At least this is what he might have well said when extending the following comment...

Britain technically is a Christian country with many secular features. It’s those two things. It’s not anything else. If you expect that you would have the same response to your faith needs in Britain as would happen within a Muslim or Islamic country, [you] would be disappointed

This is in reference, I assume, to the idea that universities that allow Muslim students to attend religious meetings and prayer should be reporting suspicious activity and keeping checks on them. Effectively we have moved no further away from spying on our students than we were one year ago.

Last night there was a democratic debate for South Carolina and unfortunately the event descended in to childish scrapping between Clinton and Obama. On one hand it is clear that they no longer think Edwards is really in the running, and on the other that they are truly worried about each other's chances of winning the nomination. Take a look at the video...

News has broken that Nick Clegg announced that his party would be voting against any calls for a referendum on the new constitution/treaty for the EU. This is leading to some calling him on it and accusing him of hypocrisy and of "selling out" the UK to Europe. They largely ignore that what the Lib Dem's do or don't do will be largely irrelevant while the Labour party whip continues to dictate a hard line on this, as the Lib Dem votes couldn't possibly swing the matter in favour of the Tory line anyway, and they don't seem to look too deeply in to what it is the Lib Dem's actually want a referendum for...

Once upon a time I was in secondary school and had to do cookery lessons with everyone else as part of a revolving door scheme of design and technology work. This meant that cooking was only taught for a fraction of the year but it was potentially valuable experience. I say potentially because my cookery lessons did nothing to teach me the very basics of what I needed to get along with ingredients in my own home. A few years later I went to university and had a trial by fire in truly learning how to cook. I feel that this is the reality for many going through "food technology" lessons, so I have to welcome the news today about cookery being made compulsory with mixed emotions

The move is a great start, and I'm happy that we're moving in the right direction, but it's not enough and it's coming about too late in the day to do this in any half measures (excuse the pun). We need independently devised menu's that are flexible to the cultural needs of individual schools, we need the funding to let those menu's, independently assessed to be the best broad learning for a child, be taught properly, and we need to stop perpetuating myths about the cost of food because of a standard line on "means testing". More importantly, with a lack of teachers trained to deliver this course, we need this kind of thinking realised quicker.