It is hard to see taxing plastic bags as one of the great issues of our time that merits the foremost place in our finest statesmen's minds. It is an absurd little issue, a picayune proportion of household waste, and a pointless inconvenience in people's lives.

The House of Commons has the undoubted rights to expel members for misconduct. This is an absolute authority which cannot be challenged in any court, as it derives from the twin concept of the High Court of Parliament being the most senior court in the land and of each House's right to regulate its own affairs.

It has never been the case that a peerage can be extinguished, even for the lifetime of a peer, by a motion of the Lords. This does not mean that there are not effective ways of penalising errant peers.

As a general rule, governments are wise to avoid taxation that is voluntary, as they need a steady stream of income.

Overseas investors have a choice. They can buy property, equities, bonds, or a host of other assets either in the United Kingdom or abroad. Each decision will be taken depending on the available net return, that is, the profit after tax.

London's central role in the financial market would be undermined if wealthy foreigners did not want to come here.

Many foreign property owners work in the City of London and are encouraged to bring their expertise and earning power to this country because of the favourable capital tax environment. Attacking their property profit may encourage some to leave, but it would certainly deter others from coming in the first place.

Press freedom has great virtues. It is not about irresponsible scandal-mongering, although that may be part of the picture. It is a means of revealing wrongdoing.

Freedom rests on a rational distrust of government; government will always use its power to benefit the incumbent administration.

The biographies of the great rarely report much about the nanny, but for many, she will have played a crucial role in their formative years.

A nanny, by being the child's doughty defender, may put sensitive noses out of joint.

Proper British nannies put the child ahead of everything. They do not like to see children used as accessories, carried around in slings for the convenience of the parents' social life. They want a proper set-up, where the baby is rested and happy, not shown off to all-comers.

Extradition treaties date back at least to 1259 B.C., when the Hittite King Hattusili the Third and Ramesses the Second signed a treaty of 'peace and brotherhood for all time.' They have become more commonplace as international travel has become easier and sensibly streamlined.

I'm not a great beer drinker, but I do like Butcombe, probably because it's made of good Somerset water.

It is not for me to enforce my morals on others.

I take the teachings of the Catholic Church seriously.

The Catholic Church's teachings are authoritative. There is a moral absolute on abortion - that it is wrong.

I was left £50 when I was ten by a fairly distant cousin, which my father invested in GEC shares on my behalf. I became interested in the market and was given some more shares by my father, which is when I began looking to see how the shares were performing and learning how to read company reports, balance sheets, and so on in order to gauge that.

I went into investments out of interest and thought I knew a little. The longer I've been involved, the less I realise I'd known.

One doesn't need money to run for Parliament, but it is undoubtedly expensive.

When I'm overseas, I suspect I look like Mr. Bean.

It is of considerable importance that politicians stick to their commitments or do not make such commitments in the first place.

I can't see the point in being in politics if you're not yourself. If you're simply interested in implementing other people's policies, then you should become a civil servant. If you have ideas and some form of ideology, then it's exciting because you can argue forward.

I trust my electors. I see them in weekly meetings. I'm their advocate, I'm there to take up their case. I'm not there to decide whether they've got a good case or a bad case. And I think that if you trust people, they're more likely to trust you back.

I think it's true - economically, you want to bake a bigger cake rather than slicing up an existing cake differently.

You alleviate poverty by trickle-down economics.

To have charitable support given by people voluntarily to support their fellow citizens, I think, is rather uplifting and shows what a good, compassionate country we are.

I would rather my constituents were warm and prosperous than cold and impoverished as we are overtaken by emerging markets who understandably put people before polar bears.

Donald Trump is an archetypal grifter. Using the presidency to promote your golf courses, hotels, and real estate business is grifting. So is getting people to pay a premium for buildings with your name in big, gold letters. Licensing your name is what every grifter dreams about.

Nearly everyone who chooses to work for Donald Trump is disreputable in one way or another; Ali Baba didn't find 40 wise men in the cave. But to label everyone in Trumpworld a grifter misses important subtleties. It conflates grifters and grafters, and it ignores the crucial distinction between the two.

If you want to go around saying that giving women the vote wrecked the country and still be taken seriously, it helps to be handing out $100 bills.

For the grifter, ripping people off is seldom the point. The grifter is an artiste who invests in the long con.

You may or may not agree with Obama's policy prescriptions, but they are, by and large, serious attempts to deal with the biggest issues we face: a failing health care system, oil dependency, income stagnation, and climate change.

Book collecting is a largely solitary, mostly male, and completely absorbing activity.

As a political party, the Libertarians have always been more party than political.

Libertarianism, the political philosophy of rugged individualism, ought to hold a natural appeal to tolerant, anti-statist, free-trade conservatives who deplore the turn taken by the party of Abraham Lincoln toward racial prejudice, authoritarianism, and mercantilism.

The use of torture on suspected terrorists after Sept. 11 has already earned a place in American history's hall of shame, alongside the Alien and Sedition Acts, Japanese internment during World War II, and the excesses of the McCarthy era.

Blacks as a group have voted Democratic since the 1930s. The GOP has not courted them in any real way since the 1960s, focusing instead on attracting white constituencies hostile to civil rights and African-Americans in general.

Trade, tourism, cultural exchange, and participation in international institutions all serve to erode the legitimacy of repressive regimes.

People tend to throw up hands at Michael Jackson's multifarious bizarreness. But is it really so strange? The boy was forced to work by a cruel and physically abusive father starting at the age of 7.

All kinds of gambling, from bingo to baccarat, are benign entertainment for most people, dangerously addictive to a few, and capable of breeding unwanted side effects for society.

To Trump, being a billionaire means plating everything in gold and slapping his name everywhere in huge block letters. It means that he gets to say whatever pops into his head and never has to say he is sorry.

Where Republicans encourage popular myths about taxes, spending, and climate change, Democrats tend to stoke our fantasies about the sustainability of entitlement spending as well as about the cost of new programs.

Book collectors are thrill-seekers. It is a vegetarian hunt to be sure, without much exertion or risk, but the endorphin rush of the chase and the adrenaline high of the capture are much the same with first editions as I imagine they must be in the pursuit of 10-point stags, largemouth bass, or 20-foot waves at Maverick's.

Not applying a religious test for public office means that people of all faiths are allowed to run - not that views about God, creation, and the moral order are inadmissible for political debate.

Politicians try to make friends, build constituencies, and avoid gaffes. Trump does the opposite, seeking out land mines in order to detonate them.

The invasion of Iraq was, in ways that have since become hard to dispute, a terrible mistake.

Only when legislators judge that the risk of continuing to support Trump outweighs the risk of abandoning him will they begin to jump ship.

America's sanctions policy is largely consistent and, in a certain sense, admirable. By applying economic restraints, we label the most oppressive and dangerous governments in the world pariahs. We wash our hands of evil, declining to help despots finance their depredations, even at a cost to ourselves of some economic growth.

Because conscription appeals to essentially no one, the United States has lived with the All-Volunteer Force since the end of the Vietnam War.