Since the election of 1997 New Labour's education policy has been subject to variety of forms of critique--in this journal and others. One of the sources for such critique has been a barrage of letters unleashed for over a decade by Colin Richards in the "Times Educational Supplement". Here are reproduced a self-edited selection of his published and unpublished letters, many of them informed by his belief that a sardonic sense of humour is perhaps the most potent weapon against an insensitive and professionally uninformed officialdom.