Despite our drawn shades and closed curtains, it lies in thick layers on our end tables and windowsills.

NEWYORKER: The Invasion from Outer Space

Every two weeks, the town residents put out for trash their hard, nonorganic items: old TVs, broken chairs, boxes of paperbacks, end tables, busted lamps, toys their children had outgrown, and so on.

NEWYORKER: Wakefield

But Mr Johnson ruled out any suggestions that this would mean the end of exam league tables - saying that would be a "disaster".

BBC: NEWS | UK | Education | School tests to face shake-up

Its highest- and lowest-end markets both take place at round tables.

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However, the education secretary will insist that his overall approach lives on ie "more rigorous" end-of-year exams will replace continuous modular assessment, and school league tables will depend in future on how pupils do in 8 core subjects not, as some Conservatives believe, on how many kids passed the re-sit of their macrame module.

BBC: Michael Gove on exams: U-turn or tweak?