As a card carrying member of the CofE - at least, I would be if we had cards - I have serious problems understanding anyone who claims to be a fellow believer and thinks that - somehow - 'it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than it is for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven' doesn't apply to them. Sorry, all this 'riches are the reward for the devout' palavar is heresy and should be viewed as such.

The problem with the American fundamentalists is that they have bought the Francis Fukayama thesis wholesale - after all, it strokes them the way they like to be stroked - and don't begin to realise that it is - like so much populist American 'academic' theory - so much crap. History hasn't ended developing (how can it? If it had, it would be dead, like any other organism. Maybe it is, but I don't think that's what Francis meant) The Texan wing of the GOP is not the Krown of Kreation (to borrow a phrase from my flowerchild youth). In fact, they resemble none so much as the Bourbons (no, not the biscuits)

As for the fundamentalists of Riyadh, well, at last somebody has displaced Lord Home. If you looked at every trouble spot in the world from Munich to Zimbabwe you would have seen the grinning skull of Sir Alec, stirring it as though his name was Palmerstone. Since 1967, however, he has been usurped by some anonymous Wahabi cleric paid for by that friend of freedom and democracy everywhere, the theocratic Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. With friends like Fahd and his children, nobody has any need of enemies, but they'll be getting them.

As for your conspiracy theory, Charles, it is entertaining but - like all conspiracy theories, ultimately diverting (speaking of which, it look as though the IRA wasn't involved in the Bank of Ireland raid - at least, not the political wing (let's not get into that divide just now) - any more than there was an IRA spy ring at Stormont - all charges dropped.