Whatever we may think of the appropriateness of what General Sir Richard Dannatt said to the Daily Mail last week, his honesty is welcome. His remarks about the invasion and occupation of Iraq overshadowed some other comments on the ‘moral and spiritual vacuum’ in Britain today. ‘Our society’, he said, ‘has always been embedded in Christian values; once you have pulled the anchor up there is a danger that our society moves with the prevailing wind. … It is said we live in a post-Christian society. I think that is a great shame.’

‘We are not consumers of what God has made,’ writes Rowan Williams in his foreword to the Church of England report Sharing God’s Planet, which has just been published to coincide with the implementation of the Kyoto Agreement. ‘We are in communion with it.’ This is supported with biblical and theological reflection, some of which may raise new issues for those Christians who understand the gospel essentially in terms of human sin and salvation.

Alan Bennett's new play (at the Lyttleton Theatre, London) is about - to use Tony Blair's famous phrase - education, education, education. It is set in a northern grammar school in the 1980s. The headmaster (with a geography degree from Hull) is determined that his brightest boys should win places at Oxford or Cambridge.

Choice is one of the key indicators of prosperity, happiness and hope. Those who have no choices in life have no prospect of changing their circumstances.

This was graphically illustrated in a programme on BBC2 recently, which focussed on life in a remote village in Ethiopia. Even in years when there is no drought, the people survive – living and partly living, in T S Eliot’s immortal phrase – on food aid when they have it and on weeds when they don’t. This is one end of the scale in the 21st-century world.