It is now possible to quantify people's levels of happiness pretty accurately by asking them, by observation, and by measuring electrical activity in the brain, in degrees from terrible pain to sublime joy.

Thresholds of pain, indignity and incapacity are entirely personal.

The best care on earth cannot prevent us all dying in the end.

Islam, Christianity and Judaism all define themselves through disgust of women's bodies.

Working lives are for the state to influence. Unemployment makes people unhappy. So does instability.

In the polls, over 80% support the right to die and have done for the last 25 years. Even 80% of practising Catholics and Protestants support it, plus 76% of Church Times readers.

But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools.