No prizes for guessing which gender is still on top

Twelve years on and still critics declare that the future shouldn't be Orange. Yesterday, as the long list for the Orange Broadband Prize for women's writing was published, the latest blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regiment of female authors was still reverberating. The novelist Tim Lott elaborated on radio on his written verdict that the prize was "sexist and discriminatory and should be shunned or at least mocked mercilessly". Since Mr Lott shares his home with a wife and four daughters, this pronouncement comes to us under the "extremely courageous" label.