Tim Lott...

It was announced this week that a school, Harvey Milk High, is opening in New York devoted to gay, bisexual and transgender students. It will, according to principal William Salzman, "be a model for the world".

Sadly, he is probably right. The idea of separate development based on the idea of difference - sexual, racial, religious or national - is one that seems to be gathering force on both sides of the Atlantic and the political divide. In America, there are already schools and colleges that are avowedly black. Here, there are also calls for such schools to redress the underperformance of young black men. There are also deepening divisions of religion, with Tony Blair advocating more faith-based schools, and class, as the divide between private and public education grows apace.

I can understand the arguments in favour. If gays are bullied and harassed, why not give them the right to separate themselves? If blacks suffer prejudice, why not allow them to develop among their own peer groups? If Muslim communities wish to hold on to their cultural heritage, why not give them their own schools? If you are rich, why be dragged down by those struggling at the bottom of the pile?

There is support for various kinds of separation policies at both ends of the political spectrum - the Left as a form of affirmative action, the Right as a bulwark for the promotion of organised religion or the retention of economic privilege.

However, I find the trend terrifying, depressing and the outcome of a philosophy of despair. It is a form of apartheid, whether liberal or conservative. It denies our common humanity, and it lays up a deep reservoir of potential conflict.

One only needs to look at Northern Ireland, where the effective separation of religious groups into educational enclaves leads to a world in which children on their way to one sectarian school have rocks thrown at them by a group of screaming adults with a different religious persuasion. This may seem a million miles from a gay-only high school, but the fundamental philosophy is the same: keep like with like.

We are heading for an Ulsterised society if we abandon the great ideal of inclusiveness and cop out of the idea of a heterogeneous, multi-faith, multi-cultural (and multi-sexual) society into one that is divided along lines of personal preference, prejudice and identity.

We are all human beings, with more in common than not, and we must learn, before our personalities have hardened and coagulated into their adult selves, to recognise and accept each other as such. Or we will reap the consequences for generations to come.

Live now ... pay later

It makes me feel like a dinosaur when I read that Britain is plunging towards historic new depths of debt - £10 billion in loans in the past month alone.

I have always been uncomfortable with debt, and pay off my credit card every month. It is an oldfashioned ethic, born out of the class I was born into, where people saved rather than spent.

I am often mocked for being an old fuddy-duddy, keeping my mortgage low and never spending more than I earn. However, I suspect that I may have the last laugh.

This country seems to have fallen into a kind of perpetual present, where people live for the moment and let the future go hang. They overmortgage, neglect pensions and splash out instead on whatever status symbols take their fancy, whether they can afford them or not.

It is all too familiar. The memory of '89, when the great crash came, is seared into my memory. Several friends lost their homes and others went bankrupt.

It could all too easily happen again. One thing you learn when you reach middle age is that in economics, as in everything else, the present never lasts.

BA loses the plot

Having arranged to travel on British Airways over the weekend, I was terrified we were going to face six-hour queues at Terminal 4. Instead, we went to Paddington, where BA allows you to check in your bags. It was polite and efficient, and exactly what has given BA a great reputation for customer service.

However, BA seems to be losing the plot again. Having got rid of our bags, we noticed a sign saying that the Paddington facility would close at the end of the month. When we asked the person behind the desk why, she shrugged, and said: "Not cost-effective".

In other words, they are putting profits before customer service. After the PR disaster of the past few weeks, I suggest that BA should broaden its idea of "loss" - what about loss of goodwill? - and keep the Paddington check-in.

Not so big in the theatre

To the National Theatre this week to see Kenneth Branagh in David Mamet's Edmond. It is a brilliant, erudite, uncompromising play, featuring brutal, racist language, murder, prostitution and homosexual rape.

Most of the sophisticated audience took it all with a shrug and a pinch of salt. However, the new Travelex £10-a-ticket season does seem to have brought into the audience a slightly more impressionable breed of theatre-goer, two of whom my partner Rachael overheard in the ladies' loos afterwards.

"Did you just go see that Edward?"
"Yeh."
"Wossit like?"
"Bit shocking."
"How's that, then?"
(In hushed tones) "Well, I couldn't believe it. Kenneth Branagh got out his willy. And it was TINY."