HAROLD Wilson famously - or rather, reputedly - said: "A week is a long time in politics." I say reputedly, because it is widely assumed that he uttered those words at a lobby briefing in 1964, but when asked about it in 1977 he could not say with certitude when he coined the phrase.

It matters not; if a week is a timespan of significance, then three weeks is an aeon.

Since I last wrote in this slot (on April 24) we have published around 42,000 of your words on our Letters Pages. Unsurprisingly, the overwhelming majority of these have been on the subject of the General Election.

Equally unsurprisingly, the volume of mail has significantly increased these past three weeks. What was not expected, however, was that the flood we were receiving up to May 7 would become a torrent in the days thereafter.

We had cleared the decks for politics in the week running up to polling day because of the sheer volume of contributions on the subject. On polling day itself, normal service was resumed.

But no-one had predicted the extent of the Conservative majority, nor the scale of Labour's collapse, and the election results seemed to take our readers aback. Last Friday was a relatively calm day, as often happens before a storm.

Over the weekend, however, we were inundated with analysis, invective, finger-pointing and head-shaking. We again had to devote the pages to readers' reactions to the seismic events. Proportional representation became the hottest topic - yet I can recall only a handful of contributions on that subject prior to May 7.

I tried my best to accommodate as many new correspondents as I could; I apologise here to those regulars who missed out. Even so, I have not been able to publish everyone. Please do not be daunted - I want this forum to be as inclusive as possible. Again, though, I should point that we shall continue to try to draw a line between castigation and gratuitous (or offensive) abuse.

Of course, while politics has dominated the discussion lately, this has not been to the exclusion of all other topics.

We have enjoyed lively contributions on gay marriage, assisted suicide, the continuing nefarious deeds of bankers, the Curriculum for Excellence, signage for bus lanes, arrangements for wild camping, the tragedy of Nepal and even the possibility of making Sir Alex Ferguson an ambassador for Glasgow.

I confess, though that my favourite letter of the last three weeks has been one pointing out an error. In our Word Wheel puzzle last Saturday, the hub character was printed as "T" instead of "I", for which we again apologise. Dave King, of Glasgow, delighted by drawing our attention to this howler in verse: "The answer read 'glowingly'/Did you miss the 'I' knowingly?/Your lack of one vowel,/ Chilled me down to the bowel. /When I spotted the clue/I knew not what to do/But I tried and I tried/ 'Til all reasoning died."

Mr King, I thank you. You lightened my load with your witty ode.