Speaking to his congregation on Sunday, Father Jones said: “My advice, as a Christian priest, is to shoplift.

“I do not offer such advice because I think that stealing is a good thing, or because I think it is harmless, for it is neither.

“I would ask that they do not steal from small, family businesses, but from national businesses, knowing that the costs are ultimately passed on to the rest of us in the form of higher prices.

“When people are released from prison, or find themselves suddenly without work or family support, then to leave them for weeks and weeks with inadequate or clumsy social support is monumental, catastrophic folly.

“We create a situation which leaves some people little option but crime.” BBC.

as every other internet smartarse pointed out, both tracks are owned by Sony BMG – so no matter which one sells the most, Simon Cowell wins. In other words, even by raging against the machine, you’re somehow raging within it. Charlie Brooker, The Guardian.

It is a cliché of current punditry that Labour has bought into the Thatcherite settlement on free markets, while the Tories have adopted centre-left positions on social issues and on private morality, and the Lib Dems seek out distinctive niches in this broadly centre-right ecosphere.

At the level of values, there is a lot in that generalisation. That is not to say that there are not differences of substance, especially in the crucial field of macroeconomics. For instance, Brown has fought the recession by deploying Keynesianism for the wealthy, stripped of any social democratic content.

While such measures get few socialist pulses racing, they remain preferable to anything the Old Etonians are likely to come up with. Watch what will happen to GDP once the wingnuts return to the Treasury, and you will soon find yourself nostalgic for good old 0.2% a quarter falls. Dave Osler, Libral Conspiracy.

If he knew he couldn’t actually deliver on the policy, why make pledges in such concrete terms? Is he a con-man, or someone who simply can’t see two steps forward to the consequences of his decisions? (His trip to Georgia during the Georgia-Russia war, to promise them Britain would send troops to fight Russia suggests the latter. What sort of idiot wants to send Britain to war with Russia? What sort of idiot makes these pledges without checking who is in the wrong (the UN concluded that far from being a victim, Georgia had provoked the war)). If Cameron can’t keep cast-iron guarantees to his own supporters, then will he also dump mere promises to look after the NHS? What does he actually believe in? Is he sunshine, is he austerity, is he a weather-vane who can be blown all over the place by people more powerful than him? Snowflake5.