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Whenever Europeans feel inadequate in relation to America, and have a yearning to console themselves, there is one subject that always comes up: the Second Amendment of the US Constitution, i.e. gun law. Yes, the Yanks may be richer than us. Yes, a dockworker in Delaware can earn more than a British cabinet minister. Yes, America has a dynamic economy and the world’s most powerful military, with a huge lead in science, tech and finance. But remember: ‘in Europe we don’t have mass shootings.’ ‘British children aren’t taught how to dodge bullets.’ ‘You may have Silicon Valley, but we don’t have lunatics wandering around Tesco with AR-15s.’ This feels even

Britain is to get a new ‘super university’, an enormous centre of higher learning that will, from the next academic year, under a single vice-chancellor, educate some 50,000 students. Under the cumbersome name the ‘London and South East Universities Group’, the new university is a merger of the existing University of Greenwich and the cash-strapped University of Kent with its campus at Canterbury. A vital part of the new university’s campus will be the Old Royal Naval College at Greenwich, one of Sir Christopher Wren’s architectural masterpieces, and a World Heritage Site described as being ‘the finest and most dramatically sited landscape ensemble in the country’. Wren’s fabulous and elegant

It is the last of the five British classic races tomorrow – the Group 1 Betfred St Leger at Doncaster (3.40 p.m.) over one mile and six furlongs. The race has attracted a line-up of only seven runners, which normally means just two places on offer from bookmakers. If this had been the case tomorrow, it would have made each way betting unattractive and I would have given the race a miss from a betting point of view. However, at least three bookmakers are offering three places for each-way thieves like me which means there might be some value to be found. Irish maestro Aidan O’Brien is responsible for three