In the run-up to the general election, all the political parties trying to win your vote using the NHS card. They make all these wild promises, but what is going on behind the scenes? Labour -- Gordon Brown's health team is promising something for everyone:  the public can have whatever they want

I took my daughter to see the film Avatar the other day. In some ways it’s a predictable film, given the director. His film Titanic was about how much happier the poor are, dancing round their fire - I ask you? A fire on a transatlantic liner? Whereas the rich are portrayed as nasty and with petty problems.

Avatar is about how much happier people are when they live in harmony with the forest, than the “other” people constantly chasing money.

We need to consider what we, as organisations and individuals, can do to reduce our own carbon footprints. It’s all very well to talk about it, but this winter, this extreme weather, shows just how close global warming could be. For Britain, global warming doesn’t mean getting warmer, it means getting colder – we’re on the same latitude as Alaska, and we should expect that sort of weather.

So what is Christian about Christmas? The date? By all accounts Jesus was born sometime in March not December. The decorations and festivities? Far more likely to be connected with the Roman feast of saturnalia. In this feast, women dressed up as men, saved as masters, and in the British versions (Lord of Unrule, and Abbott of Unreason), the law courts were closed for 20 days which meant that any law breaking would go unpunished.