This week’s Labour Party conference has put forward a proposal to radically restrict private schools. In essence, the policy seems to have three strands - remove the beneficial tax arrangements, restrict the entry to universities from private schools to 7% of the entry and, at the most extreme, to get rid of the private schools entirely, taking over their assets. The first of these seems eminently doable. Most commentary seems to suggest the last is just rhetoric and is unlikely to happen. But what interests me with a statistical hat on is that 7%.  Because it makes no sense at all. While it is true that only 7% of children attend private schools, this isn’t a sensible number to apply here. If you want a flat attendee number, then what’s important is the number of students taking A-levels, where the percentage is more like 15%. But even this figure is misleading. The problem is that far more private schools are selective than are state schools. It would be ridiculous to exp...

This article first appeared on the Popular Science website, but was lost when the site was moved. I'm now reinstating it in a more suitable location. My maternal grandmother, Annie Clegg (nee Pickersgill) was an enthusiastic story-teller, and I don't doubt the tales she spun for me inspired me to start writing myself. She was greatly influenced herself by the vicar from her childhood, the Reverend G. R. Oakley - and was responsible for my reading his melodramatic account of the ghost of Clegg Hall, and for a fascination with the Hall that has stuck with me over the years. In the feature below you can find out more about: Clegg Hall's history  Clegg Hall today  Visiting Clegg Hall  The Reverend Oakley  The Legend of Clegg Hall (an extract from In Olden Days)  The history  The 'Clegg' in the name of the current hall refers to the location (Little Clegg or Great Clegg) rather than the family - the house was built by a Theophilus Ashton in the ear...

This is an odd one. Scientists are used to giving the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle a hard time - almost all of his science was wrong, and in some cases, his ideas misdirected scientific thinking for nearly a couple of thousand years. Worse was his apparent ability to ignore easily obtained evidence when it contradicted his ideas - infamously, he proclaimed that women have fewer teeth than men. Yet Craig Adams is clearly a huge fan of Aristotle and makes a reasonable case for the importance of his contribution to some of the more useful aspects of philosophy. We're not talking navel-gazing here, but rather practical thinking on how to reason and understand better. The 'six secrets' that Adams mentions are deduction, induction, analogy, reality, evidence and meaning. While scientists will be familiar with many of these, they may not be totally clear on how they are used in practice (rather as many English speakers don't have technical knowledge of English gramm...

It's around 20 years since Naomi Klein's book No Logo was written (it was published in 2000). As it's generally regarded as an influential piece of writing, I thought it would be worthwhile revisiting it. At the time, I thought it was an interesting book, if naive and painfully overwritten. Coming back to it, there were two immediate responses. One was to really be aware how much it would have benefitted from a serious edit - it's 490 pages of tiny print and probably only has the content of around five magazine articles. The rest is words for the sake of it and repetition. It's still worth reading, but it's unnecessarily hard work. The other is an element of plus ça change etc. Inevitably part of the fascination of looking back is what has changed - although some of the big brands remain, others such as Virgin Megastores, Blockbuster, Benneton and Staples have disappeared or diminished, while the likes of Google weren't on the radar then. And neither K...