More horrors as scientists link the spread of the human form of the mad cow disease to the growth of cafeteria-style school meals in the 1980s. Professor Bob Will, director of the Government’s CJD surveillance unit in Edinburgh, said the use of mechanically-recovered meat in burgers, pies and sausages - school meal favourites - may have contributed to the relatively high incidence of the new variant of CJD in young people.

Poor taste in food is coupled with ignorance. Research by the European Council of Young Farmers showed that any British children believe that cotton grows on sheep and bananas grow here, along with oranges and olives. An optimistic take on global warming?

Midsummer madness has struck the Victoria and Albert Museum. It is staging a village fete in its Pirelli Gardens, bringing together some of the best young designers so that visitors can see their work in a fun way. Look out for paintings of white elephants on the white elephant stall and iced models of Manhattan on the cake stall.

An upbeat note for the end of term: blame the bizarre nature of English spelling - not bad teaching - for low levels of literacy. The Simplified Spelling Society told MPs that of 45 common words used in the literacy hour more than half had unpredictable spellings that did not follow basic rules. But when the same words were translated into German, Spanish and Italian only a handful were unpredicatable. Death to the double consonant for a start.