Last year’s visit of Pope Benedict to Britain was for many a surprisingly joyful and uplifting event. To some extent it revived the faith, strengthening Catholics who live in the UK. One of the many results of his visit was the renewal of the idea of meat-less Fridays. This is now the recommended practise in England and Wales. There is…

‘You have asked to have your child baptized. In doing so you are accepting the responsibility of training him in the practice of faith. It will be your duty to bring him up to keep God’s commandments as Christ taught us, by loving God and our neighbour. Do you clearly understand what you are undertaking?’ I have to admit that…

Once I bought a computer program. I’d been dreaming about it for ages, but it had similarly long been unaffordable. So when I saw the program available for half price on a well-established and renowned website I squeezed my savings, bought the program and started using it. Some time later, when I bought an upgrade, it turned out the software…

There has been a great international controversy over the release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi, the only man convicted for the Lockerbie disaster. The Scottish government released him on compassionate grounds. The decision has been widely discussed, questioned, and finally condemned or supported. Two years after he left prison the discussion came up again. The Scottish government maintains its position that compassion…

Last Friday Rebecca Leighton, a nurse from Stepping Hill hospital, was released from arrest. Previously accused of the deaths of several patients she turned out to be innocent. But when she was arrested the media went mad. In her statement she said that ‘she’d been living in hell’. Last December a landscape architect Jo Yeates was murdered. The police arrested her…