On my return home for Christmas my mum handed me a battered red book of my schoolboy autograph collection. Alongside my prized signatures - George Best and Sir Matt Busby - was one from the man who used to read out the football results on the BBC's Look North, a man I admired even as he informed me of Manchester United's latest failure (this was the Seventies, remember). I'd attended [...]

Remember the fuss when Tony and Cherie Blair chose to shun local secondary schools for their eldest child? Imagine how much greater the reaction would have been if Labour's new leader had declared: "I wouldn't dream of sending my children to an Islington secondary school. Few people here even trust the council to clean the streets. So, if I become Prime Minister, I'll privatise the schools service. Let's face it, [...]