was also the first time I have heard sports commentators using the word "clutch" in respect of a player - in this case star sub Chloe Sweary-Kelly. It turns out to be a horrible Americanism. I would ask them never to use it again, but I suspect they will double down.

Tom Lehrer is dead. And I'm not being satirical when I say that I thought he was dead already. 

As tributes have poured in, fans have been fondly remembering his songs.

There was one little ditty called Poisoning Pigeons in the Park. Another was about holding the dismembered hand of the lover he had murdered. The Irish Ballad told of a maid who was a bit bored so cut her baby brother in two, served him up as an Irish stew, and invited the neighbours in.

He poked fun at America's National Brotherhood Week. "Be nice to people who / Are inferior to you," he sang.

To misquote Kenny Everett, it was all in the worst possible taste.

Lehrer stopped writing decades ago. We shall never see his like again. Today's stony-faced attack literalists will make sure of that.