So last night I was at a family meal in a restaurant when one of my fellow diners pops up with an anecdote about how them dirty asylum seekers are starting to encroach into our town.

Within minutes the conversation descended into a frenzy of ill-informed bollocks from 90% of the people around the table as everyone else tried to chip in with their own take on how 'this country is going to the dogs'.

Depressingly it's not a unique situation to find yourself in these days and I can think of at least four or five other groups of people I know, that I could have been having that meal with last night and the conversation would have been the same.

Years ago, I would have fought verhemently against it, but much to my eternal shame I just sat there saying nothing, and occasionally trying to change the subject to something less controversial like abortion or the prospect of global nuclear war, but to no avail.

I feared that getting involved would only make the conversation turn into a heated debate and soon all eyes in the restaurant would be on our table, and I was embarrassed enough as it was.

At one point I even considered just getting up and quietly leaving, and mouthed to my missus across the table what I wanted to do, but she made me see that wasn't a good option either.

So what is the protocol these days for finding yourselves in these situations, because I am sure we are all regularly encountering this nonsense.

Do you stand up and argue back, trying to convince these people who don't want to be convinced of the massive holes in their arguments, whilst risking escalation that will inevitably make you look like the bad guy amongst people who are still essentially amongst those closest to you>

....or do you sit there, shamefully, like a massive shithouse as I did, just hoping it all goes away.