Average male pay is higher than average female pay for a simple reason. Despite decades of enforced equality, women still have babies, and men still don't. So women who wish to spend any substantial time at all with their own offspring will fall behind in their careers, and their earnings will be less.

Female politicos mostly represent a rather militant faction.

The BBC TV programme 'Back In Time For Dinner' doesn't just have one of the cleverest titles ever. It is a more-than-usually-serious attempt to recreate the recent past, the day before yesterday.

I wonder how many illegal migrants fanned out across the country while I and others were subjected to the stone-faced, suspicious inefficiency of the Border Force?

When I was young, I was extremely scared of dying. But now I think it a very, very wise arrangement. It's like a light that is extinguished. Not very much to make a fuss about.

I don't really buy the death-drive thing too literally; it feels overly neat and convenient. But I am suspicious of fighting back being the dominant model for cinematic conflict and personal conflict and political conflict.

Because I could not stop for death, He kindly stopped for me; The carriage held but just ourselves and immortality.

Everything I do has the tinge of the finite, of my own demise. At some point you either accept death or you just keep pushing it back as you get older and older. I've accepted it.