That an unfit 31-year-old with a nicotine, alcohol and kebab dependency is so vital to the team demonstrates the weakness both of our national squad and the game in this country. The tears of the nation are not for Gazza, but for the dearth of real f...

The strategy of sanctions will not work, as they hit the poor and will simply exacerbate the many problems facing South Asia. It reflects the neo-imperialist attitude of some Western countries. We need to identify the urgent problems in the context o...

Despite these cost-cutting strategies I was very hard up. Each day I calculated whether or not I had enough money for the return bus fare between digs and college, a packet of ten Park Drive, a cream cheese sandwich, a cup of coffee and two games of ...

Recently a call to my local cinema to reserve seats resulted in a peak- rate call to Inverness which cost almost 10 per cent of the price of the tickets. I am increasingly attracted to companies which offer Freefone numbers. R S LETCH Maulden, Bedfor...

The ills you describe are not apparent in New York, which spent pounds 138 per person last year, Norway a similar amount and Massachusetts pounds 322. The difference is that all these hugely successful lotteries did not need to lose hundreds of milli...

Thus it was in Croatia. Thus it was again in Bosnia. And now, it seems, we are seeing a repeat performance in Kosovo. None can say that this is an unexpected war. On the contrary, there have been predictions of conflagration ever since the Balkan war...

Of the many inaccuracies in his piece, which reads as an apologia for some of the more extravagant Hindu nationalist claims, one could cite the image of Tamberlaine as a Muslim fundamentalist hell-bent on slaying Hindus; a claim which ignores the fac...

No. Paul Gascoigne is yesterday's news. Yesterday's news is here today and gone tomorrow. And gone for ever? Certainly not. Yesterday's news always comes back when you have forgotten all about it. Sometimes it comes back as "Where Are They Now?" Some...

It would appear that the "what I want I want now" culture is running up against the buffers of reality. If one wishes to indulge in all that's on offer, and that costs money, sacrifices have always had to be made; so let us have a little less whingei...

That is the opposite of what the survey you report suggests. You state that women suffer most over the loss of personal life through work. The difference between men and women on this point, however is very small - 61 per cent of women and 55 per cen...

If the golden rule is so straightforward and worthy, why has it proved so elusive? The reasons are straightforward. Politicians, have always found it difficult to resist the temptation to borrow to spend more on the public services. Harold Wilson sup...

But then, we all know about rugby league don't we, all those whippets and flat caps and oh, how wonderfully quaint and Northern and working- class it is - all this and that poor man Monks still expects to be taken seriously as a progressive voice in ...

The Windward Islands have probably the most participative banana industry in the world. Each island has its own Banana Growers' Association, owned and controlled by the farmers. These associations, together with the Windward Island governments, own t...

Your explanation is, however, also flawed. It is not mainly the heating of the air before the jar is placed over the candle which causes trouble but the heating after this, which expands the air inside the jar, forcing bubbles out under the rim. On c...

No matter that what has happened to Gazza is self-inflicted, apparently we can not manage without his magic touch. I do not profess to know much about his footballing abilities, but my line on Gazza has been consistent ever since he beat up his wife....

There is one powerful practical reason why exams are going to become more important still. It is that most of the "new" jobs that are being created need skills that can be measured by the technique of an examination. Of course we may be teaching peop...