Winter has been even milder than usual here, and I would be happy to hail global warming were it not for the inconvenient fact that over the last 40 years average world surface temperatures have not changed, while during the 40 years before that, from 1946 to 1975, they actually fell, by one-tenth of one degree Centigrade to be precise. 

The plot of Gilbert and Sullivan’s Iolanthe, or the Peer and the Peri turns on a clause in the fairy constitution which states that “any fairy shall die who doth marry a mortal.”  At the end of the second and final act of this masterpiece of English sarcasm, however, the Lord Chancellor, who has declared himself an old hand at all matters legislatorial, proposes a small change that will allow members of the House of Lords to intermarry with fairies.  This the constitutional guardian achieves by changing the word “doth” to the word “don’t,” so the problematic clause now says...