Britain is no longer a Christian nation  If recent trends are any guide, many Church of England parishes will have been cheered by higher attendances at Easter services. The last published statistics for 2006/7 show rises of 7 and 5 per cent in church going at Christmas and Easter.   By the Rt Rev Paul Richardson
Published: 11:36PM BST 27 Jun 2009 But these figures are just about the only signs of hope for the church and certainly not the first green shoots of a revival. Other statistics make for gloomy reading. Annual decline in Sunday attendance is running at around 1 per cent. At this rate it is hard to see the church surviving for more than 30 years though few of its leaders are prepared to face that possibility. In the short term we are likely to see more closures of buildings as the church battles to meet a big pension bill, pay clergy, and maintain a large bureaucracy. To its credit, the church has been successful at getting members to give, but larger donations cannot offset the fall in numbers. At present the church is struggling to maintain 16,200 buildings, many of them old and listed with 4,200 listed Grade I. If decline continues, Christian Research has estimated that in five years' time church closures will accelerate from their present rate of 30 a year to 200 a year as dwindling congregations find the cost of keeping them open too great. Perhaps the most worrying set of statistics for the Church of England is the decline in baptisms. Out of every 1,000 live births in England in 2006/7 only 128 were baptised as Anglicans. The figure rises by a small amount if adult baptism and thanksgiving services are included but it is hard to see the Church of England being able to justify its position as the established church on the basis of these numbers. By way of contrast, out of every 1,000 live births in England in 1900, 609 were baptised in the Church of England. Figures for church marriages show an equally catastrophic decline. The church is being hit by a double whammy: on the one hand it confronts the challenge of institutional decline but on the other hand it has to face the rise of cultural and religious pluralism in Britain. How it responds to the second challenge will be crucial in determining whether it will be able to survive as a viable organisation and make a contribution to national life. At present church leaders show little signs of understanding the situation. They don't understand the culture we now live in. Many bishops prefer to turn their heads, to carry on as if nothing has changed, rather than face the reality that Britain is no longer a Christian nation. Many of them think that we are still living in the 1950s – a period described by historians as representing a hey day for the established church. The coronation brought church and nation…

 Why journalists deserve low pay The demise of the news business can be halted, but only if journalists commit to creating real value for consumers and become more involved in setting the course of their companies. By Robert G. Picard from the May 19, 2009 edition Christian Science Monitor
Oxford, England - Journalists like to think of their work in moral or even sacred terms. With each new layoff or paper closing, they tell themselves that no business model could adequately compensate the holy work of enriching democratic society, speaking truth to power, and comforting the afflicted. Actually, journalists deserve low pay. Wages are compensation for value creation. And journalists simply aren't creating much value these days. Until they come to grips with that issue, no amount of blogging, twittering, or micropayments is going to solve their failing business models. Where does value come from? Moral philosophers differentiate intrinsic and instrumental value. Intrinsic value involves things that are good in and of themselves, such as beauty, truth, and harmony. Instrumental value comes from things that facilitate action and achievement, including awareness, belonging, and understanding. Journalism produces only instrumental value. It is important not in itself, but because it enlightens the public, supports social interaction, and facilitates democracy. Economic value is rooted in worth and exchange. It is created when finished products and services have more value – as determined by consumers – than the sum of the value of their components. To comprehend journalistic value creation, we need to focus on the benefits it provides. Journalism creates functional, emotional, and self-expressive benefits for consumers. Functional benefits include providing useful information and ideas. Emotional benefits include a sense of belonging and community, reassurance and security, and escape. Self-expressive benefits are provided when individuals identify with the publication's perspectives or opinions, or when they're empowered to express their own ideas. These benefits used to produce significant economic value. Not today. That's because producers and providers have less control over the communication space than ever before. In the past, the difficulty and cost of operation, publication, and distribution severely limited the number of content suppliers. This scarcity raised the economic value of content. That additional value is gone today because a far wider range of sources of news and information exist. The primary value that is created today comes from the basic underlying value of the labor of journalists. Unfortunately, that value is now near zero. The total value is the value of content plus the value of advertising. However, advertisers don't care about journalism – only the audience that it produces. Thus the real measure of journalistic value is value created by serving readers. What are journalists worth? Economic outcomes have traditionally held low priority for journalists. That's got to change. Journalists are not professionals with a unique base of knowledge such as professors or electricians. Consequently, the primary economic value of journalism derives not from its own knowledge, but in distributing the knowledge of others. In this process…

 Leading article: The pursuit of MPs is becoming a witch-hunt The abuse of expenses is serious, but we need a sense of perspective   Saturday, 23 May 2009  Another week of revelations of MPs' expenses, another seven days of humiliation for the mother of parliaments. A welter of juicy details involving ornamental duck houses and tree consultants has tumbled forth to join what we already know about massage chairs, moats and bathplugs. The scandal has claimed the scalp of Michael Martin, who becomes the first House of Commons Speaker in three centuries to be ejected from office. Related articles Voters turn on main parties Ex-SAS officer is expenses whistleblower Nadine Dorries: This is a witch hunt – the torture must end Chris Mullin: Contrary to opinion, we're not all at it Cameron tells rebel: 'One more squeak and you're out' Brown warned reshuffle may fall victim to turmoil over expenses Front-runners stumble in the race for Speaker 'I have no wish to be represented by a thief' Yet, after a fortnight of bloodshed on the green benches of Westminster, the public reaction to this matter is in danger of getting out of hand. The tone of the debate has become hysterical. What began as a justified critique of MPs' behaviour has degenerated into crude bullying. And the row is now in danger of eroding the democratic health of the nation.No one disputes that The Daily Telegraph had a marvellous story on its hands when it acquired details of every expense claim made by MPs going back four years. And the newspaper had every right to expose questionable conduct from our parliamentarians. Our democracy functions best when our politicians are kept under close scrutiny by the media. Yet the manner in which this newspaper has been delivering these revelations, day after day, is in danger of doing more harm than good to our body politic.A drawn-out scandalThe damage the drawn-out nature of the scandal is inflicting in Westminster should not be underestimated. It is right that Mr Martin announced his resignation this week. The Speaker had been at the forefront of efforts to prevent the disclosure of MPs' expenses and was far too compromised a figure to preside over the reforms the Commons so evidently needs.But elsewhere the impact of the scandal has been far from just. Party leaders have been panicked into imposing summary justice on those MPs fingered by The Daily Telegraph. Worse, as Lord Tebbit pointed out yesterday, there is a perception that the Labour and Tory leaderships are protecting their allies, while throwing the rest to the wolves.The result is that some of the guilty appear to have been let off the hook, while others have been unfairly punished. The events of recent weeks have left many decent MPs disillusioned with politics. In our rush to shame those MPs who have raided the public purse, we risk demoralising the majority…

  Leaders worried by the rise of people power in Iran      Rory McCarthy in Jerusalem, Martin Chulov in Baghdad, Hugh Macleod in Beirut and Ian Black guardian.co.uk, Thursday 18 June 2009 22.08 BST Article history
Arab states – and Israel – are watching intently as Iran's political convulsions continue, seeking clues to how the unfolding crisis will affect the strategic picture in the Middle East, especially the key issue of the Islamic republic's nuclear ambitions.In a region where democratic politics are the exception, there is nervousness about the implications of people power on the streets of Tehran. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is deeply unpopular – but mass protests worry all autocrats.Israel Officially and in public, at least, Israeli officials have spoken of their deep concern about Ahmadinejad's apparent re-election. Israel's rightwing government, under the leadership of prime minister Binyamin Netanyahu, has made a priority of challenging Iran's nuclear ambitions. On Sunday night, Netanyahu said the world's greatest challenge today was "the nexus between radical Islam and nuclear weapons".In private, Israeli officials appeared to be hoping for an ­Ahmadinejad victory even before the polls opened, despite his vitriolic ­criticism of Israel, his denial of the ­Holocaust and his apparent eagerness for a nuclear weapons programme.Israeli newspapers quoted several senior officials anonymously saying that a win for Ahmadinejad would help Israel because, as they saw it, none of the candidates differed very much on policy and Ahmadinejad's strong language and blunt actions made him easier to criticise internationally. "Considering the circumstances, he is the best thing that ever happened to us," one foreign ministry official was quoted as saying in the popular Ma'ariv newspaper last Friday.Ben Caspit, a Ma'ariv columnist, put it even more bluntly that morning: "If you have friends in Iran, try to convince them to vote for Mahmoud Ahmadinejad today … There is no one who will serve Israel's PR interests better than him."Far fewer were the voices who questioned that line of thinking. Among them was Aluf Benn, a Ha'aretz ­columnist who dismissed the support for Ahmadinejad as a "blatant manifestation of the narrow horizons of Israeli strategic thinking".LebanonRecently emerging from their own political upheavals, savvy Lebanese see much of themselves in the people politics unfolding in Tehran."It reminds me of our protests," said Haitham Chamas, an activist who helped organise protests in 2005 that brought a million Lebanese on to the streets calling for democratic reforms and the fall of the government.Just as in Tehran, that opposition was swiftly answered by a huge rally in ­support of the incumbent regime, organised then by Hezbollah, which is allied with Iran and Syria.Chamas and friends have spent the last week talking of little else but what the historic events unfolding in Iran could mean for Lebanon, where Iranian financing of Hezbollah has divided opinion like never before. The…

   Drug firms keep up search for female Viagra By Marie McCullough Philadelphia Inquirer Staff Writer  The pharmaceutical industry's push to find a female version of Viagra has been full of letdowns. Despite a decade of testing pills, patches, gels, nasal sprays, and vaginal rings, there is still no approved drug for "female sexual dysfunction." More than a dozen drugs that reached late-stage testing have been abandoned, shelved, or recycled for unrelated problems. Market analysts still see multibillion-dollar opportunity in female sexual complaints. And two drugs - LibiGel and Flibanserin - doggedly aspire to become the first to win the FDA's imprimatur. But female sex disorders have turned out to be far more difficult to define and quantify, let alone fix, than erectile dysfunction. Kathy Kelley, the Texas founder of HysterSisters, a Web site for women who have had hysterectomies, testified before the U.S. Food and Drug Administration about the clear-cut need for drug therapies. But she also understands how complex and individual those needs are. "The brain is a woman's primary sex organ," she said in an interview. Different from men With the 1998 approval of the first male impotence drug, entrepreneurs, researchers, and many members of the fairer sex began lusting after a "pink" version. Indeed, the first drugs to be tested in women were blood-vessel dilating agents that included Viagra and Cialis. The hope was that women would follow the classic male model of sexual response - interest, arousal, orgasm. They did not. Pfizer Inc.'s research showed that genital blood flow increased in Viagra-treated women as they watched erotic videos, but the arousal did not make them desire sex. The complexity of female response has kindled intense debate. How to distinguish normal from abnormal, physiological from psychological, discontent from debilitation? The answers have financial implications, especially as most drugs for women have been designed to be used regularly and indefinitely, not just as needed to prime the pump. "In order to get insurance coverage, you have to prove this is a defined medical disorder that is really disrupting your life," said Leslie Sandberg, a market analyst at Trinity Partners in Waltham, Mass. "The vast majority of Viagra sales are cash pay; infrequently is it covered." In 2000, the FDA issued preliminary guidelines to help companies plan human studies of drugs for female sexual complaints. The guidelines - still not finalized - reflected the consensus that had emerged among sex experts at industry-supported conferences around that time. The FDA said that although "the definition of FSD continues to evolve," it "currently" has four "components:" decreased desire, decreased arousal, sexual pain, and orgasm difficulties. A woman with any one of these is dysfunctional - but only if she feels "personal distress" about it. Sex experts had added distress to diagnostic criteria for female sexual dysfunction in 1998, publishing a report in the Journal of Urology and the Journal of Sex and Marital Therapy. The addition was a recognition that some women are happy with sexual inactivity, but it…