Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ

That's how Churchill described the British Foreign Office official who provided him with highly classified documents on Germany's secret re-armament. Churchill, during his so-called "wilderness years", used the information in his campaign against appeasement. Ralph Wigram died in 1936, two years after be began leaking information to Churchill, in mysterious circumstances. it is thought that he may have taken his own life. Churchill was among the small number who attended his funeral. Wigram is arguably the most effective whistleblower in the history of whistleblowing, in that his actions appear to have been ultimately instrumental in changing Britain's attitude to war with Germany. His relationship with Churchill is explored in the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ drama The Gathering Storm. I suspect many commentators will now draw on the historical case of Ralph Wigram in their analysis of the Damian Green debacle. One clear difference in this current case is that Damian Green is not a member of the , whereas Churchil was, and as such he was, some argue, ntitled to see classified documents.

Hundreds of religious leaders are currently on climate change ahead of the on Saturday 6 December. Christian Aid, Eco-congregation Ireland, Friends of the Earth, Tearfund and TrΓ³caire are also joining forces to mark the day of action. At 11 am on the day itself, they are inviting members of the public to bring a bell -- any kind of bell -- to Saint Anne's Cathedral as part of their appeal to world leaders to make bold decisions on cutting global carbon emissions. Churches across Northern Ireland are also being asked to ring their church bells at the same time. For full details of the event see and .

The conservative Latin American Anglican province of the Southern Cone, headed by Archbishop Gregory Venables,. The 22,000-member province has become a haven for some conservative parishes and dioceses opposed to the consecration of gay bishop Gene Robinson. Several US dioceses have already transferred their allegiance to the Southern Cone, in a clear breach of church law. Possible sanctions could include the loss of voting rights within Anglican governing bodies.

The news that Damian Green, the Conservative immigration spokesman, investigating has astonished just about every commentator across Britain's political spectrum. Mr Green was later released on bail, without charge. But this episode raises questions that go to the heart of a fully-functioning democracy. As Diane Abbot put it on This Week, "civil servants have been leaking since photocopiers were invented". So why has an MP been arrested for receiving documents from a whistleblower?

If a document relating to national security is leaked -- to the extent that its release could endanger the lives of British personnel -- one could understand why police counter-terrorism officers would take an interest. But the police say Mr Green was held on suspicion of "conspiring to commit misconduct in a public office" and "aiding and abetting, counselling or procuring misconduct in a public office". Neither of these grounds for investigation appear to suggest any breach of national security, but as this story unfolds perhaps we will learn more than we currently know.

The Met say no political influence was brought to bear on their investigation and that they made the arrest without the approval or knowledge of any government minister. This unprecedented intrusion by the police into the activities of a member of parliament is now, quite rightly, the subject of enormous public scrutiny.

Commenting on the terrorist violence in Mumbai, Paddy Ashdown has just drawn an analogy with the IRA. Lord Ashdown says the IRA as defeated 'militarily' by Britain. When a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ news channel presenter questioned his claim and suggested that the IRA was essentially drawn into politics by the British government's decision to talk to them, Lord Ashdown replied: "No, you're wrong ... we defeated them militarily first."

The former Liberal Democrat leader, and former special forces commando, was brought up in Northern Ireland and had a tour of duty in Belfast in the early 70s. He is also said to be the great great grandson of the 19th century Irish political leader l.

Histrionics is the first major exhibition in Ireland of works by the Scottish artist . I saw the original version of this collection last year at Glasgow's Gallery of Modern Art, when it was featured as part of the gallery's social justice programme "Blind Faith: Contemporary art and human rights".

Buchanan's work is now on display at , and I'll be speaking tonight at a special event marking the opening of the exhibition. I've included here, below the fold, a draft of what I plan to say tonight.

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I have blogged quite a bit on the Presbyterian Mutual Society story and on Sunday Sequence we have interviewed the Presbyterian Moderator, Dr Donald Patton and the church's General Secretary, Dr Donald Watts.

The Spotlight team have been examining the crisis closely and they present their
investigation tonight at 10.35 on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ One. They'll be asking what went wrong and is it likely that thousands of PMS investors will get any of their money back? If you are concerned about the Mutual Society or know of anyone affected by the collapse of the Society, you won't want to miss tonight's Spotlight.

See here for other posts on the PMS crisis.

Speaking on today's Sunday Sequence, PUP leader Dawn Purvis called for the legalisation of prostitution in the UK, in response to the government's proposal to introducer .

In August, we reported on by Sandown Free Presbyterian Church on the eve of this year's Belfast's Gay Pride Parade. This weekend, Sunday Sequence obtained a copy of the Advertising Standards Authority's adjudication, which partially upholds complaints by seven people about the ad.

The Advertising Authority will say that "particular care should be taken to avoid causing offence on the grounds of sexual orientation" and concludes that "this ad had caused serious offence to some readers." The authority determined that "the ad breached CAP Code 5.1 (Decency)", and has advised the Reverend David McIlveen's Church to "take a view" from the Committee of Advertising Practice (CAP) before publishing future marketing material. It has also told the church "to take more care in future to avoid causing offence" and instructed that "the ad should not appear again in its current form".

However, the Authority did not uphold the complaint that the ad in question was likely to provoke violence or anti-social behaviour.

The adjudication is likely to be highly controversial because may imply that certain words from the Bible, such as "abomination", should not be placed in advertisements dealing with sexual orientation.

On today's programme, P. A. MagLochlainn, president of the Northern Ireland Gay Rights Association, welcomed the adjudication as a clear statement about the unacceptability of "offensive language" in the public debate about homosexuality. The Reverend David McIlveen told Sunday Sequence late last night that he would make a response to the adjudication "at an appropriate time".

Here's a statement from News Letter in response to the news of the ASA adjudication: "The News Letter is aware that the Advertising Standards Authority has been investigating a small number of complaints made against the Sandown Free Presbyterian Church over an advertisement placed in our newspaper. We received details of the ASA's final adjudication on Friday evening and want to take the time to study it carefully before deciding what, if any, response is necessary. The News Letter takes seriously its responsibilities as a publisher and has stringent policies in place governing the acceptance of advertising."

On tomorrow's Sunday Sequence, we will return to the Presbyterian Mutual Society, now in Administration, and to the role of the Presbyterian Church in this continuing crisis.

One commenter on this blog has written: "If you are still checking out this blog, please can you post if there are any email groups being set up for members to share knowledge about what is happening? I live a long way from Belfast and am hearing absolutely nothing except what I can glean from the internet. There seems to be a deafening silence from the PMS and we all know how helpful the PCI have been ..."

We will try to describe the situation as it currently stands on tomorrow's programme. The Presbyterian Moderator, Dr Donald Patton, will join me live in the studio from 8.30 am.

My blog posts to date summarise some of the key issues at stake:

A run on the Presbyterian bank
Presbyterian Church asks PM to guarantee savings
The Church and the Mutual Society

Update-Sunday 23 November: Dr Donald Patton said today on Sunday Sequence that the church is not ruling out any options, including a hardship fund, in responding to the Presbyterian Mutual Society crisis. He also accepted said that the wording of General Assembly resolution encouraging church members to "avail themselves of the services" of the Mutual Society was unhelpful, and that the church's response to this crisis was partly shaped by a sense of "shock".

The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Trust have published their report into the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross incident. Read the report in full .

In summary: Ross and Brand's calls to Sachs were a "deplorable intrusion with no editorial justification". It says a list of high-risk radio programmes should be put together to help prevent a repeat of the incident, broadcast on Radio 2 on 18 October. It also recommends tougher penalties for staff who do not comply with editorial guidelines, and that there should be tighter controls on shows made by companies owned by their performers. The trust also upholds complaints about an edition of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ One's Friday Night With Jonathan Ross from May, in which which Ross swore in conversation with actress Gwyneth Paltrow and TV personality Michael Aspel.

An up-to-date timeline of the Brand-Ross row is available .

The mystery of the wherabouts of the remains of , the Polish astronomer best known for advancing the theory that the sun, and not the earth, is at the centre of the universe, .

Mikolaj Kopernik (1473-1543), commonly known by his Latin name, Nicholas Copernicus, is often described as "the Father of Astronomy". Copernicus's most famous work, (literally, "On the revolutions"), laid the foundation for modern astronomy. Though it was completed in 1530, Copernicus did not publish this controverisal book on 24 May, 1543.

Karolina Kurkova . (She's a Czech underwear model, by the way.) In a recent photoshot on a catwalk, photographers noticed that the 24-year-old model has neither an "outie" nor an "innie"; in fact, she appears to have a "smoothie".

I expect that the media-inspired fascination with Ms Kurkova's navel may now re-ignite a historic creationist controversy: Did Adam have a belly-button? After all, according to literalist readings of Genesis, Adam was the first human being who ever lived. In which case, he wouldn't have had any biological parents, right? And since Eve is said to have been created from one of Adam's ribs, surely she would lack a belly-button too? of this pressing theological debate from a contributor to the Answers in Genesis website. Gary Parker argues that "God would not have planted on them a false indication that they had developed in a mother's womb."

In the nineteenth century, the British naturalist Philip Henry Gosse published a very curious book on this subject. It was called . It may be worth noting that Gosse's book was published two years before Darwin's Origin of Species; in any case, the book challenges the claim that the fossil record points to evolution. It does so by developing an argument, now often called "the omphalos hypothesis", which amounts to this: God created a world that displayed the appearance of age even from the first second of creation, just as Adam was created with a belly-button even though he had no human parentage. (Omphalos is the Greek word for "navel".) Thus, the rings inside tree trunks are not necessarily signs of ageing, nor are the fossils we find strewn across the landscape. That's the argument, in any case.

In the twentieth century, the philosopher Bertrand Russell rightly pointed out, in , that this argument, if accepted, could just as easily support the claim that the entire world was created just five minutes ago. Every aspect of the universe that seems to indicate age is, by this argument, merely a feature of the five-minute-old universe we inhabit. Even our human memories of the distant past would not constitute evidence of the past; they, too, could be said to be features of this extremely young earth.

At least we can agree on one thing: however Karolina Kurkova got her smoothed-out navel, almost nothing theologically follows from her lack of a belly-button.

For the first time ever, 31 have signed a joint letter to world letters. And their focus is to world leaders to urgently provide education for children in conflict zones. The signatures appended to the letter, , include those of former US president Jimmy Carter, South Africa's former president F. W. de Klerk, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Dalai Lama, the Burmese pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel.

All but one of Northern Ireland's Nobel Peace Prize winners have signed the letter. John Hume, Mairead Corrigan Maguire and Betty Williams have added their signatures to the appeal. The signature of Northern Ireland's former First Minister is absent. (Before reading too much into that absence, it's worth nothing that a number of other very well-known figures are also absent, for whatever reason, from the list of signatories, including Al Gore, Kofi Annan and Nelson Mandela.)

The signatories call on "governments and other parties to armed conflicts to respect and promote schools as places of peace and safety" and direct their appeal specifically as follows:

• Ensure all children have access to quality education despite ethnicity, religion or language.
• Ensure all children can learn free from fear of recruitment into armed forces, violence or intimidation.
• Ensure all children receive an inclusive and relevant education that promotes an openness of thought and is accountable to children's families and communities.
• Ensure that quality education is made an integral part of every peace process.

Read the full letter .

of those Nobel Peace Prize winners who signed the letter.

Do journalists accept that many people in the UK really are poor? Or is it the case that many journalists believe that people on benefits are working the system to their own advantage? How well does the media report on the realities of poverty in the UK today? Is there enough exploration of the causes of poverty, social deprivation and inequality? Are journalists at times part of the problem by re-presenting stereotypes and caricatures of poverty where they could be challenging myths and false portrayals? Are stories about poverty presented to broadcast, print and online audiences as though poverty was someone else's experience? Can a moral distinction between the 'deserving poor' and the 'undeserving poor' be detected in some media portrayals?

These are just some of the questions we considered yesterday in a conference I chaired for the marking the of new research on media coverage of poverty in the UK and a challenging . Media Trust is an extremely important organisation because it aims to "harness the skills, resources and creativity of the media industry to help voluntary organisations and charities make a difference to people's lives." Its corporate members include the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ, BSkyB, Channel 4, Disney Channel UK, Guardian Media Group, ITV, News International, Newsquest Media Group, and Warner Bros.

The new study, "Media, Poverty and Public Opinion in the UK", and the new guide, "Reporting Poverty in the UK: a practical guide for journalists", were funded by the and are available online in pdf form . to the guide, and the academic research paper is .

We plan to continue the conversation on this week's Sunday Sequence, and my guests will include the author of the Reporting Poverty guide, David Seymour, former readers' editor of the Daily Mirror, and Frances Dowds from the . David Seymour says poverty is the "final stigma in Britain" and claims it is often covered "with little attempt to understand or explain what life is like for those on the bottom rung of the economic ladder."

(For more information about the sofa, .)

Here's a linguistic inquiry for listeners to The Book Programme. What is phonetically interesting about this sentence?

"A rough-coated, dough-faced, thoughtful ploughman strode through the streets of Scarborough; after falling into a slough, he coughed and hiccoughed."

The religious news service that "Five 'Reverends' were amongst the names in , as well as a number of other people listed as having associations with churches, or being 'Christians' ... [in addition ...] one person is listed as working for a business dealing with primarily Christian books. Another is listed as a Pentecostal Christian attending an Assemblies of God church. Another is called a Quaker. Still another "practising Catholic. Others are said to be Cathedral tour guides, members of the Anglican Society, and supporters of the Evangelical Open Doors charity which works with persecuted Christians around the world - many in predominantly Muslim countries. Another is listed as someone who preaches regularly in Baptist, United Reformed and Presbyterian churches. One is described as a "committed Evangelical christian" who attends bible studies and prayer meetings. Others are described on the BNP list as "born again" Christians." Read the Ekklesia report .

Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Northern Ireland also reports that 39 people from Northern Ireland, including a serving soldier and a former police officer, are named in the BNP list.

Are atheists afraid to come out of the closet in Northern Ireland? On this week's Sunday Sequence, Brian McClinton, editor of , spoke about the experiences of atheists in Northern Ireland when they choose to reveal their philosophical perspective to family members, work colleagues and other sections of society. Brian McClinton says atheists have experienced discrimination and isolation, and have been ostracised by their families. In this article for Will & Testament, he explains why so many atheists in Northern Ireland have chosen to keep their heads down.

Atheism is one of the last taboos, and Northern Ireland is similar to America in this respect. Remember that George Bush Senior said atheists shouldn't be considered as citizens because America is one nation under God. It's a shame because 200 years ago both Ulster and America were dominated by radical, progressive and sceptical voices, such as the Founding Fathers and the United Irishmen.

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On this week's Sunday Sequence, Dr Donald Watts (pictured), General Secretary of the Presbyterian Church, acknowledged that some members of his church may have been confused about the relationship between the church and the Presbyterian Mutual Society, which are two separate legal identities. Dr Watts suggested that measures would be taken to more clearly differentiate the two organisations in the mind of the public.

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to, kinda, reveal whether he wants her to, like, run for president in 2012.

Scotland's First Minister got jolly for the weans last night.

the legendary Rikki Fulton did it in one of his original broadcasts from the late 70s. Thought for the Day has never been the same again. is one of my favourite Jolly sketches, which did for the Church of Scotland what Father Ted did for the Irish Catholic Church.

You can still donate to Children in Need online here.

Journalists are some of the worst offenders (as, indeed, is the phrase 'some of the worst offenders'). In our effort to turn out news bulletins, links for radio programmes, and live TV coverage of breaking stories, we turn to tired, worn-out, over-used (etc., etc.) phrases and terms that speed up composition and delivery.

Originality takes time, and time is in short supply. That's the justification that is often made for the poverty of English that corrupts our output. There is some merit to that explanation; but Oxford University wants us all to try harder in any case (and quite right too). They have compiled a list of the in current usage. I hear them all the time; and I confess to having used a few of them. Some are simply tired, like "at the end of the day"; some are logically incoherent, such as "fairly unique"; some are tautological, like "I personally"; some are grammatically incorrect, such as "shouldn't of"; some combine overstatement with overuse, such as "it's a nightmare', and some are just silly, like 'it's not rocket science'.

Also on the list is one of the two most overused words in Northern Ireland: 'absolutely'. The other is 'lovely'. I have no science to back up that claim, but how many times have you said 'absolutely' in response to a question when you meant 'yes'? And have you ever met a noun that couldn't be prefaced by 'lovely'? It's a lovely day, she's a lovely girl, that's a lovely cup of tea, he was a lovely man, it was a lovely holiday, we had a lovely time, and everyone was lovely to everyone else. I'm all for vastly increasing the measure of loveliness in the world; just not at the expense of a lovely word like lovely.

Enough of my linguistic ranting. Here's my pledge. This week, I will make a list of the most overused terms and phrases in current usage on the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's output in Northern Ireland. I will type out that list and place it near my computer in the office, as a reminder to avoid these phrases. I may even publish it here. Let me have some of your suggestions, and not just from journalism: what's on your list of the most irritating phrases in common use?

While you're pondering that, have a look at the , an index of 3,300 available clichΓ©s.

A Catholic priest in South Carolina has told his parishioners to stay away from Holy Communion , because of the president-elect's pro-choice stance.

In a letter to parish of , Fr Jay Scott Newman (pictured) says: 'Voting for a pro-abortion politician when a plausible pro-life alternative exits constitutes material cooperation with intrinsic evil, and those Catholics who do so place themselves outside of the full communion of Christ's Church and under the judgment of divine law. Persons in this condition should not receive Holy Communion until and unless they are reconciled to God in the Sacrament of Penance, lest they eat and drink their own condemnation.'

Theologically, the priest is not in a position to deny communion to any member of the parish who voted for Barack Obama. All he can do, within church laws, is encourage those voters to repent and make penance for the 'sin' of cooperating with 'intrinsic evil' in casting their vote for a pro-life candidate. Fr Newman's comments may seem a little curious to outsiders; in fact, he is merely echoing the views of the who called on pro-choice Catholic politicians, during the presidential campaign, to exclude themselves from communion. They plainly had Joe Biden, America's first Catholic vice-president-elect in their liturgical sites. If anything, Pope Benedict has taken an even stronger position on this; the pope's opposition to pro-choice Catholic positions was so vocal in 2007 that the Vatican .

Excommunication is not only a religious concept. Christopher Buckley has resigned from the National Review, the conservative political journal founded by his father William F Buckley in 1955. Christopher Buckley says he was after endorsing Barack Obama in a blog posting.

The American evangelical pastor two years after . Haggard was leader of America's National Association of Evangelicals and a vocal opponent of gay marriage legislation when it was revealed that he had been having sex with a male prostitute every month for three years. Haggard was invited to speak at a church in Illinois pastored by an old friend. He used the sermons to talk about how the scandal changed his life. He also said he was sexually abused as a child. Haggard is no longer pastoring in the United States; he is now putting his life together. ABC News that he is currently starting an insurance company in Colorado Springs.

Audio of the two sermons in which Haggard makes his comments was previously available on Ted Haggard's personal website. Following ABC News coverage of the sermons, is now being 'rebuilt'.

More on the Presbyterian Mutual Society story. The Northern Ireland has announced a plan to offer assistance to the society. Urgent legislation has now been passed which permits the society either to go into administration or form a company voluntary arrangement. Administration will buy the society time to organise its business and avoid an immediate 'fire sale' to realise the society's assets. This intervention does not guarantee the society's funds, but it does give the society an administrative option it did not previously have. We'll be analysing the full implications of this move on Sunday morning's programme.

The Royal Irish Academy, the academy for the sciences and humanities for the whole of Ireland, has awarded to a professor from Queen's University -- the first time it has ever made the award to a scholar north of the border. is Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen's University Belfast. Listeners to Sunday Sequence will be familiar with David's contibutions on the science-religion debate, and particularly on the relationship between creationism and evolutionary science. Most recently, I interviewed David about his new book, Adam's Ancestors: Race, Religion and the Politics of Human Origins, which has been longlisted for this year's Β£50,000 .

This award by Ireland's premier academy of the sciences and humanities is just the latest award for one of Queen's University's most distinguished academics. David Livingstone was appointed an OBE in 2002 for services to Geography and History; in 1995 he was elected a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1998 a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. He was awarded the Admiral Back Award of the Royal Geographical Society in 1997 and the Centenary Medal of the Royal Scottish Geographical Society in 1998.

The President of Ireland, Mary McAleese, said of the Academy Gold Medals: 'These medals allow us to take pride in the achievements of the recipients, to take pride in the work and endeavour they represent and to send out a strong message to the coming generations that the list of great scientists and scholars in not closed, nor it is exclusively the domain of historic figures. Each generation can and must reveal its own genius, make its own contribution to the sum of what we know and the revelation of what we don't know.'

A contributor to Will & Testament writes about his mother's experience as a member of the Presbyterian Mutual Society, which announced this week that it is unable to meet demands from shareholders for withdrawal of funds:

"My mother is independent and self-sufficient. She has a house and three children. She makes soup for others and is a giver in every way. If she were a taker, she would have withdrawn her money like all the others who did at the first whiff of a rumour that there were issues. None of this alters the fact that she has lost access to her and and my father's hard-earned savings through no fault of her own other than an obviously misplaced belief in the safety of her savings in the Presbyterian Church."

Yesterday, the Enterprise Minister, Arlene Foster, said her department will do all it can to help the Presbyterian Mutual Society through its cash problems. We wait to see whether the Prime Minister will agree to cover the Presbyterian Mutual Society by the Financial Services Compensation Scheme. For its part, the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has made it clear that the Presbyterian Mutual Society exists as an independent legal entity even though membership of the society is limited to members of the Presbyterian Church in ireland.

Barack Obama hasn't even been inaugurated as 44th US President yet, but the discussion in Republican circles has already turned to the list of candidates who might take him on in 2012. And since it takes at least two years to run for president these days, they need to focus on likely candidates within the two years. John McCain has already signalled that he is out of the running. Sarah Palin may have garnered enough support by 2010 to mobilise a campaign, but some Republicans are critical of her performance alongside McCain.

Step forward , the 37-year old Republican Governor of Louisiana, who could one day become America's first Asian-American president.

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Hot on the heels of the Patrick Jones controversy comes the artist Michael J Browne and his . Browne previously portrayed Eric Cantona in a reworking of Piero della Francesca's Resurrection. In other words, he often subverts well-known Renaissance works by introducing contemporary public figures and celebrities. Browne denies that his new work seeks to portray George Best as a Christ-figure. "George Best had his own human problems in life," says the artist, "but he is ascending in his own way to another existence. That's my image of him as a spiritual being, as an ascension, and he is leaving behind his earthly delights," he added. Browne's painting is currently on display at Salford Art Gallery.

The Bishop of Bolton, Chris Edmundson, many people: 'While many worship George Best on the field, I feel that many people, not just Christians, may find this painting inappropriate. Artists have often tried to portray the life of the Son of God. For those who want to see a genuine attempt at this, I suggest they see the current Holman Hunt exhibition at the Manchester City Art Gallery.'

Michael Browne says his painting was an effort to explore public perceptions of George Best at the time of the former footballer's death. Arguably, Michael Brown is challenging the public's fascination with celebrities and asking us to place their achievements in some proper context: he's provoking us to look, close up, at the ludicrousness of celebrity culture and call into check our society's tendency to divinize people whose claim to fame is an ability to kick a ball. In a sense, Browne is challenging the idolatry of the media age. Has the bishop missed the point?

Here is a short interview with Michael Browne about how he works.

The launch of a new book of poems in the Waterstone's bookstore in Cardiff because a conservative Christian campaign group called on the chain to removes copies of the book from its stores. was to be launched at 7.30 p.m. yesterday, but Patrick Jones says the event was cancelled because of a 'threats of disruption' to the store.

Christian Voice's leader Stephen Green led an e-mail campaign against the book, and encouraged Waterstones to cancel the launch, because he regards some of the poems within the collection as 'obscene and blasphemous'.

Even though the event had been cancelled, Patrick Jones went to the Waterstones bookstore at The Hayes in Cardiff and signed copies of his book in the street. Mr Jones is plainly a poet who addresses political and religious themes in his work. In this collection, some poems explore the portrayal of women and some deal with the relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. He uses language that is, at times, raw. He would not be the first poet to address these themes or to use raw language.

As one might expect, Christian Voice have now given Patrick Jones a much larger audience than he might previously have expected for his book. We'll see how this story pans out over the next few days, but I expect that the controversy provoked by the cancellation of this book launch will increase sales and name recognition for this poet.

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The Presbyterian Moderator has asked the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, to guarantee the savings of members of the Presbyterian Mutual Society, while at the same time confirming that the Presbyterian Church itself 'cannot in any way underwrite the commitments of the Society'. The Presbyterian Mutual Society exists as a separate legal entity from the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, though its membership is restricted to members of the Church. It currently holds some 9,500 shareholders' accounts throughout Ireland. In the year to March 31, 2008, it recorded assets of some Β£300m.

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More accurately, there's been a run on the . The PMS has just announced that 'because of the current exceptional financial circumstances it is unable to meet the demand from its shareholders for withdrawal of funds.' The Society has decided that 'it must now cease making repayments to members', and has 'made approaches to government to seek assistance, including asking for the Financial Services Compensation Scheme to be extended to cover the Society's shareholders.' At this stage the Society has had no definitive response from government.

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A reader of Will & Testament asks: "Has anyone ever been burnt at the stake for claiming the earth wasn't at the centre of the universe?"

Save your postcards and leave some answers for him below.

Paddy Power may be about to lose his money, if a distinguished astrophysicist has his way. Peter Brand (pictured), Emeritus Professor of Astrophysics at the Institute of Astronomy at Edinburgh University, says the presence of God can be uncovered through scientific process. He'll be defending that claim in this year's Archbishop Robinson Lecture, which is organised by the Armagh Observatory. His lecture is titled "God and the Universe" and will be delivered on Thursday, 20th November at 8.00 p.m. in the Fisher Suite of the Armagh City Hotel. Peter Brand is also an ordained elder of the Church of Scotland. I'm hoping to have Professor Brand as one of my guests on Sunday Sequence this weekend.

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One third of teachers say they believe creationism should be taught in schools, according to . The survey also shows strong support for Michael Reiss, who argued recently that science teachers should feel free to discuss creationism in classrooms with a view to showing that this perspective is non-scientific.

Brendan McAllister, one of Northern Ireland's four Commissioners for Victims and Survivors, is now responding to Dennis Bradley's comments. He says the commissioners will study the Bradley-Eames report in the new year before making their own independent recommendations to the government.

I'm chairing a conference on trauma studies today at Queen's University and Dennis Bradley, co-chair of the Consultative Group on the Past has just addressed the conference. He has confirmed that his group's report will not be published before Christmas -- out of respect to those victims for whom Christmas is a particularly difficult time. The publication date, he says, is now early in the new year. He also said his group's report will not recommend an amnesty, nor will they recommend a South-Africa style truth and reconciliation commission.

Blogging live from the conference at the QUB Great Hall.

Here's from Bristol. The story of the former drugs-user who stole boxes of cigarettes from a corner shop in 2001 then, after a change of heart, decided to apologise to the owners and pay back the value of the stolen goods. The reaction of the shop owners is just as impressive.

Richard Dawkins's successor at Oxford University says he will concentrate more on science and less on religion. But he may well re-ignite a debate about religion and science this weekend. On this week's Sunday Sequence, to the of the Public Understanding of Science says he believes the Royal Society 'probably made a mistake' in its approach to the Michael Reiss controversy. Professor Reiss resigned as Director of Education at the Royal Society after a speech he gave to this year's Festival of Science about creationism and evolution mutated into a public row. Michael Reiss had suggested that "[if] a young person raises the issue of creationism in a science class, a teacher should be in a position to examine why it does not stand up to scientific investigation". This was too much for some of members of the Royal Society, including Richard Dawkins, who was quick to point out that Reiss was also a part-time priest in the Church of England.

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The changing pattern of religiously-based voting is one of the key dynamics in this presidential campaign. Look at the figures (based on exit polls): Obama got 43 per cent of weekly church-goers, while McCain got 55 percent. Last time round, in 2004, Bush got 61 per cent to Kerry's 39 per cent. The God gap has narrowed in this election. An increased number of committed Christians were prepared to vote for the Democratic; and fewer committed Christians were prepared to support the Republican candidate. A knock-on effect of the changing religious vote pattern is that issues of importance to the Christian right (e.g., abortion, homosexuality, stem cell research) failed to dominate this election. Barack Obama will name at least more Supreme Court justice during his tenure (it's more likely that he'll name two). He has pledged to protect Roe v. Wade. His election guarantees reproductive rights for American women for another generation (or two). That's what was at stake for the Christian right. And yet they still could not mobilize the kind of support that helped to re-elect George Bush in 2004. The role of religion in American presidential politics has changed dramatically.

Steven Waldman, , lays out the changing dynamic and explains how the landscape has changed.

"If there is anyone out there who still doubts that America is a place where all things are possible; who still wonders if the dream of our founders is alive in our time; who still questions the power of our democracy, tonight is your answer. It's the answer told by lines that stretched around schools and churches in numbers this nation has never seen; by people who waited three hours and four hours, many for the very first time in their lives, because they believed that this time must be different; that their voice could be that difference. It's the answer spoken by young and old, rich and poor, Democrat and Republican, black, white, Latino, Asian, Native American, gay, straight, disabled and not disabled - Americans who sent a message to the world that we have never been a collection of Red States and Blue States: we are, and always will be, the United States of America."

That's how Barack Obama began an extraordinarily inspirational speech, responding to John McCain's remarkably gracious concession speech, in the early hours of Wednesday morning. I stayed up very late, in the end, to hear this speech delivered live to a global audience. This oration must surely earn a place in the history of American rhetoric; it is one of the most moving speeches I've ever heard. Perhaps you will be moved to rank it in comparison with other great political speeches of the past half-century or so. I suspect it will bear comparison.

Read on for the full text of the speech. Or watch the speech in this clip.

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Amid all the history-making on TV last night, there were a few bizarre moments. Of these, the most bizarre was this interview David Dimbleby attempted to conduct with that distinguished American man of letters Gore Vidal. The result is variously hilarious and painful.

I am about to go to bed after a US election-night party at the home of my friend. Although David Dimbleby is being extremely careful not to call this election for Obama -- yet -- even after Ohio, the party I was at called it mathematically when Obama won Pennsylvania. As I write, Fox News is projecting 207-138 in Obama's favour. Meanwhile, John Bolton, the former US Ambassador to the UN, is challenging claims that Obama is about to secure a 'landslide' victory. By most definitions I can find, a presidential landslide is defined by 55 per cent of the popular vote or 60 per cent of the electoral vote. By current projections, it looks like Senator Obama could well be elected president tonight in a landslide victory of historic proportions. The much-feared Bradley effect failed to materialize. And soon after polls closed in east coast states, McCain strategists were already speaking of his candidacy in the past tense. They are now on TV shows explaining defeat in terms a collapses economy and denying that McCain's selection of Sarah Palin harmed his bid for the presidency. However they explain it, no one doubts that America is going to bed tonight having just elected its first black president.

As this mathematical analysis shows, McCain needs Pennsylvania to win this election by any formulation. In other words, if Pennsylvania goes to Obama, he takes the White House with it.

And more on the qualifications of Sarah Palin. Larry Eagleburger knows a thing or two about foreign policy. He served as George HW Bush's secretary of state. So when he told a journalist that Sarah Palin was unlikely to be a "genius" as vice-president an is currently not ready for the job, his words were pounced on by the Obama team. Eagleburger has now "qualified" his original comment (). One has the impression of a man who's just received the talking points email -- late.

Ken Duberstein, Reagan's former White House chief of staff, has also questioned Palin's readiness for the job. Worse still, Duberstein said that even McDonald's interviews job candidates more than once before making appointments.

More and more Republicans are stepping forward to belatedly express their disbelief that McCain chose such an apparently unqualified candidate. In July, McCain said on live television that the candidate's choice of a VP running mate would be the first serious indication of his judgement as a future president. Those words now haunt his campaign.

The contrast with Democratic voice management couldn't be sharper. Even Obama's opponents are impressed with the consistency of narrative his team has presented, and the speed with which his team has put out fires. This race isn't over yet, but on the eve of the election, senior Republicans seem curiously willing to engage in a postmortem in television interviews.

Never let it be said that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ is unprepared to be criticised on its own airwaves. For a week now, the Russell Brand-Jonathan Ross debacle has played out on Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ news programmes and discussion programmes. When the director-general faced the cameras, his toughest interviews were with Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ journalists and presenters. Even those politicians who have signed a critical early-day motion in Parliament, have been quick to compliment Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ coverage of what some news outlets have called "The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ Scandal".

If you have been on holiday on Mars for the past two weeks, you may find of the prank calls incident helpful. Needless to day, it's a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ news timeline.

We'll be debating some of the questions at issue in the media storm around the Russell Brand Show. We'll be focusing on some of the more directly moral issues, but there are many others too, including concerns about editorial oversight. Here are some of the issues that have been raised by various voices in this debate:

1. How did this programme get broadcast in the first place? The Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ has one of the strongest systems of editorial oversight in existence. This programme, containing offensive and obscene content, was pre-recorded. Making obscene phone-calls is a criminal offence under the Telecommunications Act (1984) and the Malicious Communications Act (1988). It looks unlikely that Andrew Sachs would wish to pursue any legal redress, but he maintains that he was subsequently given an undertaking that the programme would not be broadcast. Beyond its 25-year old producer, it should have been referred up to a senior producer and other levels of management. Lesley Douglas, the head of Radio 2, has resigned. But questions still remain to be answered by the continuing Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ investigation. Which executive approved this programme for broadcast? Some commentators have suggested that the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's editorial guidelines should be revised as a consequence of this affair; but, from what we currently know, it appears that the issue is not the guidelines but a failure to follow those guidelines by a small number of Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ staff. Were senior managers slow to act in the face of growing public concern, or were they being appropriately careful not to over-react in the face of only two complaints that followed the transmission of the programme?

2. Is this a credit-crunch story in disguise? Jonathan Ross is said to earn Β£6m annually for three Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ programmes (two weekly television shows and one weekly radio show). Russell Brand is also a high-earning entertainer, with the potential for even more earnings as a Hollywood actor. Is some of the outpouring of anger at these performers partly motivated by resentment that they are earning so much money?

3. Jonathan Ross was a guest on the Russell Brand Show. He is also a Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ employee with a contractual obligation not to bring the corporation into disrepute. But a guest on a pre-recorded programme does not take decisions about editing and transmission of material. He has been suspended for three months, which represents a loss of earnings in excess of Β£1m. Is this a sufficient penalty? Will the viewing and listening public welcome him back into their homes in January? Russell Brand has resigned from the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ.

4. Ross and Brand engaged in a kind of improvisational comedy on the show. They played off each other, without a safety net. They are edgy, verbal, creative comic performers who engage in high-risk comedy. This is what they do for a living; this is the key to their success. Sometimes a joke goes too far, as it clearly did in this case. But in the context of a pre-recorded programme, they were also clearly avoiding self-censorship, perhaps assuming that their words would be approved for compliance with Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ regulations by content managers. If this programme had been broadcast live, they would merit more condemnation; which is another way of saying, their responsibilities are more limited in the context of a pre-recorded programme.

5. Why did the Brand-Ross debacle lead so many news programmes for so many days? What does this concentrated coverage say about news values? Were editors bored with yet another credit crunch story? Was the displacement of a quarter of a million people in Congo not sexy enough to be a lead story?

6. Was this a manufactured media storm promoted by opponents of the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ licence fee?

7. When the dust settles on this dispute, how will it change the Βι¶ΉΤΌΕΔ's relationship with its audience? Will we significantly rewrite rules on taste and decency? Will we tighten controls on high-wire comedy, banning more words and circumscribing more subjects as out of bounds? Is there a danger that puritanical approaches to broadcasting could, in the future, call a halt to creativity in comedy and drama?