So what really works? Treatments in jail do some good, but it's mostly too late: finding a family and a job or just growing older make most prisoners eventually give up crime.

How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions?

But instead of standing up for reason, our government is handing education over to the world of faith.

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.

But the single overwhelming reason why jails are bursting is longer sentences given for more crimes.

Crime is only the worst example, but it is a paradigm for other Labour policy disasters. No one tells the voters that crime is falling: let them stay scared senseless.

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