For years, George Osborne cut a rather lonely figure on the European stage. He was portrayed as the only major statesman who advocated austerity. But finally he has some company. Another European leader has burst away from the pack and is promising to freeze all welfare benefits for a year, cut health spending, cut taxes — and to be honest with the people by saying that ‘we cannot live beyond our means’. The Chancellor can derive much pleasure from the fact that his new ally is François Hollande.

One way or another, we’re going to be seeing quite a lot of Helena Bonham Carter and Carey Mulligan in ankle-length coats with pale faces this season. They’re in the film Suffragette, which has been shooting in the House of Commons in recent weeks. The suffrage campaign was not only successful, it was successful to the extent that any other course now seems a bit preposterous. But what’s rarely mentioned is that the bulk of the resistance to it was from other women.

Fifteen years ago, Sugata Mitra, a scientist from Calcutta, conceived of an interesting experiment. He went to a slum in Delhi, installed a computer into a public wall in the manner of a cash machine, then he waited to see what would happen. As he had expected, the local children crowded round and began to experiment — but what he had not expected was how very quickly the kids mastered the basics of computing and began to search the internet for new areas of study.

As the aircraft descends into the high altitude military airport at Leh, the first glimpse of the Himalayan Kingdom of Ladakh is nothing short of awe-inspiring. Situated on an 11,500ft high desert plateau, and sometimes known as ‘Little Tibet’, Ladakh has remained immune from the Chinese and Kashmiri territorial conflict. It maintains one of the most intact Tantric Buddhist societies left on earth. A journey through this stunning kingdom should be on every serious traveller’s list and it is now possible to stay in a series of fully staffed private houses dotted across the Indus valley.