David Cameron hopes we can all forget about George Osborne's dreadful Budget and the impending VAT increase as we pour on to the streets, waving little Union flags, on Armed Forces Day (26 June). Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, he called for "an explosion of red, white and blue". As "a country at war", he continued, we should make the military "the front and centre of our national life". Supporting our armed forces "isn't just a government responsibility - it's a social responsibility". Cameron recalled the First World War, during which, he explained, the populace kept "the home fires burning" - though I always thought, because there was then no central heating, that the fires were simply to heat their houses.

I suppose it's that "big society" thing again. But if it's our responsibility to support the soldiers, shouldn't the government take heed of our views about whether the war they are now fighting is just, necessary and wise? Since April 2001, our interventions in Iraq and Afghan­istan have cost more than £20bn - and that doesn't include the health, care and benefit costs of wounded soldiers. Bringing the troops home - an option that, according to polls, most voters support - would save enough, over five years, to retrieve about half the £11bn cuts that Osborne will make to the benefits bill.

Leave them kids alone

As it takes at least 11 years for children to complete their schooling, and parliaments last five years at most, all governments struggle to demonstrate a positive impact on education.

So ministers resort to creating "new" varieties of school (which are often just old schools rebranded) - city technology colleges, grant-maintained schools, academies, and so on. Now Michael Gove, the coalition Education Secretary, offers "free schools", which are to be set up by self-help groups of parents, teachers or public-spirited citizens.

The models are in Sweden and the US. According to the University of London's Institute of Education, Swedish free schools can claim
“a moderately positive impact". But the biggest gains are among children from highly educated families; the impact on those from low-educated and migrant families is "close to zero". The benefits, moreover, don't last beyond age 16. In the US, Stanford University found that in 46 per cent of charter schools (as they are called) pupils made no more progress than they would have done in ordinary schools and, in 37 per cent, they made less. With a few isolated exceptions, new types of school make little difference either way. Whatever a school is called, children from affluent homes mostly do well, and those from poor homes mostly do badly. You can narrow the learning gap by narrowing the income gap. If there were another way, somebody would have discovered it by now.

Family matters

As a friend and former colleague of Chris Huhne's, I wish I could defend him (and, for that matter, his very charming wife) against the News of the World's intrusion into his privacy, and the revelation of his adulterous affair. I am afraid that is impossible. During the election campaign, he published snaps from his family album with captions such as "Family matters to me so much". As I write, two days after his statement that he was leaving his wife for his mistress, Huhne's personal website still states: "Chris has been married to Vicky for 25 years, and they have five children, and one grandchild," in an otherwise brief biography which omits his education at Westminster public school and Oxford.

The voters of Eastleigh, his constituency, were misled and they have every right to the truth. That the NoW's motive is to titillate readers
is beside the point. Politicians can keep their knickers on. Or they can keep their wives and families off their campaign leaflets. Is it really so difficult to choose one or the other?

Unhappy motoring

Whenever motoring issues are raised, I am reminded of why I could never vote Tory. A government-sponsored study says a reduction in the current drink-drive limit - from 80mg per 100ml of blood to 50mg - could save 168 lives annually. But Philip Hammond, the Transport Secretary, makes it clear that saving lives isn't his bag if it means more restrictions on people careering around in motor cars. Naturally, he's against more speed cameras, too. To get this in proportion, imagine that al-Qaeda succeeded in killing 168 Britons each year. I'd be surprised if any Muslims would be allowed to leave their homes, never mind drive cars.

Moving the goalposts

Why is football's World Cup so boring? Goals are scarce and most teams seem to play at the pace of geriatric snails. The reason, explains
Ed Smith, the former England cricketer, now a Times journalist, is that even the weakest teams have coaches smart enough and players experienced enough to organise a decent defence, which is much easier than organising an attack.

All professional sports occasionally suffer from too much good defence. Most continually redress the balance by manipulating the laws, the format or the playing conditions. Cricket, for example, has imposed fielding restrictions, changed LBW laws, restricted short-pitched bowling, introduced one-day and Twenty20 matches, and shortened boundaries. Rugby Union changes the laws - or at least the instructions to referees - almost annually, and even did so in the middle of last season because not enough tries were being scored.

Yet football remains the most conservative of all sports, having, in my memory, changed the rules only to discourage passing back to goalkeepers.
The obvious answer is to increase the size of the goal. Nobody has explained satisfactorily why this shouldn't be done.

Peter Wilby was editor of the New Statesman from 1998-2005