Those in favour of it had argued there had once been a time – less than 100 years ago – when people were strongly opposed to giving women the vote, something which seems ridiculous today.

They used this as the pivotal point of their argument that if we gave 16-year-olds the vote now, by the end of the century denying them the right now would seem similarly absurd.

But opponents described the move as little more than a gimmick, and claimed there was no real demand from young people for any change.

And they are right.

Those in favour of lowering the age compared their campaign to the Suffragette movement of the early 1900s – a totally over-the-top parallel drawn by somebody in need of a good headline of two.

Let's look at the facts.

No 16-year-olds have chained themselves to the railings in Whitehall, as the Suffragettes did 100 years ago.

No would-be voters threw themselves under the hooves of a horse in the Epsom Derby, in the manner of Suffragette Emily Davison, who nobly died in the cause of women's rights in 1913.

And there have been no hordes of teenagers clamouring for universal franchise for all those aged between 16 and 18.

In short, there is absolutely no need to change the law, and MPs should therefore have nothing further to do with this preposterous idea.

A CANDIDATE in a GCSE English examination in 2006 who used a choice two-word Anglo-Saxon expression meaning "go away" in answer to a question received 7.5% from an examiner for accurate spelling and conveying a meaning successfully, it was reported recently.

And the marks given would have gone up to 11% had the candidate added an explanation mark to the end of his answer, the report went on – even though the answer had no relevance to the question posed.

To gain minimum marks in English, apparently, students have simply to demonstrate sequencing of ideas and putting words in an appropriate order.

A chief examiner said: "If it had had an exclamation mark, it would have got a little bit more because it would have been showing a little bit of skill.

"We are trying to give higher marks to the students who show more skills."

That's fair enough, but should we really be rewarding students whose most skilful – and incorrect – answer to a question is a vulgar obscenity?