No more parties. No more booze. Exams are looming and the students are panicking. By Cayte Williams: Spring Term, Week 2 at the Manchester Student House

PETER MANDELSON is to take on a new role as an unofficial adviser to Robin Cook, the Foreign Secretary, to help him to strengthen Britain's links with European Union partners.

THE INFLUENCE of footballing terminology on all areas of British life continued apace when the Home Secretary, Jack Straw, announced that "red and yellow cards" are to be shown to offenders who breach their community sentences.

THE PROBLEM of spin- doctoring will "never completely go away", Jack Cunningham, the Minister for the Cabinet Office, said yesterday amid growing concern about the influence of press aides such as Alastair Campbell.

WILLIAM HAGUE claimed yesterday the past weeks of turmoil within the Government had been a "disgrace" that had directly affected the crisis in the NHS.

I HAVE read with incredulity the rubbish, mostly written by fortysomething men up to no good I am sure, that has followed in the wake of the book by Margaret Cook (dump the surname - Margaret) about her marriage to Robin Cook, and the ignoble end at Heathrow airport of that period of her life. It is personal, they say - vindictive, vengeful and embittered.

CHARLIE WHELAN, Gordon Brown's spin-doctor finally department Whitehall last night to start a new career as a chat show host on BBC Radio Five Live.

For the new aristocrats in the media this nice car, slightly lacking in poke, represents `them out there'

LABOUR WAS embroiled in a new row over ministerial spending yesterday as Jack Cunningham, the Cabinet Office enforcer, was accused of wasting taxpayer's money on travelling in private jets to meetings.

ONE OF the mistakes people make about Mr Tony Blair is to look at his face rather than attend to his language. This is why, in an age dominated by television, he has so far been such a successful politician. His response to the resignations of Mr Peter Mandelson, Mr Geoffrey Robinson and Mr Charlie Whelan has been one of truculence mitigated by insouciance.

Channel 4 News C4 Newsnight BBC2

t HOSPITAL CRISIS. The NHS is either coping perfectly well with the winter rush or falling apart at the seams, your point of view largely depending on whether you're Frank Dobson or everybody else. In what amounts to a kind of millennium bug dry-run, a flu outbreak combined with a record shortage of nurses has led to some hospitals asking relatives to nurse their own kin. If the shortage gets any worse the NHS may have to rethink its official resistance to the hiring of crazy people who think they are nurses.

Labour's unhappy new year: Government tries to turn attention from Cabinet feuds to core domestic issues

What sort of ghastly error can you mean? Explain yourself, my enigmatic Queen