Six of the Best 182

"As the cuts hit, unemployment rises, and inflation goes up, the expected 30% increase in rail fares over the next three years will see increasing numbers of people priced off the railways, with those at the bottom of the income scale being affected the greatest." Turnip Rail points out that 19th-century governments were careful to protect poorer passengers.

Gaping Void is giving up Facebook and Twitter to concentrate on blogging.

Writing on British Politics and Policy at LSE, Sally Broughton-Micova argues that the government’s plans for local TV puts too much of an onus on stations to provide content for the national networks. Local TV should concentrate on local issues.

"Few senior staff, preoccupied with their research grants, now teach first-year students. Tutorial numbers are unmanageably doubled and trebled from a generation ago. The essays are halved in length and number. Meanwhile, overpaid administrators, pumping out the newspeak propaganda of "centres of teaching and learning", have the effrontery to claim that undergraduate education is getting better all the time - yeah. By my reckoning, in contrast, universities do less nowadays than they once did to help translate young minds from suburbia to the stars." Richard Bosworth, writing for Times Higher Education, looks back over a long career in academia.

James Russell looks at the Cerne Abbas Giant, with help from Paul Nash and Eric Ravilious.

Finally, you will need your hanky as A Life in the Day... contemplates saying goodbye to a dog called Thomas.