Its principal theme was stated by Labour: the move towards regional pay deals by a consortium of NHS trusts in the South West was a thoroughly bad thing.

The project exuded "unfairness, irrationality and economic illiteracy", we were told in the warm alto tones of Alison Seabeck (Lab, Plymouth Moor View).

From the government benches came an answering phrase in the rich bourdon of Geoffrey Cox (Con, Torridge and West Devon), who enthusiastically set about embroidering the same theme with his customary eloquence.

It was both "wrong and retrograde", he said, exhibiting a little of that talent for alliteration so admired by Professor Higgins in Alfred Doolittle. And it was "inconceivable" that he could agree to a policy which would further depress incomes in his already low-wage constituency.

Then he deftly introduced the counter subject: it was indeed a dastardly business but it was all Labour's fault.

He and his coalition colleagues from the South West went on to perform every conceivable variation on this motif. They were as appalled by the prospect of regional pay as the members opposite but Labour needed to do the decent thing and fess up to the fact that their own reforms had given trusts the power to pursue this option. It was, opined Geoffrey Cox, "cynically opportunistic" of Labour to try to wash their hands of the matter.

Labour insisted this was nonsense. The changes they had introduced had allowed one trust to increase pay in one instance but there had been no pay cuts on their watch.

As much of the ensuing debate seemed to be devoted to who was to blame as to the basic issue itself.

Andrew George (Lib Dem, St Ives) attempted a synthesis of the two themes: regional pay was bad and Labour had let it happen - but perhaps they hadn't really meant to.

Labour were still having none of it, so - unlike a good fugue - the subject and counter subject were not resolved in glorious harmony.

This is the House of Commons, though, so it was a minor miracle that the counterpoint proceeded as well and for as long as it did.

But it left the obvious question - how did we reach a situation where NHS trusts can negotiate regional or local pay deals - entirely unanswered.

My quest to get an answer started with the Foundation Trust Network.

They told me it was "complicated", something I'd already got half an inkling of. In broad terms, though, they said trusts had received the theoretical power to vary terms and conditions as long ago as 1990 under the Conservatives. But they claimed it was only after further changes made by Labour that this became a practical proposition.

Next I approached the consortium of South West trusts who are actually trying to implement these freedoms.

The consortium says it is basing its case firmly on the NHS 2006. So the trusts, which are the driving force in this, clearly think they have Labour to thank.

Finally, I sought a ruling from the Department of Health. Surely they could give me a definitive ruling on whether the move was legally sound and - if yes - which piece of legislation made it so.

The department says the powers are enshrined in the NHS and Community Care Act 1990 - a piece of legislation enacted by Margaret Thatcher's government.

They directed me to Schedule 2, paragraph 16, where it states: "An NHS trust may pay its staff such remuneration and allowances and employ them on such other terms and conditions as it sees fit".

The department threw no more light on the issue of whether Labour's later reforms had enhanced this. But the whole point of Labour's new foundation trusts was that that they should have more autonomy than their traditional counterparts.

The 1990 Act also stipulates that a trust's freedom to vary pay and conditions must be "in accordance with regulations and any directions given by the Secretary of State".

This would seem to support Ben Bradshaw's (Lab, Exeter) claim at the beginning of his debate on regional pay that "a single word from the minister today and this madness can be stopped".

It's not surprising that Health Minister Anna Soubry instead chose to commend the South West consortium for its "mature" and "responsible" approach.

A government which is seriously considering introducing local pay across the public sector can hardly be expected to censure others proceeding in the same direction.

The truly definitive ruling on all of this would probably involve testing it in the courts, which neither my personal means nor the BBC's licence fee allow for.

But Ben Bradshaw, at least, thinks others may well now do so.

Which makes some of the facts surrounding the force in the run-up to the police and crime commissioner elections particularly eye-opening.

One striking thing is the number of people who want the job.

No fewer than 10 candidates have coughed up the formidable £5,000 deposit to stand in Devon and Cornwall. The two neighbouring forces of Dorset and Avon and Somerset can only boast four apiece - the three usual suspects plus an independent.

Then there is the nature of the challenge they face.

Recent crime figures from the Office for National Statistics make interesting - and surprising - reading.

The headline news nationally appears to be good. Despite substantial cuts to police budgets there has been a 6% overall reduction in crime in the year ending June 2012.

That figure is more or less doubled in some force areas, even highly urban ones. So, for instance, crime has dropped by 14% in the Thames Valley, by 12% in the City of London and by 10% in the West Midlands.

In the South West, Dorset saw a 6% fall while crime in Avon and Somerset fell by 5%.

Only four forces out of the 44 in England and Wales actually saw crime increase.

Northamptonshire and Essex both recorded a slight rise of 1%. In North Wales it was 2%.

By far the largest increase, though - 7% - was in Devon and Cornwall.

The police federation in Devon and Cornwall points out that the rise in crime coincides with cuts to officer numbers in the largest force area in England and Wales.

Her Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary agrees that Devon and Cornwall faces particular financial problems.

HMIC's report Adapting to Austerity, published in July, identifies four other forces with the same kind of special challenges.

All the others, though, have seen reductions in crime over the past year. Sussex (2%), West Mercia (6%) and Nottinghamshire (10%).

Gwent, the fifth authority, clocked up a whopping 18% drop in crime.

That - by a substantial margin - is the best score for any police force in England and Wales. And it's been achieved by one of the most financially challenged.

So whatever is responsible for Devon and Cornwall's trend-bucking crime rise, it doesn't look as if it can simply be blamed on the cuts.

If size matters, though, it's a fact that Gwent would fit into Devon and Cornwall many times over.

The Environment Secretary Owen Paterson is adamant that his eleventh hour postponement of the cull is just that and it will still go ahead - albeit a year later than originally planned.

However, senior figures on the pro-cull side of the argument have already concluded that last week's decision has lengthened the odds on a cull ever happening at all.

According to Mr Paterson, postponing the cull had become inevitable due a combination of unforeseen factors.

The weather had been atrociously bad over the summer, it was too late in the year to embark on culling, and badger numbers were double those previously anticipated.

Nobody would stake very much on being able to predict the weather with confidence. But, given the evidence of recent years, the likelihood was always that this summer would be on the wet side.

As for it being the wrong time of year, the decision to delay the pilot culls until the autumn (to get the Olympics and associated policing commitments out of the way) was made long ago.

The issue of badger numbers is crucial. Farmers in the cull zones are required to kill 70% of the animals. Suddenly discovering there are twice as many badgers as you'd previously planned for clearly causes a big problem.

This third factor was clearly the deal breaker. The question is whether the government could and should have cracked on and counted its badgers a bit sooner.

Ben Bradshaw, former Labour Defra minister, is in no doubt.

"You would think the very basic thing of getting the number of badgers in an area right is something they would be able to do," he said.

"I'm afraid this is just another example of this shambolic government".

A Labour MP who opposes culling is hardly an unbiased commentator.

Unfortunately for the government, though, one of the key figures actually organising the cull in Gloucestershire seems to agree with him.

"If we'd known four or five weeks ago - or even longer - that we had that number of badgers to deal with, we would have had time to look at how those figures were arrived at, challenge them if necessary, and indeed put in place the resources necessary to deal with it", said Jan Rowe.

"But we just did not have time in the last 10 days to make a decision whether to go or not."

The government had spent two long years determined to get every detail of the cull right.

In particular, it was understandably anxious to do everything in its power to fight off the inevitable challenge in the courts.

Ironically, it breezed through all the legal intricacies only to fall at the final hurdle because it didn't know how many badgers there were.

Forced to halt the plans for time being, the environment secretary at least appeared to have one trump card up his sleeve. Mr Paterson was able to stand up in the Commons and reveal that the National Farmers' Union had actually asked him to postpone the cull.

Almost immediately rumours circulated that ministers had expended considerable effort trying to get the NFU on side ahead of the announcement.

It soon emerged, though, that these efforts were aimed at persuading the farmers to go aheadwith the cull this autumn. According to one well-placed source, the prime minister himself was personally furious that the farmers had forced a delay.

Judging by Jan Rowe's comments, the farmers felt the government's bad planning had placed them in an impossible position.

Having lobbied so long for a cull, the last thing they would want to do is embark on a pilot which they knew was doomed to fail from the outset.

Whether any of this has damaged the farmers' future bargaining power with the government remains to be seen.

All of the above pre-empted a backbench debate on badger culling which had previously been tabled for last Thursday.

Although the sense of urgency had obviously disappeared, nearly a third of MPs still turned out to debate the pros and cons.

Sarah Wollaston, the Conservative MP for Totnes, warned that the "celebrity status" of the badger was distorting the debate.

"I would say that we are getting a focus on a single species and I think that's unhelpful", she said.

She went on to pose the familiar question: "Is a badger more important than a cow?" (Cattle are, of course, culled in large numbers as part of the present TB controls).

A more interesting question though, might be to ask whether a badger is more important than a fox, say - or a deer or a rabbit.

If any of these other abundant wild mammals were the principal wildlife reservoir for TB, farmers would just quietly (and legally) get on with shooting them.

We can be sure of this because all of these animals are routinely shot at the moment - either as pests, to eat or simply to manage population sizes.

However, there are no campaigns, no petitions, no protesters dressing up as deer or foxes, no parliamentary debates and certainly no £50m 10-year scientific investigations standing between any of these animals and the marksman's bullet.

Some animals are definitely more equal than other as far as the law is concerned.

Badgers are not just a protected species, they have an entire Act of Parliament devoted exclusively to them.

The Protection of Badgers Act 1992 was not introduced because badger numbers were under threat but simply as a response to the (already) illegal sport of badger baiting.

It is illegal to bait (set dogs on) or cruelly abuse any of the other animals I've mentioned - but that hasn't automatically led a to ban on shooting them as well.

If badgers do enjoy celebrity status Dr Wollaston may largely have her Conservative predecessors - who passed the Proection of Badgers Act 1992 - to thank for it.

This verdict on the Prime Minister's mission to change constituency boundaries - theoretically moved forward by the Boundary Commission last week - has been delivered by a South West MP.

It would seem an obvious analysis to a lot of people.

How can the PM really hope to push this through the Commons against the avowed opposition of the Liberal Democrats?

Basically it's a judgement on Conservative policy you would expect to hear from almost anybody. Except a Tory MP.

This blunt assessment, though, is offered by Geoffrey Cox, Conservative MP for Torridge and West Devon.

It's long been an open secret that a number of Tory backbenchers don't share David Cameron's enthusiasm for redrawing the map. Not least those, like Geoffrey Cox, who would see their own constituencies dismembered or entirely removed.

Geoffrey Cox says he had reconciled himself to the loss of his own seat in principle. But he also reveals he would consider voting against the boundary changes if the government tried to secure them by "sordid trading" with the Liberal Democrats on party funding.

Conservative Party Chairman Grant Shapps MP told the BBC's Sunday Politics no wheeling and dealing of this kind is taking place. And Nick Clegg insists the Lib Dems will not be bought with "cash for constituencies" anyway.

But if Geoffrey Cox's views are at all representative of his colleagues, the Prime Minister could now face even more of an uphill struggle.

He stands accused of "paddling his own canoe" - that is, pursuing his own agenda in defiance of the majority view of his fellow councillors.

That could be a description of Alec Robertson, current leader of Cornwall Council.

But I'm actually talking about his predecessor David Whalley, Liberal Democrat leader of the old Cornwall County Council, who found himself in a similar predicament in 2008.

The motion to hold a no confidence vote in Mr Whalley was defeated, but then the whole process was repeated just a few months later in early 2009.

Votes of confidence are not a routine part of the rough and tumble in the lives of local government folk.

The neighbouring unitary Plymouth City Council has certainly had its up and downs since it was created in 1998.

But for all the controversies that have troubled it, there has never been a confidence vote in the leadership.

As for the other top tier authority next door - Devon County Council - you have to go back to 1987 to dredge up a vote of confidence in the council leader

One Independent councillor in 2009 found the daggers drawn at county hall in Truro an unedifying spectacle.

And he felt sure Cornwall's voters would feel the same.

"They don't want people fighting it out in a room", he was reported as saying.

"What they want to see is agreement".

Well, whether they like it or not, they're getting a repeat performance.

And this time it's the real deal: it's not merely a motion on whether to hold the vote, but the vote itself.

After fighting off several challenges to his leadership, David Whalley decided to stand down as leader (and as a councillor) just ahead of the first elections to the new unitary authority.

This was partly, he said, in response to "personal" attacks on him.

(However, Cornish readers won't need to be reminded of the host of self-inflicted problems which beset his administration - or of the Liberal Democrats' annihilation in the election that shortly followed).

Alec Robertson is fighting his corner vigorously, though now without the support of his former deputy Jim Currie who stood down last week.

Replying to Mr Currie's resignation email Mr Robertson commented (presumably ruefully): "You have done a great job of covering my six o'clock and I suspect more daggers will find their way through without you there to cover my back."

That's clearly perfectly legal but I think a lot of people were very surprised to find it was possible.

And it's been suggested it's not terribly democratic.

It's not something, for instance, which could happen at Westminster.

The government needs to command a majority in the Commons for any policy it comes up with.

The comments were made by Councillor Eddie Gaines, an Independent on Taunton Deane Borough Council.

He and his colleagues had just been debating a motion to ban badger culling on council-owned land.

This followed a recent decision by Forest of Dean District Council to implement just such a ban.

Both councils are in areas generally earmarked for the two pilot culls.

Taunton Deane rejected the motion. And the whole exercise seemed rather academic anyway, given that the council doesn't own much in the way of farmland.

Unsurprisingly for a district council, it is big on things like housing estates - and car parks.

Our interview with Cllr Gaines (in a council car park) produced his rather surprising comments.

Defra, however, tell me that "shooting in a car park will not be an option".

A spokesman said: "Clear guidance has been provided about the need for any culling activity to take place in a suitable location away from dwellings and urban locations, or anywhere where there is a risk of injury to people."

You can read Natural England's guidance on the Defra website.

Quite apart from the specific rules for badger culling, the criminal law has a lot to say about people who carry - let alone discharge - firearms in a public place.

Suffice to say it is not remotely encouraging and includes talk of prison sentences.

We talked about regional pay in the NHS and Serco's shortcomings in providing out-of-hours GP services in Cornwall.

He also confirmed his determination to push ahead with plans to redraw constituency boundaries, including the creation of the controversial 'Devonwall' seat of Bideford and Bude.

To say some of his own backbenchers are less than sanguine about the proposed changes is an understatement.

And, given that the Lib Dems have now withdrawn their support, it looks as if Mr Cameron is leading his troops towards almost inevitable defeat in the Commons.

He stopped short, though, of spilling the beans on the party's latest big idea for housing, unveiled shortly afterwards by the Shadow Chancellor.

We also discussed the feed-in tariff subsidy for solar energy.

Created by the same Ed Miliband when Energy Secretary, this proved fantastically popular in the South West.

So much so, indeed, that Cornwall Council confidently predicted a £1 billion "solar gold rush" west of the Tamar alone.

This proved to be tempting fate.

The coalition may have committed itself to keeping Labour's feed-in tariff - but it swiftly set about slashing the amount of money payable and excluding larger energy producers altogether.

Ministers argued that the original subsidy levels had become unsustainable; that there had been a far greater take-up than foreseen; and that the feed-in tariff had never been intended to benefit large-scale operators.

If the latter is true, it suggests Labour had drafted the original rules very sloppily indeed, allowing big companies a loophole through which they could glut themselves on subsidies earmarked for small community ventures.

I put this to the father of the feed-in tariff and I think he denied it.

Listen for yourself...

He claims the pupil premium - extra financial support aimed at the poorest school children - is actually widening the funding gap between the richest and poorest local education authorities.

His own county of Devon happens to be one the worst-resourced LEAs in the country.

His criticism hinges on the sole test the government uses to assess eligibility: free school meal claimants.

Mr Harvey says this is a "very clumsy, crude measure of pupils' income levels and poverty".

"There are many areas, particularly rural areas, which we know from all the other economic statistics are actually very poor, very low income areas where - perhaps rather surprisingly - the free school meal claim count is way below average," he said.

"So when the pupil premium is divied up these very poor areas aren't getting the pupil premium on the scale they'd been expecting.

"And actually, far from narrowing the gap between the poorer areas' school funding and the more wealthy areas' school funding, it's actually widening."

Emblazoned across the front of the Liberal Democrat manifesto at the last general election, the pupil premium is one of the policies the party's leadership is proudest of implementing in government.

Nick Clegg told us this week that it was one of just four things they were "prepared to die in a ditch for" during the coalition negotiations.

As Nick Harvey points out, all three main parties were promising some kind of pupil premium if they won the election; the devil - or rather the delivery - would all be in the detail.

Just last week the much-trumpeted policy received a body blow from the schools regulator Ofsted.

A survey of 262 school leaders found only one in 10 saying the pupil premium had significantly changed the way they supported pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Not great for the government - or the Lib Dems just ahead of their conference.

But Ofsted was essentially laying the blame on headteachers and governors for not making proper use of the extra money they received.

Nick Harvey's criticism is levelled squarely at his former ministerial colleagues.

According to him, many heads and governors won't have the opportunity to use or misuse the money - because they won't be getting it in the first place.

Introduced in April 2011 for pupils from low-income families in England

Set at £488 per pupil in 2011-12. In 2012/13 it was increased to £600 - £1.25bn in total

Available for children eligible for free school meals and pupils in care

Extended to pupils who have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the past six years from 2012-13

Schools can spend the extra funding as they see fit. From September 2012, the government requires schools to publish information about how they use the funding

Source: BBC News

School funding is a particularly sensitive topic in the rural South West and, above all, in Devon.

The formula the government currently uses to calculate basic school funding leaves Devon one of the lowest-funded authorities in the country.

So, pupils in Devon receive hundreds of pounds less than the national average every year.

Compared to the best-funded LEA that gap broadens to a couple of thousand pounds per pupil.

A long-running campaign to get this formula altered hit the buffers earlier this year when the Education Secretary confirmed that nothing will change until after the next election.

On the back of that disappointment, Nick Harvey is now suggesting the pupil premium - of all things - is now making this existing gap worse.

Devon County Council acknowledges that the free school meal test causes huge problems.

But a spokesman says it's impossible to say whether the pupil premium is widening the funding gap.

The Department for Education told me that this year the pupil premium has been extended to children who have been eligible for free school meals at any point over the last six years.

According to their spokesman, "this means that schools are now receiving the pupil premium for many of the children that Mr Harvey is concerned about".

At the end of our brief exchange I was left in no doubt as to who wears the trousers when it comes to Liberal Democrat ministerial appointments.

But the rationale behind his latest move in the game of departmental chess still eludes me.

Before this month's reshuffle he had a minister (North Devon's Nick Harvey) at the MOD overseeing a review into future alternatives to the Trident nuclear missile system.

The Lib Dems' quest for an alternative to Trident stands in stark contrast to Conservative enthusiasm for like-for-like replacement.

They now have nobody with full-time responsibility for this (presumably) important brief.

In the wake of the reshuffle there was talk of David Laws taking on the Trident review in addition to his new responsibilities at Education.

Then it was announced that Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, will add this to his day job of helping George Osborne salvage the economy.

Meanwhile - in exchange for Nick Harvey at Defence - Mr Clegg now has a Farming Minister - Somerton and Frome's David Heath - at DEFRA.

In part, he says, this provides a Lib Dem ministerial voice for the rural South West.

But the fact remains that the Liberal Democrats are virtually at one with the Conservatives on most aspects of rural policy.

Even the badger cull was an election commitment for both parties.

Given that - as Mr Clegg points out here - he only has a limited number of ministerial jobs in his gift, the previous absence of a DEFRA minister wasn't a big deal even for rurally-minded Lib Dems.

Addressing a rally at the Liberal Democrat Conference on Saturday, the Deputy Prime Minister insisted he was "more determined than ever" to find the right alternative to a "monumentally expensive" like-for-like replacement of Trident.

Conference delegates are also being wooed with new left-of-centre policy ideas calculated to reassure the jitters of the rank and file - and distance the party from the Conservatives.

However, Mr Clegg was less than conciliatory to his critics within the party when I spoke to him...

We talked about the party's strategy to finally make a breakthrough in domestic elections and the merits of European funding (like Cornwall's Objective One).

The latter, in his view, is simply fodder for "quangos" and "fat cats".

I suggested the Eden Project, Combined Universities in Cornwall, and the county's superfast broadband might, at the very least, be exceptions to this rule.

The venue for our chat boasts some of the finest views in London.

It is, ironically perhaps, the roof terrace of the European Commission's British headquarters, where UKIP also maintains a small pied a terre.

That's the bleak assessment of the f40 group of local authorities which has campaigned vigorously for change under this government and the last.

The present funding formula leaves every pupil somewhere like Devon hundreds of pounds worse off than the average child across the country.

Pupils in the best funded LEA, the City of London, get twice as much as their Devonian equivalents - a difference of more than £4,000 per annum.

Rural councils have long disputed the criteria the existing formula uses to gauge pupil deprivation.

They argue it underestimates the levels and causes of poverty in the countryside.

Labour began a consultation into changing the system which came grinding to a halt after the 2010 general election.

Earlier this year a second consultation by the coalition resulted in the Education Secretary acknowledging the "anomalies" in the present system and saying he was eager to change it.

But not yet. And possibly not even while he is still Education Secretary.

F40 greeted this news with less dismay than one might have expected.

This was because Michael Gove also agreed to consider proposals from f40 for some kind of temporary financial package pending full reform.

He has now ruled out this interim sweetener as well - hence f40's despondency.

A spokesman for the Department for Education assures me: "We are determined to get this right and we will introduce reforms at a pace which everyone can manage.

"Schools must be allowed time to adjust gradually to a new system."

F40 clearly thinks that pace could be very slow indeed.

Here's its account of the latest developments:

The Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove, has rejected a proposal put forward by the f40 group of local authorities for an immediate £99 million uplift of funding for the worst funded schools and pupils in England.

This means that the pupils, schools and local authorities that for nearly 20 years have been the poor relations in terms of the share of education funding will not see any change until well after the 2015 election… and maybe never at all.

At a meeting with Mr Gove in March this year f40 representatives were told that an extensive consultation on school funding reform clearly demonstrated that the existing allocation system was unfair and inequitable.

They were also told that the government did not intend to address the problem during this Parliament.

F40, which campaigns for fairer funding on behalf of the poorest-funded localities in England, naturally felt aggrieved about the announced delay in putting right a significant injustice.

It put forward the case for an immediate 'uplift' in funding for the worst funded areas.

"We suggested that Secretary of State should offer an interim remedy to ease the position of schools and pupils in the worst funded local authorities", said f40 chairman, Cllr Ivan Ould.

He also represents Leicestershire County Council, the worst funded schools authority in the country.

"At the Secretary of State's invitation we agreed to undertake some financial modelling to show the cost implications of a range of potential solutions, and these were delivered to him at the beginning of April.

"Four options were considered and a moderate proposal was recommended involving an investment of £99 million to be shared by the 40 worst funded authorities.

"Though ideally f40 would have liked to have seen the worst-funded local authorities receive immediate increases, taking member authorities nearer to the national average, we recognised that such a major re-balancing would be difficult in the current economic climate and should await the introduction of the proposed new system, post-2015.

"With this in mind, we asked for a fraction of the shortfall to be made up in 2012-13, with similar increases in 2013-14 and 2014-15.

"We believe that increases at these levels would help bridge the indefensible gap between the best and poorest funded local authority areas and would have been a significant gesture to clearly demonstrate that the government recognises the unfairness inherent in the existing allocation arrangement.

"In his letter rejecting our proposal the Secretary of State stated that, "it is important we move to a new formula gradually and at a pace which schools can manage".

"The f40 group finds that approach totally unacceptable as it fails to reflect the fact that the existing formula is so demonstrably wrong and unfair, and suggests that poorly funded schools could not make immediate good use of the additional funding they have been deprived of for so long.

"Outright rejection of our proposal is deeply disappointing and, although we will keep open channels of communication with the government, we are left with no alternative but to maintain our campaign for fairer funding."

It centres on the ease with which it is possible to avoid giving proof of age when buying booze on the internet.

This apparently contrasts with a steep decline in the number of face-to-face sales where ID checks have become much more rigorous.

The Home Office's response to the report didn't address the new challenges faced by the internet:

"We are already tackling under-age drinking and cracking down on irresponsible and criminal businesses. Buying alcohol for someone under 18 is illegal and the police will prosecute.

"The government have ensured there are stiff penalties in place, with a £5,000 fine for individuals and a new maximum fine for businesses, who persistently offend, of £20,000."

However, Sarah Wollaston - MP for Totnes, GP and vociferous campaigner against alcohol abuse - had a couple of suggestions for ministers:

The report concedes there are no figures to show how much of a problem online sales have become.

Proxy sales - adults buying alcohol for children - are another matter.

This, according to the report, is now the under-age drinker's 'preferred route' - and the adult involved is very often the child's parent.

A tricky one, because the strictures of the law rehearsed by the Home Office ease up when it comes to parents and their own children.

In practice this seems to facilitate everything from a modest glass of wine at a family meal to packing little Johnny off to a beach party armed with a large bottle of vodka.

The more liberal interpretation of the law in Newquay was raised by local MP Stephen Gilbert in the Commons last November.

He asked for the legislation to be tightened so that parents have to supervise the drinking as well as the buying of alcohol.

Dr Wollaston had a couple of ideas on this subject too - but they stop short of changing the law.

How realistic is the culture change she's hoping for, though?

It stretches credulity to imagine that any modern parent would fail to anticipate the almost certain consequences of entrusting hefty consequences of booze to a teenager.

Popular attitudes to drinking and driving, say, have been transformed over the past few decades.

But the sanctions of the criminal law have probably had more than a small part to play in that.

Plymouth - as usual - was a straight fight with the Conservatives, while in Exeter Labour took seats from both the Tories and the Liberal Democrats.

Labour attributed their success, in part at least, to the policies being pursued by the coalition government in Westminster. That's par for the course.

You wouldn't normally expect their Tory opponents to agree though. But both the defeated Tory leader in Plymouth and one of the city's Tory MPs had harsh words for David Cameron's government too.

But we rarely compound the faux pas by throwing religion into the mix as well.

This week, though, we gave it both barrels.

The Advertising Standards Authority recently banned a leaflet promoting divine healing for conditions ranging from sleeping problems to multiple sclerosis and cancer.

The ASA says it doesn't wish to "disregard anyone's beliefs, but specific claims targeted at people who may be seriously ill must comply with the rules on substantiation and social responsibility that apply to all other advertising".

But it has infuriated South West Devon MP, Gary Streeter, who chairs Christians in Parliament:

"The words the ASA objected to were that God can heal you physically, and what I say is, if you're not allowed to say that any longer, it's the same as saying God is not real, God does not exist.

"That's what they're really saying and that is not a decision for them to take, that's a matter for individual faith.

"It's been part of mainstream Christian tradition for 2,000 years that God can heal you...

"We should not be stopped from making that very modest claim - because it happens to be true."

We sent the Sunday Politics' Tamsin Melville to film a healing session on the streets of Truro, and Gary Streeter joined me in the studio along with Labour's Jude Robinson and Lib Dem peer Lord Burnett:

He was there to announce the £350 million contract for Babcock to refit the Vanguard Class submarine, HMS Vengeance.

The contract - and the 2,000 jobs the MOD says it will secure over the next three and a half years - will, of course, be very welcome.

But Devonport, understandably, always has at least one eye on the future.

With this in mind I asked Mr Hammond about the next generation of nuclear submarines (the Vanguard Class have had their lives extended but are still on the way out), Devonport's future as a "deep maintenance" centre and whether the two new aircraft carriers will definitely be built and what kind of planes will fly from them.

You'll notice that, as our waterside chat proceeded, I was sporting a hard hat.

This was a safety precaution enjoined on me by the naval authorities rather than a voluntary attempt to cut a dash among my colleagues or in front of the camera.

Everybody else was dutifully wearing the same headgear.

Everybody that is except Mr Hammond and constituency MP Oliver Colvile, whom you can glimpse behind me during the interview and who appeared to take Mr Hammond's hat-doffing as the cue to bare his own head.

Mr Colvile later explained that he and the Secretary of State had asked - and received - specific permission from Babcock to remove their hats when they finished their tour of the submarine itself.

This, though, seems at variance with the navy's policy of issuing absolutely everybody else with hard hats even if - like me - they were merely standing on the quayside.

Here's what the Defence Secretary had to say about some of the biggest issues facing the Navy (after discarding that irksome titfer):

I'm pretty sure Ann Mallalieu is my only Sunday Politics guest so far who's also featured on Desert Island Discs (where she chose Twist and Shout as her first record).

She is also President of the Countryside Alliance.

So - before we sank our teeth into the weighty topics of health reform and immigration - I asked her about hunting.

More specifically I wanted to know whether she hoped the government would deliver on its pledge to offer a free vote on repealing the hunting ban in this Parliament.

Now, on the face of it, this is a bit like asking Imelda Marcos whether she has a passing interest in footwear.

But - as previously discussed on this blog - it's not as simple as that.

Hunt masters and pro-hunting MPs have made it clear they're far from eager to unleash the present parliamentary intake on this issue.

They fear the Commons as currently composed would vote to retain the ban rather than overturn it.

I put that to Lady Mallalieu:

This week's announcement is the latest update on the pledge to "investigate measures to help with fuel costs in remote rural areas, starting with pilot schemes" in the coalition's Programme for Government of May 2010.

Why, then, are these pilots - offering a five pence reduction in fuel duty - only benefiting island communities?

Well, fuel costs are certainly particularly high on islands. But that's not the only reason.

Crucially, the government needs approval from the EU to go down this road at all; and so far the EU has only ever approved this kind of scheme on islands.

Tory and Liberal Democrat MPs in the South West have made great play of the possibility of the rebate being extended to rural areas of the mainland.

The government, though, is being distinctly lukewarm on that point.

Launching the scheme, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, said the government's "first priority is to make sure the pilot works and the benefit is actually being passed on to customers" (something already being hotly disputed in Scotland).

When asked about the prospects of extending the scheme to the mainland he merely said: "Of course we'll look at the arguments that are made."

When pressed again on the same point he went further in pouring cold water on the idea:

Mainland motorists will be hoping his boss, George Osborne, has something more promising to offer in his red box on March 21.

This centres on what they would see as - and again I err on the side of politeness - his overly optimistic view of their ability to maintain essential public services in the face of dwindling finances.

The government's drive for a country-wide council tax freeze next year has brought these tensions to the surface.

Mr Pickles is offering councils a one-off payment - equivalent to a 2.5% rise in their council tax - if they agree to a freeze for the coming financial year.

Ministers, of course, have no power to enforce a freeze.

Indeed there are few things they like talking about more than all the decision-making powers they are returning to local communities.

At the same time Mr Pickles - and his lieutenant Local Government Minister Bob Neill - are making it quite clear that in their opinion councils have a "moral duty" to take the money and freeze the tax.

Not to do so, they say, would be a "kick in the teeth for council taxpayers" and to "treat the local electorate with contempt".

So it's not a great time to be leading a Conservative council which takes the view that it can't balance the books without putting up council tax.

Most Tory councils are toeing the line. But authorities like Surrey County Council and South Hams District Council in Devon are kicking back.

Surrey is implementing a 2.99% increase. So councillors there clearly don't feel the government's 2.5 will even cover this year - let alone the longer term.

South Hams is putting council tax up by just 2.5%.

On the face of it, this is more puzzling: wouldn't it be cleverer to accept the government's generous offer, give your electors a little council tax holiday and then put up council tax the following year if you really felt you had to?

It's not that simple, though, for councils like South Hams or Surrey.

They clearly see council tax as something which - like hot air - has an inexorable tendency to rise.

Accordingly, their financial planning is obviously based on at least a vague presumption of cumulative increases in the years to come.

South Hams' 2.5% increase will roll over automatically into the council's base funding in the following year and the years after that.

Taking Uncle Eric's short term shilling would have thrown things into disarray because the money simply wouldn't be there to roll over into the next year.

A council could, in theory, simply whack up the council tax the following year to fill the hole. This, though, would present a major headache in practice.

Maintaining the funding level provided by the expired government grant would mean a 2.5% council tax rise just for starters.

Throw in the additional rise calculated for that year itself (let's say another 2.5% or so for the sake of argument) and the council would be in real trouble.

Demanding an increase of 5% or more from taxpayers at one fell swoop would have run the risk of capping under Labour.

Now, councils face an even more formidable obstacle: any increase above 3.5% would have to be subject to a local referendum.

And the government has made it clear that threshold could change in future.

So councils are undoubtedly right to say freezing tax this year could seriously upset their financial planning for years to come.

Eric Pickles reportedly told the Local Government Association's finance conference that refusing the freeze money because it would not be part of the base funding in future years was a "ludicrous argument".

Not because the proposition is untrue, but because the "whole idea" of the freeze is to get councils' financial bases down.

That would seem to leave those Tory councils with their hearts set on year on year tax increases in direct ideological conflict with their colleagues at Westminster.

That's one of the points I put to South Hams District Council leader John Tucker this week in the film below.

We also touched on a general feature of the government's much-trumpeted localism agenda.

On the one hand, ministers going out of their way to bang on about local authorities having the freedom to make the judgements they see fit.

But, on the other, making it emphatically clear what they think those decisions should be and publicly excoriating those councils who dare to use their freedom to disagree.