Politicians are obsessed with controlling our lives, says Alice Thomson. But the only human failing that they put off limits is gambling. Why? Because they are addicted to the money that comes from it.

Whether it is McCain, Clinton or Obama who becomes the next US president, says Con Coughlin, none of them will arouse the level of controversy that has been caused by President George W Bush's tenure.

Although the Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander avoided prosecution over a £950 donation to her leadership campaign, there were compelling reasons for her to hand in her badge, says Alan Cochrane.

Francis Charig was on the Beijing flight that crash-landed at Heathrow last month. He thinks it was a fantastic experience.

The BBC, argues Jeff Randall, should not be apologising for a radio station that educates, informs and explains.

The issue of government surveillance cuts across party lines. But there is a particularly pernicious side to Labour's intolerance of dissent in this area, says John Kampfner.

The main feminist struggles have been won and the more ludicrous ones have been quietly dropped, argues Harry Mount.

Andrew Gimson reflects on the life and work of TE Utley, a Daily Telegraph journalist who combined high seriousness with comic and even democratic tendencies.

There are problems with the proposal that sharia law should be applied in Britain in certain circumstances: the status of the Archbishop of Canterbury and the timing of his intervention.

Only a rose-tinted optimist would predict that the taxpayer will emerge unscathed when the sorry Northern Rock saga is over.

Nothing in the other three-quarters of the year can compare with a wintry landscape rimed with frost or a townscape under snow.