The IRA never posed the economic threat to English white people’s wellbeing that the export of jobs to India does. Also it’s fair to say that Irish people didn’t present as a monolithic block. I wish there was a Tamil equivalent of Val Doonican just to balance things up.

In fairness, I think that’s a very good point. I’m a scientist (although not a particularly successful one) and it does annoy me that a lot of government decisions seem to be more focussed on more on getting votes than on actual evidence of what is successful.

On the other hand, I think referenda remove decisions even further away from the experts. At least I can hope that ministers will listen to the relevant professionals whereas it’s pretty unlikely that the entire country will spend the necessary time researching into what they’re voting for.

What I would really like to see is the upper house to be reformed to contain a lot more professionals. It would be a lot more sensible if teachers, policemen, physicists, doctors etc were the ones with the power to overturn government legislation.

I do not escape the consequence of my actions (or those taken on my behalf) by absolving myself of any responsibility to participate in the making of those decisions. Nor should I escape criticism for my part in failure.

I do not trust the so-called experts all alike. The self-proclaimed and annointed ones are equally capable of mistakes as the next – and who shall insure against the temptation of prejudicial motive, which may strike each man at any time?

No, let that the wisest among us be known for his advice, not his power!

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Apologies to any classical scholars.

I see a flaw in that argument. By having no recourse to referenda, by definition, the government of the day is given the power to make decisions on things that you yourself have admitteed are not in their area of expertise. MPs are almost exclusively ex-lawyers and union stewards so what more do they know about policing, science, health care, housing etc than I do?

As a libertarian I must admit that I have a mistrust of the ‘all powerful minority’ whereas you, as (and I know I’m out on a limb here!) a ‘socialist’ may have the same mistrust for the ‘uncontrolled majority’. We’re just coming at this from different political viewpoints.

Now you’re just being silly. I already admitted that my original comment about Sun/Mail readers being “pretty stupid” was slightly unfair but I didn’t say anything about there being “no space” for people with different opinions.

My point, which I will make again since you obviously didn’t get it the first time, is that most people are not experts in government policy so Athenian style democracy would be a very bad thing. I trust my health to my doctor because he’s a health expert, I take my car to a car mechanic because he’s an expert at cars, why on Earth should I trust the running of my country to non-experts? We already get to vote for who’s in power once every four or five years. That’s enough.