Well deleting the a:hover CSS has made it so the link from the title of the first article takes you to the article page. Which is a step in the right direction however illogical :-)

I notice I feel very reluctant to reorganise my pages any further just to humour IE7! I think before resorting to that, I might try a few of the hasLayout workarounds where you put in an extra bit of CSS which doesn't really do anything. ... when I have time & headspace for that.

Another thing about having the content first is it means on a slow connection it appears first, which (though again non-crucial) is desirable behaviour I think.

Thanks again for your expertise...