Who you ask and how you ask matter, as does why you are asking — the history of opinion polls shows they are as much about creating opinions as they are about recording them, writes socialist historian KEITH FLETT

IT WON’T astonish Morning Star readers to hear that in the great houses of the Victorian and Edwardian period the use of broad beans was governed by the class system.
The family — that is, the employers — would eat the broads just for the first few weeks of the season; as soon as the beans grew much bigger than peas, they became food fit only for the workers.
They would no longer appear on the family table, but there’d be plenty of them in the staff kitchen. You can’t help suspecting that this daft rule of snobbery was invented by a cunning member of the below-stairs classes.

Doomed adolescents, when the missing person is you, classic whodunnit, and an anti-capitalist eco-thriller

MAT COWARD sings the praises of the Giant Winter’s full-depth, earthy and ferrous flavour perfect for rich meals in the dark months

The heroism of the jury who defied prison and starvation conditions secured the absolute right of juries to deliver verdicts based on conscience — a convention which is now under attack, writes MAT COWARD

As apple trees blossom to excess it remains to be seen if an abundance of fruit will follow. MAT COWARD has a few tips to see you through a nervy time