If you re-read the article, you will see that this is a suggestion from the “Jury Team” not a proposal I am putting forward.

When it comes to “fixed terms”, there are some Offices where that has considerable merit but these are where the incumbent has considerable power or independence of action and not I suspect an individual MP.

I do make the point that the Jury Team’s proposals would require a lot more work. You could argue that if you want to bring democracy back closer to the electorate and destroy the ‘professional politicians’, limiting all MPs to a 10 year maximum service would encourage a greater turnover and more immediacy but even that would need greater thought as a proposal.

In this context one could argue that a Prime Minister could be limited to no more than two full Parliaments or 10 years. Also and quite topically, the position of Speaker of the House could be similarly time/term limited.

Of course the major difficulty in the UK unlike the USA is that we do not have fixed term durations in the elected Legislature and Executive, a Parliament can run for a maximum of 5 years but could be dissolved at any time so fixed terms are not ‘natural’ to our system.

“My friend and I…” Stop being “girlie”, I cannot imagine contemplating standing for Parliament is an activity you can contemplate with your “mate, the ugly one” – I jest but not quite.

Look around you at the current furore on expenses, your “mate” – NO ! You, your family, your children, your whole life, this is not a career choice, it is a badly paid bridge to total humiliation where being an MP is as highly regarded as being a double glazing salesman. On has “Britain Got Talent”, you will get humiliated in the process of selection but at least there is the prospect of being a winner…

Could you be John Gummer MP and I think Agriculture Minister at the time, in the middle of the Mad Cow crisis being deliberately photographed sharing a beef burger with his young daughter ?

If you don’t have a real passion and belief in an idea or a goal whether right, left or up your bottom, sorry I meant Libdem there, don’t even think about it, take up knitting, you and your friend can share patterns.

Please can you help us