• The harm that selfish parents cause teenagers

I was hit hard this week by the news that more and more children in the UK are phoning the national helpline Childline because they feel ‘isolated’ and ‘lonely’; I read the research just minutes after delighting in a report confirming that babies are born with a natural disposition to dance whenever they hear rhythm.

• Brown gets right dunking over his cookie coyness

It is, I think, correct and fair to refer to Gordon Brown as a balloon, a numptie, a phoney, a nutter...

• We do not need to be told the truth. We need truth to be told

Why Bloody Sunday? There have been bigger death tolls. Fifteen Catholics in McGurk’s Bar in the New Lodge in Belfast the previous month. Eighteen Paras at Warrenpoint in 1979.

• Why Church must confess all for sake of my abused friend

For evil to succeed it is only necessary that good men either do nothing ? or that they get the victims of evil to sign vows of silence promising never to reveal details of the terrible abuse they suffered.

• Little pop tart Lady Gaga fills me full of dread for our daughters

If you go on Lady Gaga’s website you can buy a T-shirt that says ‘I’m A Free Bitch’.

• Why Christine really is the One

Isn't our own Christine Bleakley turning out to be a really class act? Her Sport Relief Waterski Challenge was a kind of David Walliams/Eddie Izzard moment when the Newtownards woman moved officially into the ranks of minor national treasure.

• A lesson in history for Cameron: unionists always do it their way

If I refer to the imbroglio of the UUP as ‘the Hermon mess', I hope Lady Hermon will not take it amiss.

• Marching into another summer of discontent

The Orange Order has given a qualified welcome to the work done by the DUP/Sinn Fein-packed Stormont body on how to resolve the issue of contentious parades in Northern Ireland.

• Swashbuckling Sir Reg finally delivers a shot across the bows

No matter how much positive spin is placed on the transfer of policing and justice powers to Stormont, concerns remain. Will what has not worked in the past be any better in the future?

• Robert Fisk: Democracy doesn't seem to work when countries are occupied by Western troops

In 2005 the Iraqis walked in their tens of thousands through the thunder of suicide bombers, and voted – the Shias on the instructions of their clerics, the Sunnis sulking in a boycott – to prove Iraq was a "democracy".

• Mark Steel: The moment you think of voting Labour, up pops the unregretful Tony Blair

There are many questions a population asks itself before a General Election, and the one that many people are asking before the one this year is, "Which of these rancid heaps of sewage will be slightly less repulsive than the other?"

• The Trick is to avoid big two

Anyone fancy 5-2 about Kauto Star for the Gold Cup?

• Cost of pay freezes and high taxes was a culture of duplicity, envy and hypocrisy

The Chancellor was right yesterday to dismiss the idea of a High Pay Commission. His phraseology was characteristically mild: he was "not persuaded" of his merits.