When a comment is a rebuttal.

Matthew Parris has one of those typically high-handed moments of his, concealed under his trademark upper-class self-deprecation, as he debates the insufficiency of democracy.

A commenter sets him straight:

If you can't trust democracy, who can you trust? For the last 900 years (approx) in England we have been moving towards greater democracy because of the failures of kings (King John, Charles I, James II and others). Our rulers are not necessarily wise.

Taxation without democracy is nothing more than demanding money with menaces.

For a democracy to function, the electorate must be fully and impartially informed. Therefore the press must be free and impartial. I am not sure how this could be achieved but could the owner of this newspaper please take note.

Ian Wyld, Marlborough,

I agree with almost all of this, but it seems pretty clear how a "fully and impartially informed" public could be achieved, and that is by imposing a free market on the UK media through the progressive privatisation of the BBC. Naturally legal powers would need to be buttressed against monopoly interests (which should be the number one priority of the Government of the land in all sectors), and obviously the public would perforce have to wake up to the idea that there is no "given" view to be held, but all this would be to the good, and democracy the winner.