[Nigel Mace]

I am more than fed up with John's presumption that he can 'speak' for public opinion in this country (I'm writing this in Yorkshire, John) let alone Europe. What polls? It is certainly not the case in Scotland - nor does it seem to be the case in England outside of the strange atmosphere apparently inhaled in one small part of Kent.

Religions as a whole have a baleful record - yet they include now, as always, many millions of peaceful sensible people, whose adherence to their 'creed' is only nominally 'observant' but largely parked alongside decent and humane standards of civilised life; they also include the tiny minorities of the deranged, who plead the cover of supposedly divine sanction for their own proclivities to extremes of inhumane and uncivilised behaviour. While we are about it, let's remember the allegedly God-inspired decision-making which allowed Bush and Blair to unleash the illegal mayhem in whose hellish aftermath we are all now living. As to your 'arguments', they smack of the same delusional quality. Since when was marriage to a right-wing historian a guarantor of the wisdom of any controversialist's views?

Since this is a thread among poets (or would-be rhymers), let's reflect on Auden's lines,
"I and the public know
What all schoolchildren learn,
Those to whom evil is done
Do evil in return."

Are we really fated to be led into yet another blood-soaked repetition of brutal and failed policies, which destroy our own once cherished values as much as huge numbers of entirely innocent people? One thing is certain. If we wrap ourselves in cloaks of 'religious' rationale - in praise of 'ours' or in disparagement of 'theirs' - the only outcome will be policies which produce more and more death.