ELSEWHERE

Life was meant to be cheesy: Dr Neal Barnard, president of the Physicians Committee on Responsible Medicine, says cheese is addictive because it contains small amounts of morphine from cows' liver. .... 'There's a biochemical reason many of us feel we can't live without our daily fix. Cheese, for example, contains high levels of casein, a protein that breaks apart during digestion to produce morphine-like opiate compounds, called casomorphins.'

Amusing: Carol Johnson supports the ordination of an openly homosexual bishop in the (U.S.) Episcopalian Church. But she also makes clear what sort of Anglican she is: She attends church there because they have pretty ceremonies and no stuffy dogmas: None of that silly old New Testament stuff! As an atheist myself, I wonder why she bothers.

BRITAIN is facing the prospect of co-ordinated strikes that could paralyse the public services as the country’s biggest union prepares to go to war against the Government. No doubt everyone and his dog will be comparing this with the famous “winter of discontent” that brought down the previous Labour government of Jim Callaghan. But in 1979 Callaghan had Thatcher challenging him whereas Blair’s Leader of the Opposition is a pusillanimous nobody.

Iraq: "To hear U.S. officials talk, the key to restoring livable economic conditions is the military working with regulatory agencies, international governmental bodies like the World Bank, and billions in tax dollars. That’s not true, of course. If Iraq is to be rebuilt into a functioning society again, it will be through the efforts of Haydar Hussain and other [individual Iraqis] like him."