Verbal

Which proves my point. Nowhere there does it say that Norton is Britain's 'foremost constitutional expert'. Read more carefully - or google or furiously - next time, Wes. (Clue: even if we accept their smoke-blowing terms, 'Parliament' does not equal 'constitution'. HUGE difference!

Yes, baldly, Wes - a word in the English language, unlike 'miscomprehend'. Now where's that link demonstrating that Norton is 'THE foremost British constitutional expert'?

Bogdanor the darling of the Left? Are you KIDDING?! Anyway, where's the link, Wes? I want to know who other than you thinks that Norton is 'THE foremost British constitutional expert'. I didn't 'miscomprehend' (sic) your claim - you made it as baldly and funnily as that.

Then please stand over there by that wall.

Correct. Thank you comrade Sergei.

Do give it a rest, Wes. If he has really been described as 'the foremost authority on the British constitution', at least try and find a reliable source. (You won't). I'll break the bad news to Vernon Bognador, who is far more eminent than Norton, and whose college (King's) only goes so far as to describe him as 'one of Britain's foremost' constitutional experts. Bogdanor is in another league to Norton - whose influence on the right has only, it seems, to do with the fact that so few academics would stoop to calling themselves 'right-wing'. Oh, and academia is loaded to overstuffed with people whose work is is supposed to fit the claim: 'world authority'. Apart from blogging, what's he actually done that comes close to someone like Bogdanor (or a rather long list of others I could mention)? You used the hilarious claim that Norton is 'the foremost' etc., presumably because you thought you were playing some kind of trump card. It's a bit more like The Joker. Here's Bogdanor's bio: http://www.intelligencesquared.com/people/b/vernon-bogdanor

No, you don't understand. Norton is 59th on the right. So he's starting from the huge intellectual disadvantage of being right-wing. I calculate that this means he's probably ranked about 5,890th among British constitutional experts. I'll PM Wes Tender suggesting he amend accordingly.

But why is it 'a perfectly good plan'? This is not about that hoary old canard of 'presentation'. It's just a mash-up of incredibly bad ideas - and by 'ideas' I mean the absence of them. To put it in terms a little closer to your home, a central plank of the reforms, if applied to the banking sector, would mean that merchant bankers' investment decisions would be vetted and approved by a local bank manager in Eastleigh.

Thinner ones, I think. Can't really tell.

I think what Deppo might be getting at is that your claim for Norton being 'THE foremost' (!) constitutional expert is a tiny bit funny. Even the Torygraph ranks him - a professor of government at the august University of Hull - no higher than 'the 59th most influential person on the right of British politics.'

I'm sure that's true. But then why the **** doesn't your galumphing hero Lansley do something about it instead of introducing 'reforms' that hand managerial decisions over experienced in-house clinicians to outside, less talented and remote GPs, and then parcelling off chunks of the NHS to similarly inefficient and remote (+ greedy) private companies. As waiting lists soar - which they have been since the Tories came to some sort of power - Lansley's widely acknowledged (even by Cameron) screw up is already having the combined effect of massively depressing staff morale, forcing casualty patients to wait ever longer for desperately needed treatment, causing organisational chaos, and providing yet more opportunities for private-company grafters to cream off easy profits at virtually no benefit to patient care. Getting rid of middle managers is one thing. Destroying the NHS in order to do that is the height of a kind of stupidity that (Lansley aside) no one even in your beloved party is prepared to defend.

Hmm. Independent Leader writer vs internet dweebs. Tough choice.

Your first paragraph is wrong. The biggest single reason that MPs of a particular party are elected disproportionately to the popular vote nationally is that political allegience is unevenly distributed. Changing 'disparities' by altering constituency boundaries would make little difference to this. The so-called 'Lothian Question' is quite separate from this, and I don't know why you bring it up. Those for and against AV would mostly agree it's a bad thing - but it's simply not relevant to FPTP vs AV. Ultimately, the reason to support AV is to improve upon a botched, iniquitous system that does little more than pay lip service to representative democracy. It's as important for democracy to ditch FPTP as it was to dispose of the equally 'tried and tested' rotten boroughs of the nineteenth century. When I hear people - including sensible ones like BTF - falling back on the 'it produces strong governments' argument I despair. The veneer of democracy can seem very thin at times, and a disturbing authoritarianism is often lurking beneath.

You don't need scanners to spot a DVD. It's usually obvious. The sorting office near me was famous for making them 'disappear'. And this is clearly more important than mere parcel bombs being sent to football managers. Poor Neil Lennon. It's horrifying living under that sort of threat.

The acting isn't very good.

Whether you like it or not, that is your next Chancellor. Take my advice, and emigrate now. Please.

Probably a DVD. Most of my post, when it's a film, gets intercepted by Royal Mail.

Oh, it was a dumbass thing to do however you look at it. Gordo was nowhere near as clever as he liked to think he was, and held sway because of his narcissistic self-belief and his seemingly limitless capacity to bully. Looking at it historically, I suppose the losses the UK Treasury incurred as a result of the sale of the gold at rock-bottom prices was perhaps greater, though not by much, than the losses incurred when Thatch conducted a fire sale of the 'family silver' - state assets sold at similarly rock-bottom prices, and with consequences we stare at every time, for example, we open an energy bill from a price-fixing, profiteering American or French-owned utility.

Brown's decision to sell gold at $275-317 over a three year period was horrendous, given it's now trading at $1115 or more. But he didn't do it to fill a public sector black hole. The funds were reinvested in currency bonds - 40% US dollar, 40% Euro's and 20% Yen. Nowhere near the returns on gold in hindsight, of course. I don't really get why Brown wants the IMF job. That place is still dominated by Chicago-School economists - Thatcher's inspiration. Hence their ability to wreck countries by other means.

This thread is full of people who have no idea what they're angry about. Not a single clue.

We haven't had one man one vote since 1928.

This is a classic garbage in, garbage out argument. Start with a silly premise, end with a silly conclusion. And I notice you have to resort to some plainly anti-democratic arguments to support it. By what criteria are you proposing to disenfranchise 'idiots, racists and loonies'? Their votes SHOULD carry the same weight as those of the 'little old lady from Burnley', regardless of how repugnant you might find their views.

I assume 'or' is a typo.

Dead wrong. Even simplers.