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Tory leader David Cameron’s attempts to "rebrand" the Conservatives as young, hip and trendy took a knock recently when he launched a nasty attack on the British hip-hop and grime scene for allegedly encouraging knife and gun crime.

Historian Niall Ferguson is perhaps the best known of the new generation of media dons. Where his nearest rival, Simon Schama, exudes a vague left liberalism and is apologetic over the British empire, Ferguson is ferociously and unashamedly neo-conservative.

Members of Britain’s biggest public sector union have challenged their leadership’s stance on pensions negotiations, and came within a narrow margin of reigniting strike action to press their claim.

Royal Mail workers across Britain will start a national strike ballot soon, unless there is a last minute climbdown by management.

Letters

In 1921, when Republican leaders entered Downing Street to negotiate Irish independence it marked the irreversible decline of the British Empire.

The British papers greeted the recent heatwave with pictures of crowded beaches. In Gaza, one of the most crowded corners of this planet, the beach provides one of few escapes.

Iran will continue to feature in newspaper headlines this month – for two reasons. The first is the stance taken by the US and Britain over Iran’s nuclear programme. The other is that Iran is taking part in the football world cup, which starts this week in Germany.

John Constable: The Great Landscapes Tate Britain, London SW1, to 28 August John Constable (1776-1837) sold just 20 paintings in his lifetime – but then he became too popular. Constant reproduction reduced works such as The Hay Wain to chocolate box cliches and saddled Constable with an undeserved reputation as a pastoral sentimentalist.

Knife crime is big news following a number of high profile stabbings over the past month. Metropolitan police commissioner Sir Ian Blair has called for mandatory sentences for anyone found in possession of a knife.

Ernesto Leal, a Chilean threatened with deportation, was released on bail on 2 June. The home office wants to deport him even though he holds a British passport and has been granted indefinite leave to remain in Britain.

Even though Ken Loach’s new film The Wind That Shakes The Barley hasn’t yet opened in cinemas, it has already won a high profile award and created controversy. Ken Loach is on a high after winning the Palme d’Or at the Cannes Film Festival. Some elements of the British media have insinuated it was just a fluke, or that he won as a kind of "lifetime achievement award".