News and Opinion

Last week the Leicester Mercury carried a letter from a parent about the difficulty of getting a Hindu child into a Roman Catholic state school. See Faith-school failings . Today the Mercury publishes an edited version of my response. I don't of course dispute the editorial prerogative, and the gist is little changed, but the mood is somewhat emasculated. Here's what I sent in under the title Good Schools for Everyone It is a very sorry state of affairs when parents like Sabhash Varambhia (Mailbox, 20 March) cannot find a good local school for their children. Mr Varambhia thought the ethos of any so-called ‘faith school’ would be better than a secular one – but found the ethos of English Martyrs (RC) school to be ‘we look after our own – Hindus need not apply’. How starkly does the point need to be made that religious schools are by their very nature sectarian and divisive? Isn’t it time that we did away with the concept of ‘bad schools’? We’re told of the importance of choice

Yes, well, you may or may not know already that I don’t have much time for the word ‘morality’ on account of it being an all-things-to-all-men (and women) concept that is just wheeled out in an attempt to reinforce an argument that lacks any other grounds of persuasion. I’ve even done it myself at times - under pressure! But because of its ubiquity it has become fairly meaningless. There isn’t even enough agreement as to whether it refers to consensual codes of rules or just individual innate gut feelings to make it worthwhile using in debate. Last night at Secular Hall a member of the audience (in responding to the talk about artificial intelligence [AI]) referenced drone weaponry – unmanned aircraft, tanks, machine gun posts, etc. and asked whether the developers of AI ever concerned themselves with the morality of such applications. I pointed out that there was no step change involved here – these weapons were actually controlled by humans but they were based many miles from the

While not being a pacifist I generally support anti-war movements and scrutinise very carefully any plans emerging from our government to go to war over this or that issue. I was on the million plus march against the invasion of Iraq - and I think we made our point over the Taliban's accommodation of Al Quaida in Afghanistan some years ago. It's time to withdraw. While dragging Afghan society into the 20th century (sic) might be a laudable objective the fact is that we won't succeed in doing it. The baggage is too great and the very presence of foreign troops is almost the only reason why the Taliban continues to thrive. As in Iran, the domestic struggle for progress is far more likely to succeed than is foreign occupation. The long-planned invasion of Iran will simply make the forces of religious conservatism and intolerance stronger than ever. But one aspect of the anti-war campaign strikes me as more than a little odd. This is the concentration on the level of British ca