Wimbledon high school for girls is pioneering an educational innovation: "Failure Week"
Read full article...No, no, no. All these infographics showing out how many bottles of champagne, Armani suits or dialysis machines could by bought with the £963,000 bonus that would have been paid to RBS boss Stephen Hester are beside the point
Nobody can blame Salman Rushdie for pulling out of the Jaipur literary festival after being told of a credible threat to his life. The aftermath of his withdrawal showed the literary world at its best and at its worst.
At this point in the conversation about holding a possible referendum on Scottish independence, it's not psephologists we need so much as Groucho Marx.
I was going to begin this column by saying how fatheaded the current culture of offence is. But then I thought: no. I can see how that will play on Twitter. I'll be retweeted and pilloried by various self-styled "community leaders". You know: fat people; people with heads; people with fat heads, especially, and that's not even to get started on members of the Easily Offended Community. By tomorrow lunchtime I'll be at the top of the news whining like a whipped dog in a frantic effort to save my job.
It's liberal trendies such as David Cameron who really make my blood boil. Oh yes, he talks about being a "Christian society"; says we shouldn't be ashamed of it. Blethers on about "Judaeo-Christian values" (why are we funding faith schools for other religions, come to that?) and suchlike.
Senior examiners at Britain's exam boards have been caught out - in their own words - "cheating"
Your medical data is not the Government's to give away
What do I hate more than sin? What do I loathe more than Strictly Come Dancing? Easy. It's the home delivery service Yodel. I won't bore you with the details: it's the traditional saga of "Sorry we missed you" cards, phantom delivery trucks and long, anguished conversations with call-centre employees
It always seemed faintly absurd that New Labour promised to "end child poverty" - a sentimental, silly promise whose premise was that "child poverty" was in some way an independent issue from the adult variety
Welcome to Britain, the deadly Australian redback spider! Welcome, too, you crazy ants and bigheaded ants, you pharaoh ants and ghost ants! Welcome, Argentine ants - the unpleasantness over the Malvinas is forgiven - and German cockroaches! Welcome, the melon-loving stink ant, with your post-mortem aroma of rotting coconuts!
The warning lights on the dashboard are flashing," Labour leader Ed Miliband warned us yesterday
At a time when the NHS is being pinched on all fronts, it emerges that the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) is proposing to make elective caesareans at public expense a right for all prospective mothers
For reasons of good manners, good taste and good public relations, the Prince of Wales and his courtiers say little in public about plans for his accession to the throne. So it's quite the scoop for Andrew Marr, in the course of researching his new book on the Queen, to have learned something of what's been discussed
Literary! Readable! Literary! Readable! The row over the shortlist for this year's Man Booker Prize - has it been dumbed down? - resembles the Lilliputian war in Gulliver's Travels between Big Endians and Little Endians over the opening of a soft-boiled egg
"Werritty" is a gift, isn't it? "ferrety", "temerity", "insincerity"... were rhyming couplets still effective instruments of political attack, no one with a name such as that would have got anywhere near the Defence Secretary
Delivering Quality First is the name given to the BBC's sweeping internal inquiry into the shape it should take in the future. Yes: I agree
More uplifting news from Mr Cameron's Big
Society. With NHS nursing staff at full stretch and stories of elderly patients in hospitals being left wet, filthy and unfed, chief executive of the Royal College of Nursing Dr Peter Carter says relatives should step in. We should take to the wards to spoon granny's breakfast egg into her and lead her to the loo afterwards.
Well, it's just gesture politics, isn't it, this 50p tax rate? Why are we punishing the wealth-creators? Look at all this wealth they've created, after all!
Suddenly maths is hot - algorithms run our net-driven world and are even the subject of Robert Harris's new thriller. Sam Leith reports
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