A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...

When Raf was more or less running the Observer blog solo, it was quite good fun over there. It was how I discovered Marie, for example.

But now that blog is more like all the other Guardian group blogs, and the commenting system is all rolled into that "Comment is Free" thing they do. I made a mistake earlier. I posted up a half-baked opinion, which was followed by a certain amount of vitriol and abuse. Sheesh.

I prefer my opinions half-baked, because then - like half-baked bread - they have the illusion of freshness. The question concerned a sex column in the Observer magazine which was - to put it mildly - a load of old wank, written by the kind of people you should be exempt from prosecution for killing. The Obs pulled it after reader complaints, and the blog was asking whether it was the right thing to do.

My own opinion is that with porn coming out of the walls (and hand-wringing articles in the likes of the Guardian about whether people aren't degrading themselves because wall-to-wall porn really has lowered people's standards of behaviour and raised expectations about what is do-able), and plenty of sex advice available in just about every single fucking magazine on the newstand, it was hardly necessary for the Observer to chime in. The key difference is that if I want to read bollocks about sex I can go buy a copy of Cosmo or FHM. But if I choose to buy a Sunday newspaper for news and interviews, I don't necessarily want to field questions like, "Daddy, what's anal sex?" from my 8-year-old, who might have been looking at a picture and read something I'd rather she hasn't.

So I posted my half-baked opinion that I believed in protecting the innocence of my children as long as possible. Of course people who don't want or don't have kids aren't going to sympathise with this point of view. What do they care if my kids still believe in Father Christmas? And I agree with them: wouldn't society be so much better without other people getting in the way with their opinions and feelings? And you get that other opinion, too, from people who think that our record-breaking rates of teenage pregnancy are something to do with the fact that our Sunday newspapers don't discuss anal sex enough. I can't follow the logic there, but apparently all the 15 year olds who get pregnant, its All My Fault. I never touched her, your honour!

I am a prude, I know I am. Always have been, always will be. I'd rather, as the saying goes, have a nice cup of tea. And, yeah, I do think it's wrong to see half-dressed dancers on what is a children's TV programme (TOTP) thrusting their crotches at the camera and shaking their asses at each other. I don't want my under-tens wanting to dress like that for their pass-the-parcel parties and dancing at the school disco like that. So sue me. But being abused by the nasty people who populate those Guardian comment-is-free pages is hardly going to change that opinion.

I do have a lot of sympathy with those who have to moderate all those comments. It must be like being drowned in raw sewage, to have to live, day after day, in that stream of rage and hatred from all those angry people.