He’s got IT

Congratulations to shop worker Wayne Hughes, who won pound;1.1 million on the Lottery earlier this month. Fresh from getting the winning numbers tattooed on to his arm to celebrate, he stuck a blow for further education.

Mr Hughes, who is now 34, said he thought he might take up the college course in IT that he had wanted to do since leaving school at 16.

“I’m not sure what I’m going to do yet as I need to get my head around it all,” he told a press conference.

He certainly sounds confused: FErret can’t help feeling that he’s going about this all wrong. Surely you go to college to pick up a vocational qualification and prepare yourself for a life of wage-slave drudgery, which you then dream of escaping with a Lottery win?

Still, congratulations to Mr Hughes for showing that somewhere out there the dream of learning for learning’s sake lives on.

Now, can we borrow a tenner?

East Sussex suffragette

Someone else who showed an impressive commitment to the cause of education recently is Sylvia Westley, who spent her 90th birthday chained to railings in protest at the failure to build a long-promised centre for adults with learning disabilities in Eastbourne.

Red tape has left the pound;800,000 project in limbo, prompting this echo of the Suffragettes’ protest.

Ms Westley, a widow, said: “I may be 90 but I will not lie down on this. I would go to jail over it because I think it’s absolutely cruel behaviour.

“What the council is perpetrating is man’s inhumanity against man.”

Blimey! Her protest against East Sussex County Council, apparently history’s greatest monster, ended when she unchained herself after an hour - which is quite long enough for a 90-year-old.

Let’s hope that her point was taken on board, or it’ll be the Epsom Derby next.