Sixth-formers at Millfield School in Somerset are being urged to contribute to a Leavers' Scholarship to fund bursaries for children from families who cannot afford the fees. Now in its second year, and modelled on American Ivy League fund-raising methods, the scheme is one of hundreds of initiatives launched after the 2006 Charities Act underlined the need for private schools to demonstrate the public benefit they provide in return for charitable status.

Gordon Brown admitted last night that Peter Hain's campaign was guilty of "incompetence" over undeclared donations to his deputy leadership campaign but insisted he would be cleared of wrongdoing.

Chinese Communist Party cadres defy the country's one-child policy at their peril. Family planning officials in the central province of Hubei have expelled 500 party members for breaching the rules.

It has now been a month since Charles Dunstone put the cat among the pigeons by offering a "free" broadband service to anyone willing to sign up to Carphone Warehouse's "TalkTalk" service. Since then, anecdotal evidence suggests that it has not all been plain sailing, with potential customers reporting technical difficulties in signing up and insufficient numbers of trained staff unable to cope with demand.

The day I sent my piece to a brewery

Andrew Flintoff's natural instinct is to accentuate the positive and it was no surprise that he should hail England's six-wicket victory over Sri Lanka at Edgbaston as a significant moment. Yet he accepted that his team could have made shorter work of a touring side currently suffering one of its leaner phases.

There are moments of genuinely disquieting strangeness in James Marsh's feature debut, a southern Gothic about secrets tragically withheld. Its brooding atmosphere can be partly attributed to co-writer Milo Addica, who also co-authored Monster's Ball and Birth; this guy is plainly a specialist in the dysfunctional American family.

Gordon Brown will announce that the minimum wage is to rise above the symbolic £5 mark for the first time in a Budget expected to launch Labour's election campaign.

Task Force verdicts from supporters and football authorities emphasise conflicting priorities between business and the needs of local communities

THE TEXT

Sir: Commenting on William Hague's proposed cut in the higher rate of income tax ("At last, Labour's rivals make politics more interesting", 16 August), you accuse the centre-left think tanks of an "absence of effort, let alone output" in producing new ideas for Labour. In our case at least this is a surprising criticism, since we are working in precisely this field.

LIKE MILLIONS of home buyers in the Eighties, I took out a with- profits endowment to pay the capital off after 25 years. I expect it to deliver a tidy sum when it matures in about nine years' time.

Maybe it is the silly season but personal finance keeps making the front half of the papers, rather than being tucked away inside the Sport section as usual. (A big welcome back this weekend to those fickle readers who abandon this part of the paper during the football close season).

Allegations of mis-sold investments and tirades against unfair mortgage contracts have been plastered all over the front pages of the papers (and the facing page here) in recent weeks. This is more than just coincidence.