It’s getting to the point when everytime the Government opens its collective mouth I despair.

The prime minister is suggesting parents should be forced to give up work to supervise their children if they are suspended from school.

At least there is some good news for civil liberties today:

A 15-year-old boy has won a landmark High Court challenge to the legality of child curfew zones used to tackle anti-social behaviour.

John Tyndall, the founder of the BNP who was due to appear in court on Thursday, has died. Perhaps one of those occasions where people would’ve "said it three times"?

I’ve not heard a fanfare from The Independent, but according to the website of The New Zealand Herald, the winner of the Indie’s Sudoku Grand Master Championship 2005 was Edward Billig.

Edward Billig, 23, the new star in the quiz firmament, is a tall, ursine youth with close-cropped hair and beard, who resembles a Motorhead roadie.

He is, in fact, an audio technician who lives in Wapping and works in Fleet Street.

Maybe there’s something in his pedigree – the fact that his father was a maths teacher who did music and sound recording – that explains how he can finish six hard sudokus in only 22 and a half minutes.

He doesn’t have a secret plan.

“You just look at groups of numbers and work out what’s missing,” he said.

He practises by timing himself at work.

“Carol Vorderman says she can do a pretty fiendish one in 19 minutes. I can manage it in about 10.”

He seemed a little stunned by success.

“My head’s hurting a bit now,” said the Independent Sudoku Grand Master 2005, as he left, bearing his Waterford crystal trophy, his champagne and other paraphernalia of victory. “I think something’s broken inside it.”

Bad luck to those readers who made the final but didn’t win. I’d be interested to hear any accounts of how it went.

(Via.)

Ananova‘s corrections and clarifications page, including such classics as:

On June 12 [2004], we published a story saying that Frank Skinner was part of the ‘Leicester City Three’ who were cleared of rape allegations during a team trip to Spain’s La Manga resort.

This should have read Frank Sinclair and we apologise unreservedly to Mr Skinner for any distress caused and are happy to put the record straight.