Despite its location and denomination, the school's intake is more than 70 per cent Muslim, with a large chunk of Buddhists, Hindus and Catholics thrown in. About 80 per cent of pupils have English as their second language; at least 26 languages are ...

Given the frighteningly complex fiscal, political and institutional manoeuvres still needed to resolve the eurozone's flaws, such expectation is something of an overstatement. But, Mr Draghi's plans were, when they came, strong stuff nonetheless. In ...

In one of Evelyn Waugh’s Sword of Honour novels, a pompous American character is constantly calling things “significant”, prompting the question: “Signifying what?” Quite. Back in the 1940s, Waugh clearly saw “significant” as an unwelcome American im...

In 1979, the Arctic in September had more than 7,000,000sq km of ice. This September, when the melting season ends in a few days’ time, it is likely to have less than 3,500,000sq km.Its disappearance, maybe within the decade, has the most profound im...

The issues that attract the wrath of the media are centred on the Church’s teaching on sex and marriage. One would have hoped that a thoughtful journalist would look for the big idea behind what makes the Church so unpopular. The Church is essentiall...

An unfair advantage, he declared, which at first left an odd taste. He had to battle similar accusations about his blades when lining up against able bodied athletes as he did in the Olympics (he reached the 400m semi-finals). The Daily Mail even ven...

Mr Murray complains that the children in the campaign's televised advert are in fact actors – a fiction, he suggests, that renders the whole issue of child poverty in the UK somehow like "a Richard Curtis" film. What little poverty there is in our so...

Such bleak data was an ice-cold reality check, a reminder that the overriding issue in November’s presidential election is the economy and, more specifically, jobs. The recovery from the last recession is the weakest of any since the 1930s, and no pr...

Yet Cameron does rather often affect this brash over-manliness. It’s been on evidence this week in the reshuffle, with a nice decision to sack people away from the cameras in the Commons, entirely overshadowed by the sharpness of the way in which som...

India’s new health-care scheme for the poor aims to be cashless and paperless from the start, using swipeable smart cards to make payments and convey information. In Pakistan over 140,000 poor people have received cash transfers over the phone under ...

While other food fads have come and gone, the market for organic food - produce farmed without the use of synthetic fertilizers, genetic engineering etc. -  has grown steadily since 2000. That's great for those who can afford it (though, not as great...

But for the purpose of this article, let’s focus on a recent survey that found that almost one in four men don't like what their partners wear. From bitter experience, the “don’t like” bracket seems to span everything from “Holy crap, what have you g...

Perhaps this was his intention – to promote courage in burglars, and to weed out the cowardly ones. More likely it is simply a result of the kind of muddled thinking that seems to afflict us all when it comes to moral reasoning. This is not an attack...

They are right to detect a shift in policy; prompted by the financial collapse, Cameron has been forced to edge away from Green subsidies and turn instead to measures that will make energy cheaper for those struggling to make ends meet.Perhaps the gr...

According to Amnesty International, Khoshravi is scheduled to be executed on 10 September. This sentence not only continues Iran’s policy of bloody repression, but as unlikely and ironic as it might first appear, it is legitimated by the United State...

Wolf’s reasoning for removing the right to anonymity, as she explained in a live chat with Mumsnet, is that granting anonymity to the victim implies it is he or she who has something to feel shame over, not the rapist. That’s fair. Indeed, being able...

She is right that far too many NHS organisations are getting the basics wrong, but the reasons are less to do with the competency of doctors and more to do with ruthless, misguided cost-cutting by hospital trusts whose boards and personnel have littl...

But the Pakistanis are almost certainly tilting at the wrong target by linking Save the Children with Dr Shakil Afridi, who was sentenced to 33 years in jail for running a bogus vaccination programme which the US intelligence service used to track do...

Here we have a range of measures that bear the half-baked stamp we have come to expect from the Chancellor. He's going to do something to tackle the housing shortage. But that something is to allow developers to hack into invaluable green-belt land, ...