I don't agree with you though, APL, about the shoe chauffeur business. That was black propaganda peddled by Chris Huhne and co. and taken up eagerly by the BBC, to make you think the bike was just for the cameras. Red boxes contain important State documents and cannot at the moment be carried about in a pannier as if they were the shopping. And someone who gets into trouble for edging ahead at the traffic lights etc is obviously a real bicyclist trying to stay alive. You have only to look at the difference in energy between him and car-bound Brown to see the good that bicycling is doing him. Ditto for Boris vis a vis taxi-bound Livingstone. It is a great pity that so many people swallowed this lie and that it is still appearing, as it would otherwise have been good advertising for bikes – and goodness, we need it, with the pollution and unfitness our country suffers from compared with other more go-ahead countries where people of all ages bicycle in safety without wearing helmets or lycra. Rather than knock him for riding a bike, welcome it, and use it to get safer arrangements for bicyclists – so that they may multiply in numbers, for all our benefit.

’Love your neighbour as yourself’

Why?

The Chritian faith is based on the teachings of Jesus Christ as contained in the Gospels of the new testament.

The main message in the new testament is to love one another and to love God. Love the sinner, hate the sin.

It is true that there are many bloody episodes and many apparently strange laws (Read in the context of a modern world) in the old testament, however, most of the books to which critics refer are histories rather than teachings.

The problem with any faith, when discussing it with a non believer is just that, a religious faith is a faith as opposed to something one can see or touch.

I always say the following in reply to someone that mocks my choice to follow my chosen religion:

It is better to live life believing that there is a God and then find out after death that there is not, then to live a life believing there is not a God only to discover after death that there is a God………..Are you prepared to take that risk?

I would say that there has been a historical trend of Conservatism which has ben similarly Luddite – from the time when Wellington oppoded railways on the grounds that it would let the common people move round the country to John Major's evocation of old maids bycling. It is not a side of conservatism I have much sympathy for as my call on another thread for the working classes to be able to have houses in the country will have shown.

I doubt if Mr Cameron, having been a strong Thatcherite when first in Parliament, is overly concerned which idealogical wing of the party, if any, his apparent commitment to opposing global warming, came from.

Anyway, the lady you mentioned smoked cigarettes! Outrageous!

I think the split in the C of E is a little more than whether the book of common prayer is used or not.

Are you saying by supporting the "personal freedom" agenda that the gospels are wrong?

Was Jesus Christ wrong not to appoint female apostles?
Was he also wrong not to allow men to lay with men as men would with a woman?
(sentence left out-ed)
As I understand it, the Christian teaching is that marriage is confined to one man and one woman. Sexual intercourse is confined to within a marriage. Unmarried people, according to the scriptures, should refrain from sex, that must include homosexuals. Not attractive in the modern world but, does that make it wrong?

The Lord tells us to hate the sin but love the sinner, ie love the person but reject the sin.
Modern people may not like the teachings but, the teachings are the teachings. It is not man's place to pick and choose which scriptures he accepts. If one decides to cut out one teaching they dislike and someone else decides to do the same, soon you have nothing left. In the Catholic Church we have a saying that we have a shortage of applicants wishing to join the Priesthood but we have a surplus of people that wish to be Pope.

I believe many of society's ills have happened since we in the UK have turned away from Christiananity and it's moral code.
The media have led the anti Christian message, aided by successive governments.
Children no longer attend Sunday school and neither did their parents, so where do they get their moral guidance from now? They won't get it from a politicised education system or from the media.

Is it right to abandon ones principles just to be acceptable to people? Is this not what the political parties have done and have they not also lost support?

I do feel for the C of E and would urge any Christians that still hold the teachings of the bible to be true to consider coming home to the Catholic Church.

May the Lord bless you and open your heart to his message.

I was perhaps unclear, I was not suggesting the bible is better or worse than any other religous texts or indeed the Stoics. If you insist on looking somewhere for morality in philosophy, might I suggest you take a look at the works of Ayn Rand?

In the first instance what Cameron thinks about the environment is a personal matter for him, he has no business imposing his opinions on you or I, simply because our opinions happen to be generally aligned on some other totally unconnected matters.

As he chooses his religion, if he has one, he is perfectly at liberty to cycle to work, as I did for three years between Tottenham and the West end, of course I did not ask my driver to toddle along behind me in my limo all for the benefit of the meeja. But overall, despite inconsiderate London drivers I felt better for the exercise.

Nor have I asked anyone else to put a windmill on their roof, just because I have the urge to do so. Should I take leave of my senses and put a windmill on my roof, it would be in direct contradiction of my knowledge that the cost of doing so far outweighs the benefits of any electricity it might generate. Not to mention the structural damage it may well cause to my house.

Should too, I decide to look at the North Polar Ice cap, I would be sure to do it in the most ecologically economical manner, knowing as I do that flying by jet, is an evil thing, also that asking a load of freeloading meeja folk along would just compound the sin and generally make the ice melt faster, thus contributing to the supposed decline of the North polar ice cap that I had gone there to see in the first place. That to me would not seem like a very conservative action, nor an economical one.

Lastly, he is not my leader, we shouldn’t be encouraging the cult of personality in UK politics, that sort of thing is for the Labour party and North Korea, David Cameron is just a chump who at the right time happened to pull the right strings among his Meeja chums – surprising actually since Meeja is the only place he has ever worked. Whereas his opponent who had fewer friends in the Meeja, has recently demonstrated he holds true to some real conservative principles.

Rosie: “Conservation and concern for the environment were exclusively Conservative preoccupations.”

No, not correct. Conservative concern for the environment arises principally from the concept of private property. That is it, if you own something you tend to care for it. Private property is the founding principle of true conservatism.

The Socialists, like the Green party (and it is worth mentioning here the BNP usually wrongly branded by BBC smear a ‘far right party’ ) you mention, are each of them collectivists, they refute the concept of private property. The result is since no one owns a thing, no one cares for it. That is what leads to the sort of situation you describe. I believe it is called ‘the tragedy of the commons’.

Why am I hostile to ‘my’ leader? Because at each opportunity to show some backbone, demonstrate some principle, he has declined. Be it to keep his promise to take the conservative s out of the EPP or, well, what other promise has Cameron made?

However, it is worth noting that whilst we offer the traditional choral services regularly, attendance at them is minimal; whilst our modern language service of Parish Communion attracts 200 people every week.