Agreed.

What I am saying--what I think I have been very careful to say--is that the responsibility is hers, whoever wrote "NOT". So, no, there's no "Don Corleone" question and your point is off target. The question is whether any wrong was done at all in the writing of the "NOT". If it was substantially wrong to do so, she is responsible, period. As minister she is arguably responsible even if she didn't know it was done!

She could have actually approved the funding, changed her mind after the document left her desk, and phoned somebody to order it changed. But it IS true that if she personally wrote the "NOT", she has been lying to Parliament; and on that score I am not an advocate of mercy. If she is guilty I am happy to help build the gibbet.

If people perceive me as fulfilling that function, I'm completely happy with it.

Why would you assume someone was "making up stuff" instead of just making a math error? I suppose I should be pleased by the presumption of wickedness instead of stupidity (the actual source of the problem).

Sure, I only meant to specify that he doesn't flog Labour in this particular speech.

Right, I'd obviously dislike Pullman because he's an atheist. Are you quite sure you're careful enough about the whole "Knowing what the hell you're talking about" thing? http://richarddawkins.net/articles/571

"People have been flying in the theatre for over 100 years"? Accurate, but I'd have gone with "2,500". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mechane

Yes. It is a problem "then" in some hypothetical nightmare future where gas drilling turns the world into a reeking thirsty wasteland of spontaneously exploding farmhouses. (You can't believe I'M serious?)

Yes, it certainly would be surprising...if either man were in fact American. Velshi's from Toronto and Anglin is a Montrealer.