Lot of sensible things have been said in this thread. And a few silly things rightfully ignored.

Thanks for finding the song Newsgroup Personality Jeri - this whole episode has been getting too heavy, and it summed up some of the issues splendidly. Once it's on the DT, the next time I feel irresistably drawn to responding to something that doesn't merit a response, I think I might just stick a blue clicky thing to.

And, I agree with The Shambles that we shouldn't be embarrassed or frightened of going on about this kind of stuff, so long as we don't lay into each other in a way that damages people, or damages the Mudcat. Now that we have the improved Forum Super Search up at the top of bthe page it's a great deal easier to enable people to go delve back into the Archives and find out what people have said before, and build on that.Or avoid building on it, if that seems better.

I try to work on the philosophy that if its not worth killing over, it's not worth quarrelling over. You can really infuriate people that way sometimes... As Rabbi Lionel Blue puts it "Don't take it so heavy."