MoD documents leaked to Andrew Gilligan show that the ‘special relationship’ in Iraq was more like a bad marriage: riven with misunderstanding, irritation and hurt feelingsIt may have made it into such pillars of the zeitgeist as The Simpsons, the film Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason and Geri Halliwell’s single ‘Bag It Up’. But it is still, perhaps, a little surprising that that seminal work of cod psychology, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus, should have infiltrated a secret Ministry of Defence report into the war on Iraq.

Rod Liddle says that Ofsted’s attempt to rank schools according to their SATS scores is, like so many of its other ideas, not just unhelpful but counterproductiveFancy a job as head of Ofsted? The post apparently pays not far short of half a million quid per year, and I can’t imagine that there’s much work involved. The problem, I suppose, is that one never knows precisely what they’re looking for when these unelected sinecures at quangocratic bureaucracies are up for grabs, so it’s bloody difficult to prepare for the interview.

Lance corporal Jay Bateman and Jeff Doherty slumped to the ground. They were killed instantly in the first swarm of bullets from an enemy ambush. Their comrades dragged their bodies along irrigation ditches and across burning fields under intense fire. Rocket-propelled grenades skidded and cartwheeled through the poppy stubble, exploded and showered them in dirt and shrapnel.The only helicopter available to evacuate the bodies was called away to pick up a another soldier wounded in a battle up the Musa Qala wadi.