“The Booker prize has, for much of its history, been anthrax for the average reader. Whether you stumbled dutifully out to buy Keri Hulme’s The Bone People, Michael Ondaatje’s The English Patient or Anita Brookner’s Hotel du Lac, one thing you could be guaranteed of: you might come out of the experience feeling cleverer, or more high-toned, but you’re unlikely to have had much of an enjoyable time.

Furthermore, you are unlikely to have read anything contemporary, or that has anything to say about Britain today (though you might get a scent of Dublin or Glasgow). Rather as British art abandoned painting, for decades British writing abandoned story.

Plot, good characters and, God forbid, humour, have not only been largely absent from the list of Booker triumphs – they are positively reasons for exclusion, it seems sometimes. ” The Scotsman

Hasbro encourages subversion of its game Monopoly!: ” The more money you have, the easier it is to own it all – so print your own! Just click on the image of the money you want to find a whole page-full.”

Link between cannabis and mortality is still not established: “A recent editorial in this journal implied that as many as 30 000 deaths in Britain every year might be caused by smoking cannabis. The authors reasoned that since the prevalence of smoking cannabis is about one quarter that of smoking tobacco the number of deaths attributable to smoking cannabis might be about one quarter of the number attributed to tobacco cigarettes (about 120 000). The idea that the use of cannabis increases mortality is worthy of closer examination. How do we assess this issue?” British Medical Journal editorial