Society

Having given the matter careful consideration, I have decided that I do not agree with councillor Colin Brewer’s suggestion that disabled children should be ‘put down’ after birth, perhaps in the manner of a farmer smashing a deformed newly born lamb against a wall, as he helpfully put it. ‘You can’t have lambs wandering around with two heads or five legs, can you?’ Colin asked, presumably rhetorically. Colin is a councillor in Wadebridge East, Cornwall, and does not come across as the fullest pasty in the lunchbox. It would not surprise me if some wag has already made the rather bad-taste point to him that if his proposal were adopted,

The verdicts have been delivered in the Operation Bullfinch trial. Seven of the nine men have been found ‘guilty’. The case involved the highly organised sexual and physical abuse of underage girls in the ‘care’ system. This was carried out by a gang of men in Oxfordshire over the course of nearly a decade. As I wrote of one of the most shocking aspects of the case: ‘One of the victims sold into slavery was a girl of 11. She was branded with the initial of her “owner” abuser: “M” for Mohammed. The court heard that Mohammed “branded her to make her his property and to ensure others knew about

The outcry against the government’s plans to allow nurseries and childminders to relax staff-to-child ratios is scaremongering, driven somewhat by showboating rather than evidence. The government is proposing that nurseries should be able to relax staff-to-child ratios if they employ higher-quality staff. Ratios will be relaxed for childminders too: but this should also be dependent on these professionals having higher qualifications. From all the outrage anyone would think Elizabeth Truss was forcing providers to cut staff ratios. But all she is proposing is that they have the flexibility to do so. If they really believe laxer ratios will undermine children’s safety and outcomes, they need not sign a petition; rather, just

The combined endowments of the three top US universities alone is more than Britain’s entire defence budget. Luckily the risk of American invasion is still one of graduate students seeking a cheaper option, with old-world charm and brand name. But the days of Oxbridge and the Russell Group holding ranks with the ‘new money’ Ivy League are numbered. Not just because more money funds more, and better, research. But because US universities also use that money to do a better job finding, investing in and nurturing potential – potential often still excluded in the UK. They show that excellence need not mean elitism, and that’s a lesson the British academe

Michael Gove is right about almost everything, but like most know-it-alls, he has a habit of putting people’s backs up when telling them he’s right. That’s the theme of a piece I’ve written for the Telegraph today about the Education Secretary’s desire to meddle not just with what goes on in the classroom but also in what children get up to when they’re at home. You can read his full speech on this which is, as always, very interesting and lively, at the bottom of this post. The opening section, in which he asked parents whether they’d rather see their children reading Twilight or Middlemarch, playing Angry Birds, or coding

If the devil were to conduct an experiment into mankind’s ability to resist temptation, it would look something like Stanford University. It is built in one of the world’s most agreeable climates and everyone dresses as if they have just stepped off the beach – which lies only half an hour away. Hammocks lie between trees, as if to tempt the weak-willed on their way to lectures. There are jazz clubs, golf courses and swimming pools – and 1,700 students are added each  year, to see if they get any work done. But they do, enough to make Stanford one of the world’s best universities. In fact, 22 of the