No-win situation

We report today on the invention of the world's first "pupil-friendly" examinations, featuring better laid-out papers and a break in the middle to look up the... oops, we mean to recover one's strength.

We report today on the invention of the world's first "pupil-friendly" examinations, featuring better laid-out papers and a break in the middle to look up the... oops, we mean to recover one's strength.

Doubtless such a plan will meet the same narrow-minded ridicule as the development of "competitor-friendly" sports, but the only problem with such initiatives is that they do not go far enough. It is not enough simply to say that all primary school children should have prizes; the very rules of the main sports need to be rewritten. In tennis, for example, aces should not count and, if an umpire rules that the ball should have gone over the net, then he or she should be allowed to award the point to Tim Henman. Similarly in football, goals should be disallowed if they are the result of an obvious goalkeeping error.

That should even things up a bit.