Have you visited a municipal recycling plant recently? To do so is to see laid bare the damning downside of our consumerist society. Meander through the site on any Sunday: amid the organically decaying deposits in the garden waste skip and the irredeemably rusted contents of the scrap-metal bin you’ll see a tonnage of gear that might be perfectly safe, clean, usable and recyclable.

Stroll down any supermarket aisle. On every shelf, a confusion of food labels. How many of us understand every one? Even if we did, that convenience store is the wild west, our most in-the-face example of the free market in action. With so few labels actually policed, what can be trusted to mean what it claims?

Many people think that teaching mathematics in mixed ability sets is better than the current norm of setting by ability. I do not believe this is the case for the majority of maths classes in the UK.  Let me explain. 

It’s the first thing spotted by the maiden visitor to our Oxygen House HQ: a multi-story building, but no lifts. Instead, apparently just an airy, modern, elegant staircase.