Throughout those five years Connie felt powerless to say anything, or to speak up. The abuse came to an end when, at 14, Connie became pregnant. At that point the police got involved and visited the house. Shortly after the police left (without takin...

His diagnosis in most respects is sound. The last Labour government used to like citing international education tables when they showed England's schools performing well, but rather neglected them when they indicated the opposite. And while it is not...

The sigh of relief throughout the City could hardly be contained. What the Chancellor's soft-pedalling on the issue actually means, as well the banks know, is that any move to lift the stone from financial remuneration will be delayed until after the...

Hedgerows are good for farmers David Palmer and Aidan Harrison (Letters, 20 November) are right to point to the importance of hedgerow management for wildlife conservation and to the defensiveness of some farmers about declines in farmland wildli...

Which is why the sense of helplessness that has enveloped the nation this past week in the face of the country's greatest disaster in decades has felt so wrong. In the second crisis to hit the South Island since the 7.1 magnitude Canterbury earthquak...

The disclosure measures originally proposed by Sir David Walker were actually rather mild. Each bank would simply have to tell us how many people there were in pay bands above £1m. And that was about it. It's not even as if they would have to be name...

* Don't summon the doctor should William ever call for his pipe and his fiddlers three in the middle of the night. Chances are, he is just being a merry old soul, for which there is no treatment. * Sometimes, accidents happen. For example, if an egg-...

After two weeks on my back on a smelly ward in London, I hobbled home, my torso encased in a plaster cast, to find the doormat loaded with more than £10,000 in bills. If anything I was lucky – friends have been forced to cough up on the spot and clai...