"Until Nigel Lawson's 1988 budget, the top rate of Income Tax was 60%, which today would seem impossibly high, and it was paid by all higher-rate payers, not just by millionaires."

That's not accurate.

I quote from Hansard (http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1988/mar/15/income-tax):

"After nine years at 60 per cent., I believe the time has come to make a further reduction in the top rate of income tax. At present there are no fewer than five higher rates of income tax; 40 per cent., 45 per cent., 50 per cent., 55 per cent. and 60 per cent. I propose to abolish all the higher rates of tax above 40 per cent."

I am much more shocked at the Queen Elizabeth II Centre than Conway Hall. Conway Hall is an explicitly ideological organisation which has the perfect right to refuse to host events operated by people whose ideologies it doesn't agree with. I think a direct comparison could be made to a church (or a church hall) hosting an event by a pro-marriage equality organisation and only realising that "marriage equality" = "gay marriage" after accepting the booking. Of course they should be entitled to reject the booking.

I'm less certain about the Law Society - it's also a membership body, but its ethical position is much less fundamental to its purpose.

But the QEII Centre is a commercial conference centre (yes, it's Government-owned, but still). I am appalled that any such body is pretending to have an ethical stance on whose bookings it takes. It's not even as though it has venue security as an excuse - it's seen a lot more protesters against BAe AGMs than it ever would against an anti-gay-marriage conference.

If you're booking a normal commercial venue that does not have an express ethical policy, then the only legitimate issues for the venue would be security* and compliance with the law.

The Equality Act has demonstrably had a chilling effect on freedom of speech and there needs to be some firm action to avert that chilling effect - even if the cases would actually have failed in court, that's hardly the point if bookings are being cancelled.

* On security, I can imagine many venues refusing to hold a G8 summit because the venue could not be made sufficiently secure without closing half the city around them, to pick an extreme example. I know that venues have made bookings conditional on a security plan being agreed with the police and on additional security and insurance costs being paid by the booker; both of those seem like sensible commercial precautions in cases where there is a substantial increase in cost because of a real security risk - for example party conferences of government parties, which host a large fraction of the Cabinet for 4-5 days and are predictable long in advance. That doesn't mean that security can be used as a blanket excuse to deny people you don't like because there will be one protester outside the front door!

Wilders was not, and never has been, in government.

He did a "confidence and supply" deal with a VVD/CDA coalition, but he wasn't in government himself.

It's not just Wilders that's doing well - the Dutch socialists (that's the Galloway/Melenchon party) are doing tremendously well in the polls. If Rutte (leader of their right-wing liberal party; imagine Clegg without the left-wing of the Lib Dems and with more charisma) really has got fed up with Wilders then he's going to find it difficult to build another right-wing coalition.

They could end up with a Purple coalition to keep out Wilders and the SP, which would be catastrophic, as every democrat in the Netherlands end up responsible for the economic crisis, and the Dutch put in either the Trots or the fascists.

There are two entirely reasonable interpretations of "there will be no cuts in police numbers under my mayoralty". One is the one you adopt ("there will be at least as many police at the end of my term as there were at the beginning"); the other is "at no time during my mayoralty will the number of police fall" (ie, on no day will it be possible to say "there were more police yesterday than today"). That is clearly the interpretation adopted by the video.

It is the usual lefty definition of "cuts" - anything other than a monotonic increase is a cut

I think the evidence is that, after controlling for other factors like income, length of relationship, etc., relationships in which people choose to marry are more stable than relationships in which they do not.

If you put it another way: "People who want to make a public formal commitment to each other are more likely to stick together than those who don't" then it's hardly surprising, but equally it doesn't really say much for marriage as an institution, does it?

"Better to marry than to burn" 1 Corinthians 7:9

The Church's view of marriage before the Reformation and the Council of Trent was pretty strongly negative - it was only for those who couldn't control their lust. That's why marriages were conducted in the porches of churches with the door closed - so the nave wouldn't be sullied by them.

OK, I understand that. If someone in elected office were to offer you some consultancy work, would you be interested?

He's linked to the same mythology that Dan Brown works from. The mythology is much older than Brown, and I suspect he was more of the inclination to sneer at Brown for being a johnny-come-lately.

A possible: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Colloquium_balticum - a meeting on the fringes of a large event could well be referred to as a meeting at (large event).

There are also a number of hotels called Balticum or Mare Balticum

Hmmm, Smashing Slavic Siren - you even get the ambiguity about Smashing now.