It started with patio-heaters and air conditioning units, it has resulted in ex-Shell boss saying that inefficient cars should be banned, but it is interesting that in between these two wishes stands another Lib Dem gem, contravening just about all employment law you can on the subject and banning so many "foreigners" from coming in to our football teams.

It's a little zany, but it's certainly not without its background. There has obviously been much talk about just how deep the English talent pool is since McClaren failed to do anything with our national squad and it is only apt and proper for the British commonality to resort to what they know best, xenophobia. It shouldn't, however, be the place of a bunch of MPs to take that geographical racism to a higher stage.

What they fail to realise is that it is not foreigners being here that is the problem. There are more teams playing football than a couple of decades ago and the sport has evolved highly, unfortunately money in to facilities and grass roots training has been lacking. It's a picture spread across all sport as the government siphons money away from grass roots engagement with sport, through the big lottery fund, in to building infrastructure and lining the pockets of some previously great, yet now greedy, sporting stars.

The national game is going to perpetuate it's own demise if it doesn't pull its finger out, and MPs aren't going to be able to influence that at all unless they somehow rescind the government policy on wasting lottery money. The English FA continues to pick solely from the Premiership despite the quality of players in the Championship being much improved over the last decade, and clubs spend more time about take-overs and pricing local fans out of the market rather than investing in facilities of their own.

Some level of the capitalism that has seeped in to the "sport" has to be dragged back out, but pointing our fingers at a bunch of people just doing what they are legally allowed to do, just like those Poles staffing our buses or sweeping our streets, as if they are personally taking delight in keeping our pool of talent low is just petty idiocy that the Lib Dems should do more to avoid if they don't wish to sound just like Labour and the Tories.