Paulo Sousa, the former Portugal international, yesterday became Queens Park Rangers' sixth manager in a little over a year when he was confirmed as their new first-team coach. Sousa follows John Gregory, Luigi De Canio and Iain Dowie, as well as caretaker managers Mick Harford and now Gareth Ainsworth, who have been dispensed with since Flavio Briatore became the chairman.

The Liverpool defender Martin Skrtel is targeting a return sooner than anticipated after recovering from a knee injury. The Slovakia centre-back damaged posterior cruciate ligaments in his right knee after falling awkwardly during a match against Manchester City in October. He did not require surgery.

Spain may boast the world's top-ranked national team and richest club but the soccer obsessed nation is sliding towards its first recession in 15 years with many small and mid-sized teams tumbling into the red.

I went to a fancy-dress party last weekend where each guest was asked to dress as a cartoon character. I didn't exactly enter into the spirit of the event: I found a cat mask for £1 and on a friend's advice said I was Milady, the cat from the 1980s cartoon Dogtanian And The Three Muskehounds (based, of course, on The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas).

How can he get away with it? While David Cameron laboriously carries out a U-turn on taxes, the Prime Minister positively somersaults over every position he has ever held and yet seems to get only stronger in the opinion polls. He has abandoned all his golden rules, embraced unfunded tax cuts as the panacea for our recessionary woes and declared the whole thing a global problem in which we are but guiltless victims. Meanwhile, poor old Cameron has to do his manoeuvres in full public glare...
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I am now in my 53rd year and I still feel let down by the social services department for the way they didn't protect me as a child. This was in the 1960s and 1970s. Now, nearly 50 years later, I read your reports about Baby P and find that nothing has changed, and vulnerable children are still being let down by a "caring profession". I'm not writing this for people to feel sorry for me; after all I am alive. Baby P is not.

Saturday nights will not be the same. John Sergeant has quit Strictly Come Dancing. Though his footwork was, to say the least, questionable, popular votes kept him in the competition while better dancers fell away. This led to anger from judges and competitors alike, for which Sergeant has paid a heavy price. The show is now left with a gap which must be filled immediately if the series is to keep momentum and maintain its competitive personality. A challenger must therefore be found to fill...
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The BBC's "local video" initiative is an audacious plan to invest large amounts of funding generated by the licence fee into flooding 60 key cities throughout the country with online news, weather, travel, sport and community information. At face value this might seem a positive development, an attempt by the corporation to enhance the cohesion of British cities and strengthen the democratic process through the dissemination of news about local life. What's not to like?

The Government's latest proposals on prostitution are doubtless well-intentioned. Who could argue with a desire to increase protection for women who have been trafficked into prostitution against their will, or with the urge to shift legal culpability away from vulnerable and often brutalised sex workers and on to their customers? But there is a serious danger that what the Home Secretary, Jacqui Smith, proposed yesterday – creating a new offence of paying for sex with prostitutes who...
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So the British people are going to get a President after all. He will "speak for the nation and to the nation". He will rule over us with his "knowledge and contacts and unique ability." How do we know? Because Charles Windsor has just announced – via his biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby – that he is seizing the role for himself, without an election. Explicitly citing the Presidencies of Ireland and Germany, Dimbleby says Charles intends to be a "political" King. It will be "a...
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