Up until last week, I was a member of i-church's Council - a group of volunteers that had been responsible for leading the church since its last Web Pastor stood down last summer.

i-church is ultimately owned by the Anglican Diocese of Oxford, who have recently asserted their authority over the community in no uncertain terms, and who really pushed me to want to leave.

It took us ages to move servers in the end, what with work and life doing their level best to get in the way. But we're back now, and both making personal promises to write more, and more often.

Abi's sock monster business is growing, and she's just had a successful day with a stall at the Sheffield Green Fair. She almost bought a coffee shop recently, but after a lot of business planning decided it wasn't a strong enough proposition. Rather than waste all the entrepreneurial advice she got, however, she's getting involved with the City of Sanctuary Cafe project in town.

Hmmm... after reading With friends like these ... I think I'll look around nervously and sneak out of the Facebook community.

You'd think it was simple, wouldn't you? Gay Iranian woman comes to England and claims asylum (asylum means 'a place of safety'. It seems many people have forgotten this). Homosexuality is illegal in Iran; her partner was arrested. tortured, and sentenced to death by stoning, her father was arrested and tortured to reveal her wherabouts. It isn't like the Iranian authorities don't know about her. Do we take her in? Welcome her and comfort her with open arms?

Excuse me for being a bit thick, but why do our toilets have U-bends? What purpose do they serve? Surely if the waste went down a straight pipe we'd need less than the standard 8 litres of water to flush it down?

I'm trying to save water at the moment, so does anyone have an answer for me?

We in the West don't like to change. Oh we like the idea of it, sure enough. We like leaping on our high horses about climate change and 'Doing Our Bit'. But it would seem we're only happy to Do Our Bit if we can do it within our own comfort zone. Look around you. Look at Smart cars, bio-diesel, carbon off-setting and kerbside recycling. How to save the planet without actually having to lift a finger. How about, and here's a radical thought; how about not owning a car at all. How about not flying. How about using less in the first place; buying goods that are already recycled, so that all the paper and glass and plastic you so dutifully sort actually makes a difference, instead of being stored in a container in Liverpool docks because there's no market for recycled paper, or green glass.

I find the reaction to Sony's PS3 Game, Resistance: Fall of Man really interesting. The game reportedly depicts a bloody shoot-out inside Manchester Cathedral - something which church leaders have described as "desecration".

The following letter of complaint to Ofcom was written by our friend Josie Wexler and is published here with her kind permission. It raises a plethora of objections to Channel 4's 8th March 2007 screening of The Great Global Warming Swindle by documentary-maker Martin Durkin.

I found it depressing watching. I hope Ofcom takes action against Channel 4 over this, for the reasons Josie articulates so well. However, I suspect the screening has already done its damage: it is now being cited triumphantly on the blogs of those in climate-change denial.

One day there'll be a page here just for recipes, but until then I'll just drop them randomly into my blog.

I'd never made chocolate brownies before today, they just seemed too extravagant - I mean, a whole block of real chocolate, just for cooking with? Then a certain supermarket employed a Jedi Knight for a day (probably hired from one of those charity shops I mysteriously have to go into) and made me buy a big slab of "quality" cooking chocolate because it was broken and thus reduced. Sigh.

Anyway, I dug out a recipe given me by a friend (thanks Charlotte!) ages ago, and set to work. It scared me a bit at first: Cocoa powder *and* chocolate?! But heck, who am I to argue? And my life they are delicious.