The best job in Britain ...

... is, without doubt, Controller Radio 4, in spite of the conventional wisdom that the R4 audience excels all others in cantankerous 'nein sehen'.

All the ones I've known - controllers, that is, rather than audiences, including Mark Damazer who's currently handing over to his successor, Gwyneth Williams - found themselves eventually on the receiving end of some very pointed tut-tutting, whispered 'well I nevers' or even 'I says'.

Or worse. There were the Long Wave riots; the Woman's Hour uprising; the UK Theme intifada. Etc.

But it was James Boyle who attracted the most withering looks and sottissmo voce susurrations when he tore up the pre-1998 schedule and replaced it with ... well, with the schedule that remains largely intact to this day.

There are those who think that the best thing a CR4 can do is as little as possible. Manage to do nothing at all - no Anderson's Country, no Go 4 It - and you might be spared the chorus of suppressed sighs that a decision of any kind inevitably triggers.

This is not true. CR4s can do lots if they want - as Mark Damazer quite rightly insists. And he should know, because he did a lot. All of it improving.

At the handing over of the torch, then, here are my three suggestions for Gwyneth Williams; suggestions I am confident will not be embraced. Which explains, of course, why I would never be invited to have a crack at the best job in Britain ... however long I might sit by the 'phone.

Restore Yesterday in Parliament (YIP) to its 0830 half-hour FM slot:

This was the one big thing I think James Boyle got wrong back in 1998.

Before then, Today ran from 0630 to 0830 most of the year - with YIP on both FM and LW from 0830 to 0900 during the parliamentary terms.

But James wanted to do two things: open the network earlier, at 0600, and try to carry as many of Today's 6 million across to the rest of the schedule. YIP on both FM and LW was seen as a barrier - which it was, though not as great a barrier as it seemed to some.

It was a balanced judgment. On the one hand, the possibility of adding a percentage point or two to the 0900 (and beyond) audience. On the other, losing a prime time outlet (morning is prime time in Radioland) for that most basic function of journalism: reporting to us citizens/voters what our representatives are doing in parliament in our name.

If we're serious about restoring the status of parliament - and, as voters in a representative democracy, can we be other than serious about that? - surely there is no better first step than to restore a daily, comprehensive, mainstream report on its business in addition to the late-night Today in Parliament.

Extend The World at One and The World This Weekend to an hour:

OK ... so this might look like special pleading. Perhaps I never quite came to terms with the cut from 40 to 30 minutes ... but listening to WATO and TW2 over the election period should have been enough to persuade anyone that an hour of serious, sober, public affairs journalism in the middle of the day is little short of essential.

Martha Kearney and Shaun Ley have continued the fine forensic interviewing tradition of Hardcastle, Day and Clarke ... but in 30 minutes the opportunities for reporter investigations are fewer than they could be.

Commission a new multimedia, multiplatform World News strand:

The Radio 4 audience is clear on this - they want more world news. It was, perhaps, the most persistent theme of the letters and emails they used to send me.

There's an opportunity here - the BBC has the most extensive global newsgathering operation of any news organisation. Increasingly, its reporters are recruited locally and can offer the kind of insights that British journalists posted from London - however brilliant - never quite achieve.

Plus, audio is finding a new life on the web. Either as deeper, more involving podcasts or in combination with still images or video in those multimedia slideshows I keep ranting on about. Like this; or this; or this multimedia show on the 2010 Iraqi elections.

So what about a new WN title ... created from the ground up as part radio programme, part podcast, part interactive web product?

Like I say, I won't be waiting by the 'phone.

News of the World and the scalp hunt

It would be a pity if the News of the World phone hacking scandal reduced itself to a hunt for Andy Coulson's scalp.

That's not to say Mr Coulson doesn't have many questions to answer - he does. But so do NewsCorp's management, the Metropolitan Police and the Press Complaints Commission. And arguably, their (selective) inaction in the face of criminal activity is at least as reprehensible as anything Mr Coulson is alleged to have done.

The NotW scandal brings into crisp focus all of the questions about the British press that make it one of the least trusted in the world. Not least the fact that it took an American paper, the New York Times, to mount and publish a proper investigation that finally got people to sit up and take notice.

The British press - with the egregious exception of Nick Davies et al at the Guardian - has been criminally silent. It is impossible to imagine that they would have held their tongue so tightly if this scandal had been about a government department or the nuclear industry.

Andy Coulson is, for all sorts of obvious but unsatisfactory reasons, the chief target. Some of the NotW's victims would relish the prospect of landing a blow on David Cameron - whose press chief Mr Coulson is. The danger is that such an outcome - which would then move the story on to the PM's "judgment" - would leave unexamined stuff that is very, very whiffy indeed.

And we should remember that when Andy Coulson's defenders tell us these new, damning allegations are coming from an unreliable source, they are from a journalist Mr Coulson was, for a time at least, perfectly happy to have working on his staff. And when they tell us that last year's Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee could find no evidence that Mr Coulson knew about routine phone hacking ... they're only telling us part of the story.

A story that's worth reminding ourselves of - or, if your main news source is a NewsCorp title, reading for the first time since those titles virtually ignored the select committee's report when it was published, and wholly ignored any criticisms in it of NewsCorp's obstructive management.

"No evidence"

Let's start with that 'no evidence that Andy Coulson knew' illegal phone hacking was a routine newsgathering technique on his paper - which it was - and that Clive Goodman, who went to jail, was a "rogue".

Here's what the committee says:

439. We have seen no evidence that Andy Coulson knew that phone-hacking was taking place.

Ok ... that seems clear enough. Except;

... that such hacking took place reveals a serious management failure for which as editor he bore ultimate responsibility, and we believe that he was correct to accept this and resign.

And as if to help us judge the veracity of Mr Coulson's assurance that he knew nothing, the committee reminds us:

431. Mr Coulson also said he had "never read a Gordon Taylor story, to the best of my recollection" although, as we have been told, it was Mr Coulson who spiked the story.

Hmmm ... Anyhow, the committee goes on.

440. Evidence we have seen makes it inconceivable that no-one else at the News of the World, bar Clive Goodman, knew about the phone-hacking. It is unlikely, for instance, that Ross Hindley (later Hall) did not know the source of the material he was transcribing and was not acting on instruction from superiors. We cannot believe that the newspaper's newsroom was so out of control for this to be the case.

441. The idea that Clive Goodman was a "rogue reporter" acting alone is also directly contradicted by the Judge who presided at the Goodman and Mulcaire trial. In his summing up, Mr Justice Gross, the presiding judge, said of Glenn Mulcaire: "As to Counts 16 to 20 [relating to the phone-hacking of Max Clifford, Simon Hughes MP, Andrew Skylett, Elle Macpherson and Gordon Taylor], you had not dealt with Goodman but with others at News International."

All of which makes the testimony of Sean Hoare, to both the New York Times and the BBC R4 PM programme, feel a bit like one piece of the jigsaw the select committee couldn't put its finger on.

The big question, though, always was about the apparent failure of NewsCorp, the Met or the PCC to take NotW's routine illegal phone hacking as seriously as it warranted. Yes, there were the prosecutions over the royal phones ... but as we know, those weren't the only victims of this criminal activity.

Here's what the committee says about this - there's a lot of it, but it's worth reading in full:

442. Despite this, there was no further investigation of who those "others" might be and we are concerned at the readiness of all of those involved: News International, the police and the PCC to leave Mr Goodman as the sole scapegoat without carrying out a full investigation at the time. The newspaper's enquiries were far from 'full' or 'rigorous', as we - and the PCC - had been assured. Throughout our inquiry, too, we have been struck by the collective amnesia afflicting witnesses from the News of the World.

449. The News of the World and its parent companies did not initially volunteer the existence of pay-offs to Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire ...

the private investigator who worked with Clive Goodman and others

... and their evidence has been contradictory. We do not know the amounts, or terms, but we are left with a strong impression that silence has been bought.

455. Gordon Taylor was cited in one of the charges over which Glenn Mulcaire was convicted in 2007. In the civil action, however, the News of the World nonetheless initially resisted the claim, and on a false basis. We consider there was nothing to prevent the newspaper group drafting its confidentiality agreement to allow the PCC and this Committee to be informed of these events, so as to avoid, at the very least, the appearance of having misled us both. We also believe that confidentiality in the Taylor case, and the size of the settlement and sealing of the files, reflected a desire to avoid further embarrassing publicity to the News of the World.

467. In 2006 the Metropolitan Police made a considered choice, based on available resources, not to investigate either the holding contract between Greg Miskiw and Glenn Mulcaire, or the 'for Neville' email. We have been told that choice was endorsed by the CPS. Nevertheless it is our view that the decision was a wrong one. The email was a strong indication both of additional lawbreaking and of the possible involvement of others. These matters merited thorough police investigation, and the first steps to be taken seem to us to have been obvious. The Metropolitan Police's reasons for not doing so seem to us to be inadequate.

472. We accept that in 2007 the PCC acted in good faith to follow up the implications of the convictions of Clive Goodman and Glenn Mulcaire. The Guardian's fresh revelations in July 2009, however, provided good reason for the PCC to be more assertive in its enquiries, rather than accepting submissions from the News of the World one again at face value. This Committee has not done so and we find the conclusions in the PCC's November report simplistic and surprising. It has certainly not fully, or forensically, considered all the evidence to this inquiry.

It's hard to fault the select committee's reasoning and conclusions - hard, too, not to feel their frustration at being blocked at every turn in trying to get at the truth.

And that's why this scandal shouldn't be allowed to slide into obscure memory the moment someone is able to hang Andy Coulson's bloodied scalp from their belt.

Stained or Sullied

"I am afraid that all of us who blog have been sullied by this experience" writes Conservative blogger Iain Dale today on his friend and, one supposes, rival Paul Staines - who writes pseudonymously as Guido Fawkes.

For it was Paul Staines who led the way in circulating rumours and innuendo about William Hague. If you were to read his latest (1200 Thursday 2 Sept) post, though, you'd have no idea of the nature of the 'story' as he originally developed it.

After the Foreign Secretary's unequivocal statement, the 'story' is, according to Staines, about Mr Hague's failure to employ an efficient press handler. That, and the Foreign Secretary's mistake in releasing the statements he did responding to the innuendos on Staines' blog. Oh, and judgment:

"All in all, he has only himself to blame for being ill-advised and has shown a staggering lack of judgment."

More on 'judgment' in a moment.

But it's the story about the story that's exercising the traditional press: Sky this morning ran a 'moving on' story; while the Mail wondered why Mr Hague felt the need to say so much about his marriage; the Sun, on the other hand, featured a thing it calls 'baby fight heartache'; the Telegraph played it as a straight denial; while the Mirror wondered whether Mr Hague protests too much.

Like so many other political stories that we can't quite put our finger on, it's reduced to the catch-all crime of poor judgment.

But hang on. Poor judgment about what?

Let's not be disingenuous - this was never only, or even principally, an allegation that the Foreign Secretary's judgment was poor in the way he recruited staff ... though, as above, that's part of what it's become. Nor about his sure-footedness at handling the press ... though, again, as above, it's become that.

On 24 August, Staines was 'Just Asking' why:

"young Christopher Myers (25) should go from driving William Hague (49) around his constituency during elections, where according to the Mirror, "they became close during campaigns"

to a special adviser?

And in case you didn't quite get the point, the following day's post was entitled "Looks Like a Bentley" (geddit?), an apparent answer to a question posed by Mandrake in the Daily Telegraph. And if the innuendo in the headline was lost on most of us, it wasn't on Staines' readers ... take a look at the comments, though, with discretion if Sniggering Homophobia isn't your usual setting.

By Sunday 29th, the innuendo had become less subtle in 'Flashback: Hague's Gay Special Adviser":

"This is not the first time that William Hague's choice of Special Adviser has raised questions."

What sort of questions, Paul? Well ...

"what special talent, unseen by the rest of us, does Mr Myers possess?"

And, of course, the post told us, William Hague has form. He'd previously hired a "young, openly gay, relatively unknown figure" as a special adviser.

By Tuesday 31st, all innuendo had been stripped away:

"Exclusive: Hague Shared Night in Hotel Bedroom with SpAd"

'At least one night', the post tells us. And that:

"One witness told Guido that the room sharing couple's body language at breakfast was eye opening."

And that:

"Two national Sunday papers have the evidence but, despite journalists putting considerable resources into the story, their editors are reluctant to pursue it. Perhaps because in the words of the song, 'no one knows what goes on behind closed doors'."

Evidence of what, Staines declines to say.

What's most disappointing about all of this isn't just that a political blog has given currency to unsubstantiated allegations. Nor that it's been done in a way that's encouraged some pretty shocking verbal homophobia.

No, what's most disappointing is that the whole episode shows we still can't shift our political journalism out of a mode in which slurs and innuendo insinuate themselves, even if those slurs aren't even on nodding terms with the truth.

Is it good enough for a political blogger to argue, as Staines does, that his "is only a blog, and it is intended to entertain not save the world" when his 'entertainment' produces real effects in the real world?

And is it good enough for us traditional political journalists to sigh wearily and report on the way a politician is 'tested' ... even if that 'testing' is based on their reaction to untruth, rumour and innuendo we wouldn't ourselves ever report?

Do journalists care?

This article in the online Scottish Review is a must read - especially for any journalist involved in covering the Cumbria shootings. It's by Lorn Macintyre - a writer - and it echoes many of the things I've heard from listeners over the decades, usually after (or during) coverage of traumatic events.

Make what you will of its direct criticisms of the organisation I work for, the BBC, and two of the programmes I've edited over the years, The World at One and PM - that's not the point of this blog post. The article raises much more profound questions about the assumptions we journalists take into covering events like this.

And it shines a light through the gap between those assumptions and the sensibilities of our audiences. By all means, read the article in full and reflect on it as you will - but these are, for me, the most striking questions:

Were the media engaged in "an obsessive and unsavoury inquisition into the circumstances of the deaths"?

Any journalist worth his or her salt takes it as an absolute given that the job is to act as the eyes (and ears) of the wider public. Even when the facts and details are grim. Especially when they're grim.

Could there have been anything to be gained from suppressing - or not reporting - known facts and details about the circumstances of the victims' deaths? Few journalists would answer 'yes'.

And yet ... there are limits. Over the years, there have been many images of death that - rightly - neither the BBC nor any other Western broadcaster has shown. We draw the line at the gruesome details of sexual abuse.

If we accept the need for limits, then, why are they here rather than there? And in whose interests are they drawn?

The media has an "obsession with interrogating witness after witness, those who escaped death, and those who witnessed it".

I don't know a single journalist who would describe interviewing witnesses and those who'd escaped death as an "obsession with interrogating" them. It's gathering the facts, surely; assiduous rather than obsessive.

And yet ... do we journalists stop (should we stop) to think about the effect of what, to us, is an unquestionable necessity of the job? Are we right to argue that our job ends with the disclosure of 'facts'?

How does a family member, a friend, feel when they hear these details repeated over and over in bulletin after bulletin?

I've never found this one easy to deal with - though I've been told often enough that, as a journalist, you have to harden your heart. Many news stories upset someone - but, the conventional wisdom goes, that's no concern of yours; your job is to get the facts out there.

I'm sure that's right as far as it goes. And I'm not sure what the alternative is. But this is a concern you hear over and over from audiences - and are we totally certain their expectation of us is an unreasonable one?

Is it really therapeutic for the wounded, and those who escaped the pointed barrels, to keep repeating their terrifying experiences on air?

Is it?

It's something you will often hear journalists say to those who've had an awful experience and it's advice that's often given to young reporters nervous about approaching people in distress.

'Tell them they'll feel better talking about it.'

That might be true for some; it might make them feel better or start the grieving process. But we also know that it isn't true for everyone. Do we - should we - care? So long as we get our story.

"Surely it is the duty of the police and not the media to amass evidence on each killing ... (they) should be allowed to proceed with their harrowing duties, rather than being harassed by one of the many reporters dispatched to the crime scene?"

Again, seeking to find the 'why' is a duty that every journalist would say is beyond question. After disclosing the 'who, what, where, when', it's the job of the journalist to give context; to bring expertise to bear on the known facts. To keep adding to those facts. It's what the job IS.

And yet ... when you look at the sum total of the media's job on the 'why' of Derrick Bird's killings, are we confident that they've done or are doing an unequivocally brilliant job?

Depending on the paper(s) you've read over the past few days ... the cause is a family feud; a will; a tax bill; teasing over trips to Thailand; an 'unhealthy' obsession with a Thai girl etc, etc. Or that Derrick Bird was a quiet man ... or he had a history of violence. He'd planned the killings months ago ... or suddenly snapped. His targets were chosen ... and they were random.

We know that journalism's search for the 'why' can be a messy, sometimes rambling, often chaotic job. We accept that ... but what if our audiences don't?

Is "the motive for the media's insensitive and intrusive behaviour in such cases ... not sympathy for the murdered or the bereaved, but ruthless competition"?

Very few journalists want to be second with the facts; journalism is about the new, making known something that previously wasn't known. Competition is essential to the job and, while it may not seem "ruthless", "insensitive" and "intrusive" to us ... what if that's the way it looks to our audiences?

And if we seem to have removed ourselves from 'normal' human sympathy ... does that matter? More: should we allow our motivation, either to report or not to report, to be "sympathy for the murdered"?

Which brings us to Lorn Macintyre's summary accusation ...

The microphone and the lens intrude into personal grief, exploiting the fragile psyche.

... and to the blunt question all journalists should ask themselves. What if this is true?

We might know it's not. Or feel it's not - or at least not our intention. But what if it's true?

Do we care? Should we care? And if we do/should ... what do we do?

Laws law

Journalism has its first scalp of the new government. Inside 17 days. A new personal best. Should we be proud?

Have we, once again, brought power to heel with our watchdoggery? Stood firm in defence of the honest man and woman?

Or has journalism, true to type, proven its inability to understand its civic purpose? That the point of journalists' scrutiny is to improve the way we govern ourselves? Without that, it is just self-regarding noise.

There's a real dilemma at the heart of this and we journalists should, at the very least, recognize that. Perhaps even, whisper it quietly, be prepared to try to resolve it. As things are, we excuse in ourselves behaviour we would accept in no other institution - a behaviour that is at best arrogant, at worst delinquent.

You don't have to take sides or be soft on politicians to have been dismayed by the assertions of some in the press that, in spite of David Laws' explanation of his actions in the light of the Telegraph's disclosures, they knew what it was really all about. What was really going on in the former minister's mind.

'Sobvious innit. MP = greedy. Snouts, Trough, Boots. Fill. Nothing's changed, they're all as bad as each other. Bad as the last lot. Chuck 'em all out.

Thus the Sun: Mr Laws "channeled more than £40,000 of taxpayers' money to his long term partner" - the verb, intriguingly upgraded at the subbing stage; the original story had the more bland 'paid' ... as you can see from the url.

Thus the Mirror: a simple expenses scandal - his apology groveling (oh, come on ... you can do better than that: surely it was at the very least 'sniveling' ....)

And thus Barbara Ellen in the Observer ... who you might have thought should have known better.

Don't we - in the interests of both scrutiny and accuracy - have to begin with David Law's own explanation of why he did what he did? If we can disprove it through proper scrutiny .. fine. But if we simply dismiss it - because we really know - we also have to explain why one of the cleverest and most economically astute men in the country, let alone Parliament, didn't arrange his affairs to cash in to the max. Something he could have done entirely within the rules both as they were then and as they are now.

And this matters. Matters way beyond the detail of this one story.

It's likely - most sensible commentators seem to agree - that that the Laws affair is about judgment distorted not greed. That what we've learned about a (former) cabinet minister is that people - even those in positions of leadership - do daft things for complex reasons. Usually because they understand themselves less than they understand anything else.

Yet that lazy default - "we know they're all on the make" - is doubly dangerous; it looks like scrutiny without being anything of the kind. And it damages our politics, if for no other reason than that it reduces our various publics' understandings to yet another pointless, misleading binary; venal or honest ... with the centre of gravity very definitely on the venal side.

There is a genuine dilemma around disclosure and its effects.

As Roy Greenslade writes:

"The press exists to reveal what those in power seek to keep secret. The raison d'être of journalists is disclosure."

And it's impossible to argue that having bought the information - part of that CD whose contents it began publishing just over a year ago - the Telegraph should not have revealed what they had. And the measured language of its first report can't be faulted.

But is it enough to say that "disclosure" is all? That our responsibilities as journalists end once the revelation has been made? Don't we also - as people with pride in our craft - have the responsibility to make sure that disclosure is scrutinised in ways that are both rigorous and accurate. That we don't hunt scalps just for the sake of it or as means of validating our own purpose in life?

The Guardan's Michael White goes further:

"I do not think the public interest has been well served
by the Telegraph exposé. Laws is a clever, serious fellow who could have
opted for a life of idle self-amusement but plunged in public life
where dreadful things can happen.

So I regret his going and hope
the Telegraph's more thoughtful readers are as unimpressed as I am.
Perhaps the newspapers really are losing the plot in their - our -
battle to retain sales share."

Whether it's about the business of sales share alone, I'm not so sure. There's something so deeply ingrained in the culture of British journalism that the alternative, thinking whether the way in which we treat disclosures like the Telegraph's is proportionate, is just not an option.

So we've got our £40,000 back ... at what cost we will only know when or if the £160bn debt mountain is finally climbed.

More 'oxy' than 'moron'

Frederic Filloux is a blogger and teacher, based in Paris. He edits a blog/newsletter called Monday Note - worth sticking on your GoogleReader (other readers are available).

His latest post - The Oxymoronic Citizen Journalism - has generated ... well, mostly yawns, except amongst the ubercitjguruklasse - e.g. NYU's Jay Rosen who Tweeted in response to it that - "from Paris, the worldwide professional freak out over the term 'citizen journalist' continues ...".

"Freak out" there is a noun, by the way. Verb or noun, though, no freak out.

Like I say, mostly yawns at that old 'would you trust a citizen neurosurgeon to remove your kid's neuroblastoma?' gambit. Answer: 'No'. Answer continues: 'Nor would I trust one of those journos who made up over 100 totally false stories about the McCanns to tell me how many legs I had. Let alone offer me something with "more professionalism than mere crowd-powered demagoguery".'

Let's be honest, too much of our journalism is exactly that - 'crowd-powered demagoguery' ... except the crowd is populated by journalists in what Tony Blair once called a hunting pack of 'feral beasts'.

Too much journalism is too bad to make the claims that Frederic, and others, make in defence of it. Differentiating it from random rumour and the "utterly superficial" by virtue of its "painstaking" professionalism - a differentiation that Frederic himself concedes is all too rare.

There are differences and distinctions between those of us paid to do journalism and those of us not - but 'professionalism' isn't it. Especially since more of us would trust a total stranger than a journalist to tell us the truth.

To be fair to Frederic, he acknowledges that 'citizens' have a role in telling their own story about themselves to themselves - but the mask slips when he talks about "newsrooms" having "a challenge on their hands"; that what non-journalists have to say about their world is an "input" that needs "handling".

Frederic seems to think 'citizen' and 'journalism' are contradictions - he probably didn't mean to but, put like that, you see it for the nonsense that it is. And you have to be careful, you know, with 'oxymoron' - it doesn't quite mean what you think it means. If you want to sound really clever, do the Greek: oξύς (sharp) and μωρός (dull) ... which kinda reads across to citizen=sharp, journalism=dull ... though, of course, in French that would be the other way round.

Journalists forget at their peril that the facts they deal in - assuming they are dealing in facts - don't actually belong to them. And they have no right to manipulate them on the other side of some 'professional' membrane, separated from the citizens whose lives they're both describing and - potentially - changing.

And if you don't get that, you kinda don't get very much.

Anyhows, all of this will be on the agenda at what we hope will be the biggest ever Citizen Journalism conference in the UK - it's at the LSE on 11 June.

The Value of Journalism (#voj10 on Twitter) will look at CitJ from every angle - especially, what it means to the so-called 'professional tribe' and how it nurtures and supports our civic lives.

My hunch is that 'oxymoronic' is not a word we'll be using much.

Crystal ball or book?

Nick Clegg's short intervention this morning - that the party with most votes and seats, the Conservatives, should seek to form a government - could be a hint that things are moving faster than they might seem.

The assumption has been that the Lib Dems key demand - an agreement to, at the very least, a referendum on PR - is anathema to the Tories and effectively rules out any coalition between them. Certainly, that was the assumption of this morning's 0810 interviews on BBC Radio 4's Today - and with good reason.

Need that be so? And need we spend too much time looking at the crystal ball?

The 2008 election in New Zealand provides a good example of a 'confidence and supply' agreement; an agreement between parties - none of whom has an overall majority - in order to form a stable government but which does not tie the partners together as tightly as a formal coalition with a single, agreed, full legislative programme.

The basis of 'confidence and supply' is, very crudely, that the smaller partner agrees not to vote against the incoming government's Queen's Speech or a confidence motion nor to vote against supply measures, enabling the government to pay its bills and raise credit.

In the case of New Zealand, the centre-right National Party - which was the biggest party, three seats short of an outright majority - drew up a 'confidence and supply' agreement with the (broadly) Liberal ACT.

Its preamble is interesting:

"Recognising that National and ACT have a duty to give effect to the will of the people as expressed at the general election, in particular the strong mandate for a change in New Zealand’s economic and social directions ..."

Remind you of anything?

And here's something else to think about. What if part of a 'confidence and supply' deal between David Cameron and Nick Clegg is that the Tory leader agrees that a vote in parliament for a referendum on PR isn't a confidence measure ....?

We'll know, I guess, at 2.30.