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

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

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.

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?

This is indeed a clash of civilisations, not between Islam and Christendom but between reason and superstition.

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.