What a bizarre country we live in!
 Where bankers (employed by companies more than half owned by the State) can, despite massive incompetence, be paid equally massive bonuses, yet we are unwilling to pay Members of Parliament to travel first class (we would call it business class if we weren't so preoccupied with inapproprate notions of status) or be paid a salary which would encourage the brightest and the best to aspire to their ranks because of  a strange and quixotic public meanspiritedness. In more senses than one, we get the politicians we pay for.
 Where ageing pop stars, out of an obvious vested interest, rather than any kind of evidence, can proclaim the homosexuality of the Incarnate Son of God, yet where the Prophet Mohammed ('peace and blessings upon him' - the italics indicate an element of irony) is accorded by a cowardly media an inviolability which forbids any kind of comment whatsoever.
 Where, for those born here, the birth rate plummets and the culture of death increasingly lays claim to the beginning and the end of human life.
 Where the Church has an honoured place for those who deny the articles of the creeds, yet marginalises and excludes those who uphold the historic faith.
 I'll stop before penitence turns to depression.