Bug#402691: vim.full refuses to turn syntax highlighting off

[Brad Barnett]

Package: vim-full
Version: 1:7.0-122+1

For some reason, syntax highlighting is now on by default with vim. 
Fair enough, perhaps enough people prefer it...

However, I am unable to turn off syntax highlighting at all.  Editing
/etc/vim/vimrc, and uncommenting:

"syntax on

and changing it to:

syntax off

does not work.  Further, ":syntax off" inside of vim does not work either.  

As a minor side note, if the default is that syntax highlighting is now
on, perhaps the config file should be changed from:

" Vim5 and later versions support syntax highlighting. Uncommenting the next   
" line enables syntax highlighting by default.
"syntax on

to:

" Vim5 and later versions support syntax highlighting. Uncommenting the next   
" line disables syntax highlighting.
"syntax off

or some such...

Thanks!