THE suggestion that the unmathematically-minded should not be forced to worry about the value of x or the uses of various Greek letters after the age of 14 was well-defended in interviews by Terry Bladon, teacher at Eastbourne Comprehensive School in Darlington for 29 years. He's also a high ranker in the National Association of Schoolmasters and Women Teachers, at whose annual conference the suggestion was made.

Among the many views expressed pro and con, one idea cropped up frequently: that there should be some practical, maths for life teaching for the not-so-numerate. Boiled down to its bones, maths for life is what we used to call arithmetic; the sort of thing that helps us count our change and check our bank statements.

More than 40 years ago, when the notoriously stiff and long-defunct Durham University Examinations Board had a GCE maths syllabus which included calculus (question 15 on all three GCE papers), the non-mathematical took a Certificate of Proficiency in Arithmetic instead. So what's new?

Seeing red

MILD apoplexy greeted Quakers' chairman George Reynolds' latest pronouncement this week.

The Sunderland-born iconoclast plans to change the team colours of Darlington (black and white since 1883) to red and white stripes. Spectator wonders where he got the idea from ...

Reynolds' defence of this act of cultural vandalism - "The club's colours have always been red, white and black" and "Everybody seems really happy with the shirt" - are too laughable to even comment on.

A friend of Spectator's divides his football watching between Quakers, who have flirted with relegation for most of the season, and Sunderland (family connections), about to be crowned the Premiership's worst ever team.

He foresees a new twist on the film Groundhog Day next season. Every Saturday, he will wake up and watch a team in red and white stripes playing terrible football.