Believers are right when they say that to understand a religion properly you need to get under its skin. But to understand it fully, you cannot stay there: you have to take a more objective view, too.

Dover's cliffs call to mind the Roman invasion; the Battle of Britain; our proximity to, yet difference from, mainland Europe; and international trade and exploration, both fair and exploitative.

Trying to keep up with health advice can feel like surfing the Net for weather forecasts: what you find is always changing, often contradictory and rarely encouraging.

Wasn't it Bertrand Russell who used the phrase 'The superior virtue of the oppressed'? There is always this temptation amongst people that see themselves as progressive, and on the side of the weak. They demonize the powerful, but over-romanticize the weak. I think we should recognize that. If you take seriously the idea that people are always going to use truth claims as a means of powering their own agenda, that is going to happen whether you're weak or powerful.

Being able and willing to complain is what makes us rational and moral animals, capable of seeing and articulating the difference between how things are and how they should be.

There is such a thing as fanaticism, it is always wrong, and if you disagree, you're wrong too.

If I hammer my own thumb while doing some DIY, it's not nice, but it's not the end of the world. To care obsessively about similar levels of discomfort in animals seems to be a case of mistaken moral priorities.