PRODUCT CONFIDENCE ASK ANY SALES MANAGER and he will tell you how important it is for his sales force to have confidence in the product they are selling. If they are confident that their product is the best on the [...]

MATRIMONIAL AFFAIRS AS THE LAST SHREDS of Government support for marriage disappeared with last month's Budget, I couldn't help wondering why the married person's allowance was removed in an otherwise "pro-family Budget". According to recently-published research commissioned by the Lord [...]

THE FEMALE BARRY HUMPHRIES GERMAINE GREER, the whole woman, Doubleday, 1999, with a massive print run at £16.99 in hardback] is angry again. A woman with an Aga and a comfortable professorship, after all, can afford to be angry. This [...]

Three Kinds of Lies THERE ARE THREE kinds of liar: those who lie with their thoughts, those who lie with words and those who lie with their very lives. The liar of thought, for example, is the individual who is [...]

THE POPE'S PROBLEMS DOWN UNDER PRIESTS EVICT “ROME SPIES” from services, said a surprising headline recently in The Brisbane Courier Mail. Throughout Australia the secular press is reporting the very public brawling between conservatives and liberals within the Roman Catholic [...]

THE STORY AND THE SONG 'THE HYMN-STORY is no substitute for the hymn itself; a second-rate piece of work is not redeemed because it was written by a certain person (ancient or modern!) or under remarkable circumstances.' So says Carl [...]

Babylon Unmasked (Revelation 17:1-18:24) THE BOOK of Revelation has earlier contained an image of the church as a woman clothed in splendour (12:1) but also hidden in the wilderness (12:13-14) to preserve her from Satan’s assaults which are symbolized by [...]

Political Corrections WHILE WE have in the White House a man who is not only a sexual predator, as New Directions' editors noted last month, but almost certainly a rapist as well (a judgment following not only from his victim's [...]

A letter to a young priest, on his appointment to a new living DEAR MARK, Thank you for your letter. I am delighted to hear that you are to be the new parish priest of St John’s and I’m very [...]

John Young examines the new cult of episcopal managerialism, and wonders if there is anything at all to be said for it. THIS IS NOT A SERMON, but even so, I have a text on which these reflections are based, [...]