Nul points.

These are difficult times for people, and there are more difficult times ahead.

Yet every single day I am seeing partisan politics getting in the way of solutions.

Right now there will be someone who is looking at a bill and contemplating suicide, someone else will be crying over their failed ATOS assessment, and somewhere a mother will be feeling a degree of burning shame and failure as she looks at her cupboards and knows that she will need to avail herself of a food-bank this week.

None of that of course matters when there is point scoring to be done.

Who cares about the reality of the misery visited on a neighbour when the game of one upmanship is afoot?

Labour is trying to hijack the fight against the cuts cry the SNP.

The SNP support the bedroom tax cry Labour.

Blah blah blah.

All they are doing is giving the impression that while the house is on fire their time is best spent arguing about who gets to hold the hose as it burns to the ground.

It's all pathetically shameful behaviour, and every hour spent gleefully participating in a flaming online war with someone who holds a slightly different ideological viewpoint - but is looking to oppose the cuts to - is a wasted opportunity.

I can't honestly wrap my head around how this needs to be pointed out.

If someone was to offer a credible action plan that would ensure a better future for us all then I am not going to dismiss them because they are wearing a tie of a shade I'm not partial to.

It would be easy to claim that those who enjoy splashing about in the dirty puddles are simply idiots, but they are not.

Most are intelligent people who are instead blinded by their own hate.

They are fundamentally tied to their ideology and unable to rationally consider the bigger picture.

Ultimately this inability to sit around a table – real or virtual – and find some common ground and then work forward to achieve an aim is actually behaviour that benefits those who we perceive to be our enemy.

Why would those in power need to set time aside to consider how to keep the malcontent in check when that person is so busy indulging in in-fighting?

It's doubtful that anyone reading this will see themselves in the criticism, even if they are blatantly participating in it, as very often, like the sociopath, they will rationalize their own actions.

It's all very sad really.

Disappointingly, and depressingly sad.