Two religious items caught my ear on the Today Programme this morning.

The first: a Muslim activist has won a case to have the crucifix removed from the Italian public (state) school his children attend. He is happy. Other Muslims are not. Neither are many Italians.

The second: Thought for the Day, the programme’s “God spot”, was delivered by a vicar from Brighton. He used the story of an English madam recently convicted in Paris to support his argument against the encroachment of the state into matters of “personal morality”—“who were the victims of the crime?” he asked. He believes that the obsession with people’s private lives is symbolic of our growing inability to distinguish between the truly right and the truly wrong. Anyone with a clue knows he wasn’t really talking about prostitution.