So we mustn't let that happen, must we? Oh no, it's not just the horrible old Tories who are saying they're bad, it's the nice Labour Party too! So it's all right to treat them like shit!"Perhaps the weapons problem in schools has gone too far and we are never going to disarm teenagers or younger kids, so maybe we should just teach them how to deal responsibly with knives. Individuals accused of murder with knives often say such things as "Oh, I never meant for them to actually die". Well, you should bear in mind that if you carry a knife people will die if they have the misfortune to get on the end of it.Maybe we need to give schoolchildren better anatomy lessons and show them the areas of the body they can stab without fear of actually killing someone. Just as a five-year-old in America has so little idea of the effect of a gun, apart from some cartoon one on the telly, so an 11-year- old cannot really have much idea what will happen if they wave a knife around. Alternatively, perhaps we should follow our dads' advice and put these kids in the army. Oh sorry, forgot - that's another prime breeding ground for bullies.. It is Easter weekend and thousands of men up and down the country are driving to vast, cathedral-like buildings on the edge of town.

They park their cars and lead their families inside, striding up the nearest aisle in preparation for a familiar ritual. Half an hour later, they emerge: the children fractious, the mother bored, the father eager to put into practice the advice he has gleaned during this annual visit. To alien beings visiting Earth for the first time, the obvious conclusion would be that they are all worshippers at the shrine of the great god B&Q. It is Easter weekend and thousands of men up and down the country are driving to vast, cathedral-like buildings on the edge of town.

They park their cars and lead their families inside, striding up the nearest aisle in preparation for a familiar ritual. Half an hour later, they emerge: the children fractious, the mother bored, the father eager to put into practice the advice he has gleaned during this annual visit. To alien beings visiting Earth for the first time, the obvious conclusion would be that they are all worshippers at the shrine of the great god B&Q. Even during one of the most important festivals in the Christian calendar, it is a fair bet that many more people will get down to a bit of DIY than visit their local church. B&Q estimates that 26 million people will start tiling the bathroom or stripping floorboards this weekend, activities only distantly linked to Easter's traditional significance as a cycle of suffering, death and resurrection At least I think that is what it is supposed to be. Growing up in a non-religious household, my parents and I exchanged Easter eggs on Good Friday, a custom which later drew a stern rebuke from a boyfriend who had been raised in a devout Anglican household.This struck me as odd, not because I had been getting it wrong all those years, but because he was an atheist. So what if we were tucking into our chocolate eggs on the wrong day? Looking back on it, I suppose he was a cultural Christian, in the way that non-believing friends of mine from the Middle East regard themselves as cultural Muslims.

If we are honest, this is the only sense in which we can still claim to be living in a Christian country, given that the vast majority of us no longer go to church, as this paper reported only last Sunday.This is a very good thing. Whatever the denomination, religion is a mixture of myth and superstition that provides a woefully inadequate basis for the kind of morality we need in a modern democracy. I know this flies in the face of received wisdom, which links the decline in church attendance with increasing materialism. People cannot behave well, it is claimed, unless they have divine guidance, such as the Ten Commandments For atheists, this is a non sequitur.