Win a holiday

It's the Government who won't learn

The new schools White Paper obfuscates the need to impart basic knowledge by jargon and guff

• Camilla Cavendish

I’ll pay 69p for a belt-tightening Queen

OK, the monarch herself is relatively cheap. But has she noticed that there’s a recession on?

• Frank Skinner

Highway robbery. And that’s official

They’re the biggest, meanest bunch of organised crooks from WC1 to N3. They go by the moniker of 'Camden Council'

• Hugo Rifkind

Columnists  

If equality's dead, what is the point?

A Cabinet minister cynically announces Labour's founding principal redundant. This must be rejected

• Roy Hattersley

Democracy can’t beat demography

World population shifts will always give military advantage to ‘underdeveloped’ countries

• Richard Ehrman

The beach? Just the Tube with hairy backs

If you’re thinking of heading for the sands, don’t

• Rick Broadbent

Leading articles

A turning point in Afghanistan

The US surge has all the elements of force, speed and surprise for military success. But to win, the allies must prepare for long-term deployment

Just the job

Businesses must help the Government to rescue a generation from unemployment

Phoney war

Salinger may have the right to block publication of a sequel, yet not be right to do so

Join the Debate  

Straw refuses 'unrepentant' Biggs parole

Justice Secretary defies Parole Board and will not allow Great Train Robber to go into care home because 'he flouted the law'

Home Secretary: ID cards 'not compulsory'

Alan Johnson has signalled a major retreat by the Government by ruling out ever forcing UK citizens to carry ID cards

Queen faces showdown over plan to keep spending

Palace to ask for major rise in Civil List as senior source told The Times of intention to keep expenditure at current level

Faith  

Westminster Abbey's crowning glory

Plans for most dramatic addition to London skyline since Gherkin

Catholic school bars Muslim teacher in veil

Visitor who insisted on covering her face is refused access to 'taster' day at St Mary's sixth-form college in Blackburn

One in seven Britons believe in creationism

Almost 150 years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species large sections of Britain do not accept his theory

Basilica bones are St Paul's, Pope declares

Carbon dating of fragments from the sarcophagus in the Apostle's tomb show that they belonged to a man from the 1st century

Obituaries  

Karl Malden: The Times obituary

Actor who memorably played opposite Brando in two great Hollywood movies — A Streetcar Named Desire and On the Waterfront

Mollie Sugden: The Times obituary

Comedienne who made Mrs Slocombe a household name and whose deadpan delivery was enhanced by a feline sense of comic timing

Pina Bausch

Challenging German choreographer whose vivid experiments in dance theatre exerted an enduring global influence on new dance

David Pears

Oxford philosopher who wrote on Hume, Russell and, most notably, Wittgenstein