Easter

Quarrelling about the date of Easter has been a Christian pastime for centuries. The chief bone of contention is whether Easter should be held on 14th Nisan in the Jewish calendar — that is, at a fixed point of the lunar month — or whether it should be held on the nearest Sunday to this date. The Celtic church(es) evidently had their own ideas on the question. In the year 651, Queen Eanfleda of Northumbria was fasting on what she regarded as Palm Sunday on the very day that her husband, Oswy, King of Northumbria, was celebrating Easter. Behind the seemingly batty arguments lay the world-changing conviction that Christ’s death and resurrection had been a new Passover.

What seemed this time last year to be a little local difficulty in Ukraine has metastasised to the point where a peace plan drafted in Paris and Berlin may be all that stands in the way of war between the West and Russia. Over the months, many of those watching, appalled, from the safety of the side-lines, have combed history for precedents and parallels that might aid understanding or offer clues as to what might be done. Last spring, after Russia snatched Crimea and appeared ready to grab a chunk of eastern Ukraine too, the favoured comparisons were with Nazi Germany’s 1938 annexation of Sudetenland. It was a parallel that seemed all too plausible, given the Kremlin’s statements about the need to protect Russian 'compatriots' wherever they might live.

First it was a jellyfish that blighted the Prime Minister's Easter break in Lanzarote. Now, according to Trip Advisor, fellow guests at the discreet Casa Tomaren might have had more than the PM's  swarming security detail and travelling aides to worry about. One happy punter writes: 'We just spent a holiday at Casa Tomaren and I wish I had not. After our first night we complained of ants in our beds and in hindsight we should have left straight away but did not want to spoil our holiday. As the holiday progressed our girls got bitten to death by bed bugs and I have picked up some other bug related rash which I have yet to diagnose. I thought they were mosquitos at the time but took the girls to the doctor on my return and was told they were bed bugs.

Another day, another welfare row. The practical outworking of the Government's most controversial idea - that people on welfare should actually be better off in work, continues to spark outrage. Today it is church leaders who line up to try to land punches on Iain Duncan Smith, making an attack on his decision that welfare payments (like the average salary) should not keep pace with inflation. In leading the biggest package of welfare reform since the first foundation stone of social security was laid by William Beveridge, IDS  is familiar with the poverty lobby's ongoing shock-and-awe strategy. Yet like so many who have gone before, today's critics miss the bigger picture.