Tony Blair's annoyance was plain last week when Bell challenged him in the Commons to allow more freedom to his backbenchers "so that this place might become rather more the free Parliament of a free people, and rather less a rubber-stamp assembly".

BBC: News | UK Politics | An accidental MP

It was free, apart from the cost of a stamp, when much of the rich world's vast advice industry was costly.

ECONOMIST: Esther Lederer, agony aunt, died on June 22nd, aged 83