My Sepulchre's Whiter Than Yours

The Church of England is making another effort to squeeze that great, fatty hump through the eye of the needle. Not by selling all that it has and distributing to the poor, of course; such naïve Biblical literalism must be left to the publicans and harlots. Instead, five bishops have made representations to the Sunday Torygraph about New Labour's avarice and moral corruption, as well as the inevitable celibates' jokes about the "breakdown of the family". The bishop of Durham claimed that the Government had not done enough to help the poor, which seems rather ungrateful given the many opportunities for poverty-induced repentance afforded by New Labour's welfare, education and health policies. "Labour made a lot of promises but a lot of them have vanished into thin air", the Bishop said, implicitly contrasting Labour with the sort of people who promise mercy to the merciful, the earth to the meek, and the coming of the Kingdom of Heaven within a single generation of Christ's earthly existence.