It will be incredibly difficult to award a grade for spoken English in a GCSE while still accommodating regional accents and variations in spoken grammar. And even if the examiners are experts in a particular local dialect, how will they cope with the Tynesider who moved to East London at the age of eight, or the Liverpudlian whose parents come from Devon? There is good reason for children learning to read and write a standard English, but that should not stop them using in conversation the beautiful and various words, phrases and grammatical structures that have persisted in different parts of the country over the centuries. In America, cable companies already have to connect schools for free.While most schools possess more computer expertise now than they did 10 years ago when the DTI experiment took place, few are better funded. BT has not settled its prices yet, but connection to the World Wide Web currently costs about pounds 30 a month plus the price of a local phone call while it is in use. Dean Richards, England's No 8, will find out tonight whether he is to be the first player to be banned under the new totting-up procedure for yellow cards.

Richards, Leicester's captain, will be defended by his club when he appears before the Leicestershire disciplinary committee at Welford Road after receiving yellow cards in successive matches last month. He, like his illustrious European counterparts, was driven by what may be described as a purification compulsion. His sanitising crusade was launched to purge Islam of all who resisted the spread of his own idiosyncratic brand of Shi'ism; Stalin launched pogroms against any who might pollute his paranoid notions about the nature of Soviet Communism; the persecuting popes instigated their orgy of doctrinal cleansing by burning heretics; we don't need to be reminded how assiduously Hitler's most ardent disciples implemented his policy of "ethnic cleansing''.The point is this: fascism will not - indeed cannot - even begin to make sense until we strip it of all political and religious connotations and begin to see it for what it initially is - a state of mind searching for an ideology.Yours sincerely,John DohenyCult Research InternationalLondon, N810 October. He meets all of Felipe Fernandez-Armesto's defining criteria: heput the group before the individual, order before freedom, cohesion before diversity, revenge before reconciliation, retribution before compassion, the supremacy of the strong before the defence of the weak.The institutionalisation of the fascist mentality marks the transition of primitive Christianity into Roman Catholicism so that the persecuting popes can be lined up beside Hitler and Stalin.Khomeini likewise. Fascism is too complex a monster to be amenable to hair-splitting definition.

Why? Partly because historians habitually identify fascism with extreme right- wing ideologies. Looked at from a purely psychological perspective, fascism is first and foremost a state of mind that readily adapts itself not only to the far right, but also to an endless spectrum of political and religious belief systems, including Communism, Islam and Christianity.Stalin, despite his Communist credentials, was a fascist dictator differing little from Hitler. This refreshing honesty should obviate those nauseatingly hypocritical debates between the Law Society and the Bar, where diametrically opposed views are paraded as being "in the public interest".Equally, given this pragmatic approach, Tony Blair's assumption that the legal profession could be prevailed upon to undertake some free work exposes Blair as a naive sentimentalist and raises doubts about his judgement and common sense.Yours faithfully,Nicholas DraycottSydenham, Oxfordshire10 October. From Mr John Doheny Sir: Felipe Fernandez-Armesto (Essay, 9 October) is right. From Mr Nicholas Draycott Sir: In your letters section "Balancing solicitors' needs and clients' rights" (9 October) Martin Mears, the new Law Society president, is berated for his angry response to the Which? report about poor legal advice. For all his obvious faults, Mr Mears should at least be given credit for unashamedly admitting that the function of the Law Society is (and in truth always has been) to uphold and protect solicitors' interests.