Tim is to be commended for his relentless poursuit of this issue. Personally I stopped listening to the Today programme in the 1980s. Listening to that sheer poison eternally every morning would have killed me long ago. The BBC could never be punished enough for its crimes in the 80s and 90s and personally I favour burning in down and scattering salt on its ruins. Meanwhile, anyone who takes it on at any level should be supported to the hilt.

I used to like Douglas Carswell. Admire him too, as I do the other components of the Holy Trinity Hannan/Carswell/Reckless. However, I am slowly coming to the conclusion that as well as looking mad these days, he actually is mad. First his solomonic judgement imposed Speaker Bercow on us, an all time parlimanetary low. Now Irish PR. I hear the flapping of white coats.

It would help Bercow's cause if he did anything right. But he has no sense of right or wrong, as is proved by the fact he stood for the Speakership in the first place: soemone in mid career had no business standing; someone with no cross-party support had no business standing; and someone whose candidature was a weapon of the executive against the Opposition had not business standing. The Ratboy apologists can wail all they want. He's the most unpopular man in Parliament and he ain't gonna be there long, however much taxpayers money he wastes on advisers.

We should mandate Thursday night counting by statute - a small amendment would do it. And as for postal votes, the vast third-world type corruption that has been enabled under Labour's current hyper-lax postal voting regime regime needs to be swept away wholesale. If a short copntemplative trip to the polling booth is really too much for you, tough cheese, you don't deserve your vote. Postal votes should be for the Forces, the infirm and overseas residents only.

A regrettable intervention by Mr Isaby, who sadly on all Ratboy issues is His Master's Voice. There was nothing fair and square about Bercow's election. The Speaker is supposed to have bi-partisan support and Bercow was the precise reverse - a Labour prank on the Tories.

This social fascism makes my blood freeze. Once we become an Edwina Curry style party of nagging and lecturing again we are finished.

I used to live in Camden. How well I remember the year that a bank rang the Council up and said "Where's our loan? You've got to repay it today." "Er, which loan is that?" "The £25,000,000 one." "Ooh, er, we seem to have left that out of this year's budget. Oh never mind, we'll just give you the housing budget instead". God bless the People's Party. As thick as Das Kapital.

This is a free market issue. Noone has any business imposing their own subjective morality on the market. If these young women were denied the decent living many of them earn from dancing they may be forced to take even more extreme steps for their money by becoming prostitutes. Hence those who seek to impose their own subjective morality on the rest of us in an authoritarian manner force, from their point of view, the perfect to be the enemy of the good. This is similar to the way the Vatican hates abortion but also prohibits contraception, thus ensuring the highest possible level of abortions. Moral authoritarians should be looking at these club and saying "Great! A way pretty but thick young girls can make similarly huge sume of money without actually prostituting themselves. Fantastic!"

These people are pathetic attention seekers. Bell always was, it's embarassing to see that Waite has descended to his level and as for Rantzen she's made a career out of it.

Because this is politics, you idiot, and there are millions of parents whose kids who have sat these exams in the last few years, plus everone who sits a A level is by definition 18 and a voter. We have the best education team in living memory and it can be trusted to deliver what is needed. They should bee be supported in doing what is necessary in the way they chose to do it. Not second guesssed by armchair educationalists who sound off without a strategic thought in their heads.

Shane Frith is right. Nick is talking economically illiterate bilge. It makes me embarassed he's a Conservative. Mystical mediaevalists who reject the latest 250 years of economic progress should spare us their deranged cant. They should get off their C21st western capitalist computers powered by C20th western capitalist electricity and scamper off to their allotments where they belong. Happy digging, trogs!

I think this has been a worthwhile experiment but the result is a bit of a disaster. Dr Wollaston appears to be unpolitical. Indeed it is not clear how committed to our Pary and values she is. In my view, the final choice in every constituency should be between committed ideological Conservatives. We don't spend our lives working for the Party, only for it to select 'good eggs' who can't tell their MV=PT from their Macauley. Perhaps in future the selection could be restricted to those with a record of Party work. Or the electorate could be limited to Conservative members and pledges.

I couldn't disgaree with Sally Roberts more. Rantzen is a wretched and shallow attention-seeker who would taint our party be association. The last thing we need is another Bercow. Beware!

Tories of good will can have different opinions on the tactics of feeding taxpayers money to the minority grievance industry. However, with the coming public austerity needed to get the public finances back in order, none of it is high enough up the priority spending list to survive. It must all be swept away as we pare the cost of local government down to the bare bones. Those of us who will be paying higher taxes and sacrificing cars, holidays and the kids' schools will not be willing to do so if the proceeds are wasted on this sort of nonsense.

On point 4, it's difficult being committed to British sport when we don't have a team in any sports that anyone cares about. Sure, there are British teams at the Minority Sports Olympics coming here in 2012 but frankly who cares? Where are the British Football and Rugby teams?

An outstanding and inspired appointment. Good innings by Chopper who is a beacon of ideological rigour on the green benches.

Tim would be right, if only aid did any good. However, as has was proved in the 60s and 70s by Lord Bauer and agin this year by Dambisa Moyo, counter-intuitively long term economic aid (as opposed to defence aid or short term humanitarian aid) actually harms the recicipent societies. Aid is an anti-third-world-weapon that has corrupted their governments, denied their peoples self-respect and therefore fostered a grievance culture, further increasing dependency in a relentless downward spiral. Western governments, 3rd world governments and especially NGOs have to break out of the neo-colonialist mentality. It is the countries such as Ghana which have begun to wean themselves off demenaing aid and begun to float bonds on the market which are making most progress.

Well said. The man has always been an oily nonentity. Let's kick him into outer space.

Let's not forget that however affable Clarke is, he has consistently put his obsession with transferring further power from Britain to the EU ahead of everything - ahead of his Party and ahead of his own career - not to say by definition ahead of his country. He would have been a calamitous party leader because split parties do not win elections. To impose his will the wets would move against the Right by branding us 'extreme' and by using the party machine to hunt us down, as Heath did. There would have been running civil war - utter catastrophe.

The Telegraph has been a rubbish paper for decades. Even when it was still conservative, it was small c conservatism of a particularly fuddy, yawn-inducing type. It was never interested in politics per se, the the way that the Guardian is. And the convervatism never spread further than the op ed columns. The rest of the paper was a no-go zone for Tories, so no hope of a Tory take on the arts for example or in features. What has happened to it now is the logical end point of the jouney it has been taking since the 80s. However, I share its scepticism about the newsworthiness of conservativeintelligence.com stories. These are shot through with a repellent self-importance born of the supposed inevitability of Conservative victory at the next election. It is particularly ironic, given how sceptical and unhelpful Con Home has been to the Cameron project, that it should now seek to make money from Cameron's incipient success. The smug West-wing diagrams and charts with everyone's name in their places is simply a more sophisticated version of Derek Draper's "there are x people in this government who matter and to say I know them all would be the understatement of the century". I sincerely hope that the money-making will not extend further than this conference to some ghastly public affairs consultancy which will tarnish the Tories by association once they are elected. The last thing we will need is for Tim Montgomerie/Stephen Shakespeare to play Ian Greer/Derek Draper to Cameron's John Major/Tony Blair.

You're wrong CZ. It's unwanted pregnancy that is a problem, not sex per se. Sex is natural and ineradicable. How exactly would you stop people having it off anyway? You'd have to create the mother of all socialist states to have that amount of social control.

There's no argument that sex education can be given too early. Much before 12 strikes me as perverse. Also there is little argument that many leftists/Council employees do seek to undermine the fabric of society by disintegrating families. The latest Sheffield Council leaflet recommending "An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away" to teenagers is a part of that. However, there is a visceral and untempered tone to Cllr Seaton's comments that is repulsive. From reading his invective, you get the impression that he wouldn't approve of "An orgasm a day keeps the doctor away" for adults either - for whom it is broadly true. No sex should not be foisted on young children. Yes, children of 16 and over should be enabled to have sex without conceptual consequences, if they choose to do that. Yes, recreational sex before marriage is on whole, good, natural and in any case ineradicable.

Pitt the Younger yes, but let's not forget Pitt the Elder, victor of the 7 Years War, founder of British greatness and our national leader during the immortal Year of Victories 1759, 250 years ago this year.

"Utterly deluded", "ludicrous" "rather dubious" "petty bunch" "vast majority" - all choice Bercowese. We're honoured by your presence among us, Mr Speaker. Now please give us these cheap headline-grabbing jacobin stunts, dress properly for your job and concentrate on that part of your platform which will improve the Commons' ability to hold the Executive to account.

Hmmm. Another effusion of the Speaker's House spin machine courtesy of one of the Editors of this blog. Jonathan was among the only half-a-dozen people in the whole Conservative Party to support the Bercow Speakership bid. It was mystifying to his many friends and admirers why he would allow his "friendship" with Bercow to overcome the settled and universal feeling of the Party. Many of Bercow's previous 'friends' know how one-sided are Bercow's acquaintances and how disposable he regards them. But more importantly, many of us have friendships and even marriages with people on the other side of the political fence. That includes Members of the House. But we do not let it affect our political judgement of what is best for Britain. In this case, we were assured by the bercowistas that whatever one's view of Bercow's past/ethics/loyalty/hatred of the Party/creeping socialism/social creepism/sucking up to Brown/serial betrayals/houdiniesque principles etc, he would be technically a good Speaker becauase he loved the Commons. We were told he was "a House of Commons man to his fingertips" - much like Bercow's great role model J. Enoch Powell. However, within 2 weeks we have had the abolition of the Speakers' traditional garb; and the proposed abolitions of the Speaker's ancient procession and the tradition of Members referring to each other in the Chamber by their constituency appelation and the style 'Honourable'. It takes some chuptzpah to characterise this maniacal jacobinism as loving the Commons. Given his ongoing vandalism of hundreds of years of Commons practice some might ask, in what substantive sense were these reassurances of Bercow's love for the Commons valid? I cannot pretend I ever wasted a minisecond's credence on the 'Commons' man' ploy. However, I do think that now it is being so thoroughly repudiated it puts those few Tories who retailed it (in good faith) in a tendentious position. Were they misled, or were they attempting to mislead us?