I've now had a chance to look at this and first of all, I must offer my apologies to the membership as a whole. I can make all the excuses in the world about long hours at work, early starts, late finishes, being dog tired when I get home etc, but none of that really matters and to be honest I'm not in the mood for a pity party. At the end of the day, I'm the administrator of this forum and it falls on me to make sure that what has been happening recently between two members doesn't happen. I dropped the ball and that's on me and me alone. I'm really disappointed that it did happen because I never intended for this forum to be micromanaged in the way that the old one was and hoped, perhaps naively, that it would police itself. I saw that things were beginning to heat up on that thread and decided to let it play out, hoping that one or the other would be the bigger man and leave it. I now realise that, with hindsight, that was a mistake on my part and I regret not taking firm action to put a stop to it there and then.
I said in a previous post that people should be free to state an opinion and that people should be equally free to disagree. Debate the point all you like, but please, do not allow a debate to descend into name-calling and insults. If people can't agree, then I expect people to agree to disagree and move on. Name-calling, insults and provocation will not be tolerated and will be treated harshly. I don't care who they are, what they might have achieved in the past and how much they have contributed to this or any other forum, if people can't behave like grown-ups, I don't want them on the forum. End of.
To that end, I've banned both the members concerned and I expect that to be the end of the matter. In future, if members take offence at a post or a statement made in a post, report it and do not rise to the bait.