You Couldn't Make It Up

The Bishop of Ebbsfleet is the latest to defect from the Church of England whom he accuses, in its willingness to ordain women, of 'making things up'. He'll be joining the Catholics, the people who brought us Transubstantiation. Wine into the Blood of Jesus, women into bishops. Yeah, one of those is definitely beyond belief.

Three Shocks and We're Out

Another week, another report about the effects of drinking in pregnancy. Shock number one: the children born to women who drink one or glasses a week aren't pigeon-toed mouth breathers. Shock number Two: it never occurs to any of these researchers that most people lie about their alcohol intake. Do the (very few) women who neck three double-vodkas a day through their first trimester actually own up? Or - Shock Three - do they only admit to having had the odd one? Conclusion: no-one knows anything. But, in an age without common sense, an endless rolling tide of 'guidance' is apparently all we have.

We're all Special Now

News that up to a fifth of children meant to have Special Educational Needs have been wrongly diagnosed should not come as a shock. The SEN industry has been expanding like mad - or like alternatively sane - to the point where even the little quirks of character that make us who we are are pathologised, labelled and - here's the nub, budgeted for. Children I know who fidget in their seats are 'dyspraxic'. The parents may be relieved by the 'diagnosis', the schools doubtless relish the extra cash. But the kids themselves aren't always quite so pleased.

When I was a child, I had classmates with all sorts of oddities. Some were good at maths and nothing else. Others only liked drawing, or rocked in their chairs when concentrating. There were even boys who didn't like sport. How ironic it is that forty years ago, before the supposed age of reason, the range of what passed for Normal was so much wider.

Television Kills- or does it?

New research claims to have proved that television gives children cardio-vascular disease later in life.

Evidently, those who make a career out of piling the guilt onto hard pressed parents want us to know that when we press On we are hastening the premature deaths of our children. While we await actual scientific proof - I'm not holding my breath here - I'll throw in this possibility for anyone who may be a television viewer but also likes to use their brain:

Kids who watch a lot of TV may be missing out on more active pursuits; when you're sitting you're not kicking a ball or running. So it might not be evil rays coming out of the box after all. Just a thought.

Thank you, Lorenzo

The death of Roald Dahl's daughter Olivia from measles induced encephalitis, revealed in the new biography serialised by the Daily Telegraph, must have made interesting reading for all those parents still shying away from having their children vaccinated. Did it also prick the conscience of Andrew Wakefield, the discredited doctor who led thousands of them to connect the MMR triple vaccine with autism and Crohn's Disease - despite no credible evidence that it caused either?

I went to primary school with a boy called Lorenzo, who suffered the same rare but terrifying brain inflammation after the measles as Olivia Dahl. He survived, but at age eight, having formerly been able to read and write, he became a wild, disturbed boy who could only scream, laugh and throw things at the teachers. When the health visitor offered us the vaccine for our children I read the information, but found my memories of Lorenzo focused the mind even more effectively. I'm guessing that the other kids in our class who are now parents might now also be remembering him with sorrow, and a shudder of gratitude.

Hairy bottom, control freak or nose picker?

Leaving, the new Kristin Scott-Thomas film, is a dark, heartstopping drama about a rich French housewife who falls in love with her Spanish builder. Her husband, whose passion for her expresses itself as icy control, is a fearsome yet pitiful figure somewhat like Karenin. There is sex - without Hollywood bodystockings and with hairy bottoms, grief, rage and some very convincing domestic violence. Watching these characters play out this gripping drama, I glanced at the man next to me, who at the height of the action was calmly picking his nose. And English men wonder why their wives romanticise the appeal of Europeans.

Are you a Catholic priest who's raped a child? Click here to learn about conscience

Another week, another revelation of abuse and cover ups in the Catholic Church. This week's Guardian Weekend magazine ran the account of a woman raped at age 13 by the priest living in her house, whose own mother chose to see her as the sinner. It takes a pretty big leap of faith to go for a perception quite that twisted, but if anyone can, a Catholic can.

The Pope's choice to run the UK inquiry into the whole horror, Cardinal Cormac Murphy O'Connor, has blamed it all on the creeping menace of 'secularisation'. Unless that's the new term for sexual psychopaths, I'm confused. Out here in Secular World we generally believe child rape is wrong. We have not only a judicial system but also, most of us, a conscience. Clue for clerical rapists: that's the bit of you that tells you when you're doing something harmful to others, so that even when your own bosses don't hold you to account, you take responsibility yourself and stop. That way, when you somehow escape prosecution for a crime that in Secular World would put you in prison, you can still Do the Right Thing. See?

Of course, you'd think, being so big on Guilt and Sin and all, this lot would feel just a little badly about wrecking the lives of so many innocent children on a scale that amounts to psychic genocide, but that's the brilliance of their particular brand of DoubleThink. They are, after all, the people who helped promote anti-semitism by labelling Jews the killers of Christ, and supposed concocters of sinister, global conspiracies against nice, harmless Christians. Time to re-examine that one, I think. When it comes to international conspiracies, the Jews can't hold a seven-branched candlestick to these guys.