Now you can say that was an overreaction, that an attack by a small group of a dozen or two individuals is not the same as a declaration of war. But it was understandable. Although Third World countries fairly routinely suffered far worst attacks than 9/11 during the twentieth century, it was totally unexpected, and devastating, for the US to suffer such a serious attack.

The problems seems to me to have come later, when (A) for reasons that are still unclear, insufficient resources were available at the critical moment when there was a chance of capturing or killing Osama at Tora Bora in December 2001, and (B) there was then drift - it was clear that Osama had escaped so the original mission had failed, and the UK/US drifted into a long-term war without being clear what it was for.

The more British (and other foreign) troops, the fewer Americans are needed. Moreover, they can quietly give the most dangerous roles (such as fighting in Helmand) to the stupid foreigners, who thus take the brunt of the casualties.

Finally, the involvement of lots of nations - whether their troops actually accomplish anything or not - is politically useful, because it lends colour to the fantasy of the “international community”, and makes it less dramatically obvious that the USA is pulling all the strings.

Miliband and his like would never even have had to bother thinking about strategies if the war had not turned sour, with the deaths of a few hundred soldiers and airmen. I am still waiting to hear anyone in this country so much as mention the tens of thousands of Afghans who have died because of the unprovoked attack our nations launched on them.

And isn’t it illegal to record a phone conversation without the knowledge of both participants?

To some extent, though, Mr Brown is hoist with his own petard. Lack of care for external appearances can cause real resentment, as in the case of Michael Foot and the “donkey jacket” (actually, I believe, a duffle coat) that he wore to the Cenotaph in 1982. Or the brown suede shoes that Brown himself sported at the Lord Mayor’s Mansion House Speech.

New Labour is also in a cleft stick as regards the armed forces. Like good progressive left-wingers, they mostly detest everything about military life - hierarchy, orders, discipline, even (to their credit) violence. But they also feel committed to setting right all the myriad injustices in the whole wide world - and how can they do that without some way of overpowering the “bad people” who cause all the trouble?

Hence the appearance of asking the armed forces to make bricks without straw. Kipling would have smiled, mirthlessly. Perhaps they should contemplate Alexander Solzhenitsyn’s edifying words (from “The Gulag Archipelago”):

If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being.

It’s very difficult to see any solution to the perennial problem of ensuring honest government. Most people are quite happy to rub along earning a living, perhaps having a relationship or two, bringing up a family, and feeling they are contributing a little to society. Then there are the “movers and shakers” - people who earnestly desire money, power, or both. It is extraordinary the lengths to which they will go to get these rewards. Decades of doing paralysingly boring jobs, schmoozing and networking, plotting and scheming finally have their reward. Stalin could perhaps be the role model for many of those who feel they are “destined for greatness” or “born to lead”.

Some of them end up with lots of money, which brings with it a certain kind of power. Others end up with political power, which has a strong affinity for money. Since long before Aristotle and Plato broke their brains on it, the problem has been obvious: how can we ordinary decent citizens prevent our leaders from conspiring with rich merchants and bankers to their mutual benefit - and our repression and impoverishment? Oligarchs and plutocrats just get along together so well! Power and money are like bacon and eggs, peaches and cream… love and marriage.

So it happens, year after year and decade after decade (actually, millennium after millennium) that supposedly democratic rulers hob-nob with the rich. Some money trickles into political coffers… and, in return, favours are done for “our kind of people” in industry and banking. That’s been frankly and openly the system in the USA more or less since 1776, and it’s quickly getting to be our way over here too.

On the contrary, I think it should be a great deal easier, for two good reasons. (1) Comparing lengths and areas is a basic skill of the human brain, requiring very little hard work or training, whereas arithmetic can be a grind to master. (2) Children are likely to be intrigued by the idea of systematic fraud, and pleased by the opportunity of reducing their own gullibility while laughing at that of others.

Simple enough - they are the victims in this whole unfortunate affair. When the British presence began, as I recall, the then Minister of Defence told the nation that it was quite likely no bullets would be fired. Who could have known that invading a foreign country, populated by some of the fiercest, most independent, and most enduring fighters in the world, on a trumped-up pretext, and wreaking havoc there, could lead to bloodshed?

Labour ministers certainly are not psychic.

It seems hard to imagine why the injunction should have been sought, if there were not something rather serious to hide.

“Never believe anything until it has been officially denied”. - Claud Cockburn.

Yes. The old approach was correct. The modern approach of giving marks for prerequisites is wrong. I see fixing it as a key technical issue.

I first noticed it when doing Open University courses. The OU diligently sets out the marking scheme, which reveals that a substantial fraction of the marks is available even if you know absolutely nothing about the subject on which you are being tested.

Of course, it is correct that most institutions now find that so many people do not know the prerequisites that they have to take remedial action. But giving marks for prerequisites is the wrong remedial action.

It seems to flow from the Dodo mentality:

The Dodo suddenly called out ‘The race is over!’ and they all crowded round it, panting, and asking ‘But who has won?’ … At last the Dodo said ‘Everybody has won, and all must have prizes.’ [Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Chapter III]

The other key technical issue is abolishing continuous assessment. It simply makes cheating too easy. It is also wrong in principle. A may grasp X in a few minutes, B may take a hundred hours, but the result is all that counts.

But I see most of these education issues as intractable. Everyone thinks they are an expert, yet many of the issues are quite subtle.

It is easy, for example, to compare today’s maths A2 papers with my O-level papers 46 years ago and to see a dramatic drop in standards, but it is notoriously hard to fine tune the difficulty of a question paper.

In practice, where there are a large number of people taking it, the most reliable method of aligning the difficulty with the previous year is to set the pass mark so that the same percentage pass. In many subjects the difficulties are compounded by variations in marking.

A different kind of issue is the rote learning/understanding debate. A disastrous belief took hold in the 1960s that it was beneath both pupils’ and teachers’ dignity to indulge in rote learning. Instead teachers were to instil understanding. It is astonishing that people still seem not to have grasped that you cannot acquire understanding until you have learnt the basic facts/techniques.

I think the main problem lies with teachers. Much understanding does not need to be explicitly taught or imparted. It flows automatically once you have mastered a well-chosen collection of facts. But teachers seem to find the implications of that deeply unappealing.

But resolving those kind of issues cannot be satisfactorily done on the pages of the Daily Mail. Nor unfortunately by the various examining bodies - all my lifetime the teaching profession, certainly below university level, has been heavily swayed by political beliefs about fairness and social justice which have little relevance to delivering a good education.