Telegraph: I guess it's the Shire effect. Tolkein tells us that the inhabitants of that green and pleasant corner of Middle Earth are "slow to quarrel' but "doughty at bay'. Much the same could be said of the people of our own shires: it takes a lot to anger them, but once roused they form a formidable, almost unstoppable, force.
And as Tory and Lib Dem MPs are discovering -- on returning to their constituencies for the summer recess -- the patience of rural Britain is now wearing thin. More and more local...