Necessary Steps

For those of you suffering withdrawal pangs since the end of the Psychogeography column in the Independent, here’s another instalment of Necessary Steps, this time about travelling to Foula in Shetland, from the New York Times. And to offset the loss of Ralph Steadman’s artwork, there’s Will’s photographs instead.

I’m a diehard leftie but my son is going to private school

If England, according to Oscar Wilde, is the native land of the hypocrite, then the contortions achieved by former Left-wing supporters of state education in order to justify sending their kids to private schools have to be some of that land’s most curious rituals. When I was a child in London my parents schooled me privately to begin with, and then when the inherited dosh ran out sent me to a state school. It was at that point that my mother began to trumpet her great belief in comprehensives. Even aged 13, I couldn’t help seeing hypocrisy in this.