Very strange. This thread seems to be operating as a reasonably courteous discussion between people who disagree with each other on things they actually care about.

Now I've said that I suppose it might spiral off into a traditional acerbic catfight. But I hope not.

I get tired at the way a whole range of different issues get tied up together so that it is assumed that if you know what someone thinks on one thing you know what they think on everything. The trouble with that is that, since people do like to clump together with like-mionded people, a lot of us are lilley to shut up on the issues where we feel we are a bit at odds with "our side", or even adjust our thinking to fall in with what we see as the consensus. And that is just as liable to happen in every part of the forest.

Some time back I remember a newspaper here ran a quiz billed as determining whether you were a conservative or not. Questions on all kinds of issues and lifestyle variations. When I did it I was interested to see that I came out as decidely conservative in spite of having a set of opinions on any number of political and economic issues which would be counted as way off to the left.