Source:31 May 2011

MO was set up with good, democratic intentions, yet description of its measures as "benign surveillance" does now have the whiff of uneasy paradox to it, in an age when the government threatens to monitor our every call, text and email.

The companies will pilot the new technology?with select utility partners over the next few months. The application may eventually support utilities' efficiency programs for light commercial customers as well, depending on the response. Honeywell also says it plans to sell a similar product through residential contractors and retailers.

He has great things to say why does the church cut him off?How disappointing, therefore, that a day later the English bishops' Catholic Communications Network had yet to publish a press release??about the encyclical on . Yet how predictable: the CCN has a track record of overlooking documents from this Pope.In the absence of a proper response from the CCN (annual expenditure: ??315,286) I was going to produce my own summary of Spe Salvi. But I can't improve on Christopher's masterly article. For the full text of the encyclical, click .Let me give you a taste of the richness of Benedict's thinking. In this long paragraph, the Pope takes as his starting point the figure of Christ depicted on early sarcophagi as philosopher and shepherd. Notice the skill with which he blinds together the true purpose of philosophy, its embodiment in Christ, and the relationship between the role of the philosopher and the shepherd (the little grace note referring to Roman pastoral art is classic Ratzinger). The sarcophagi of the early Christian era illustrate this concept visually,in the context of death, in the face of which the question concerning life's meaning becomes unavoidable. The figure of Christ is interpreted on ancient sarcophagi principally by two images: the philosopher and the shepherd. Philosophy at that time was not generally seen as a difficult academic discipline, as it is today. Rather, the philosopher was someone who knew how to teach the essential art: the art of being authentically human,the art of living and dying. To be sure, it had long since been realized that many of the people who went around pretending to be philosophers, teachers of life, were just charlatans who made money through their words, while having nothing to say about real life. All the more, then, the true philosopher who really did know how to point out the path of life was highly sought after. Towards the end of the third century, on the sarcophagus of a child in Rome, we find for the first time, in the context of the resurrection of Lazarus, the figure of Christ as the true philosopher, holding the Gospel in one hand and the philosopher's travelling staff in the other. With his staff, he conquers death; the Gospel brings the truth that itinerant philosophers had searched for in vain. In this image, which then became a common feature of sarcophagus art for a long time, we see clearly what both educated and simple people found in Christ: he tells us who man truly is and what a man must do in order to be truly human. He shows us the way, and this way is the truth. He himself is both the way and the truth, and therefore he is also the life which all of us are seeking. He also shows us the way beyond death; only someone able to do this is a true teacher of life. The same thing becomes visible in the image of the shepherd. As in the representation of the philosopher, so too through the figure of the shepherd the early Church could identify with existing models of Roman art. There the shepherd was generally an expression of the dream of a tranquil and simple life, for which the people, amid the confusion of the big cities, felt a certain longing. Now the image was read as part of a new scenario which gave it a deeper content: "The Lord is my shepherd: I shall not want . Even though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I fear no evil, because you are with me ." (Ps 23 [22]:1, 4). The true shepherd is one who knows even the path that passes through the valley of death; one who walks with me even on the path of final solitude, where no one can accompany me, guiding me through: he himself has walked this path, he has descended into the kingdom of death, he has conquered death, and he has returned to accompany us now and to give us the certainty that, together with him, we can find a way through. The realization that there is One who even in death accompanies me, and with his "rod and his staff comforts me", so that "I fear no evil" (cf. Ps 23 [22]:4),this was the new "hope" that arose over the life of believers.This encyclical fills me with hope for the future of the Church; yet also, paradoxically, with despair, because the intellectual and moral chasm between the Church's chief pastor and our local shepherds has never been greater. And one measure of that chasm is the failure of the bishops to promulgate and explain the teaching of this greatest of modern Popes. Catholics in this country should be ashamed of the Bishops' Conference of England and Wales and its risible "communications network"; I know I am.English Heritage has thrown a spanner in the works of the Catholic Diocese of Leeds and its beanie-wearing bishop, Arthur Roche.

All of which makes me worry, yet again, what will happen if +Peter goes to Westminster.That said, Toulon were quite dreadful. They were complacent and flat, relying on Jonny Wilkinsons boot to provide their 15 points. Only when Cardiff had scored, with the clock ticking down, did they wake from their slumbers and show any urgency. Otherwise they just presumed that their superior power, and a scrummage that became increasingly dominant in the second half, would see them through. That it did not was justice in action. They simply did not deserve to win.