• 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.

• Why this little pop tart 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’. The T-shirt isn’t free, however. It costs £19.99. I’m not sure what a ‘free bitch’ is, but I think it might be a prostitute that you don’t have to pay for.

• 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?

• Loud, aggressive and mean, Carol’s number’s really up

For years she has been paraded as the ultimate poster girl for attractive, smart, self-sufficient forty-something women, but last week we saw the real face of Carol Vorderman and boy, it ain’t pretty.

• They've got a deal! Oh no they haven't! It's panto time again

Barack Obama was bouncing with excitement in the White House on Tuesday as word came in that Stormont had accepted the devolution of policing and justice.

• 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".

• Lord Baden-Powell must have been a Nazi piece of work

I don't know how to tell you this, but I am the owner of several books by Lord Baden-Powell. “For shame!” I hear you cry. I agree. He was a man who ought to have been poked in the eye more often by those around him. But there you are.

• 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.