MONDAY

I had a question on faith schools. Why does the government impose a fifty per cent cap on people from one faith entering a school? They are not concerned about 100% Catholic or Anglican schools. They are worried about 100% Muslim schools but they refuse to admit it.

Psalm 72:

Truly God is good to the upright, to those who are pure in heart
But as for me, my feet had almost stumbled, my steps had well nigh slipped.
For I was envious of the arrogant, when I saw the prosperity of the wicked.

TUESDAY

I go to the Cosmonauts Exhibition in the Science Museum. There was a strange spiritual movement in Russia at the end of the nineteenth century which proclaimed that man’s salvation could be found in space.

Today the strange poetic reading from Ezekiel 47:

“The angel brought me to the entrance of the Temple, where a stream came out from under the Temple threshold and flowed eastward…”

WEDNESDAY

Today I speak and vote against extension of Sunday trading. One of those exciting lively Commons debates on a moral issue and we win. I quote Lord Sachs on the atomisation of society. Seven-day, twenty-four-hour shopping has not made us any happier.

A beautiful reading from Isaiah today:

“…on every roadway they will graze, and each bare height shall be their pasture. They will never hunger or thirst, scorching wind and sun shall never plague them.”

THURSDAY

We have one of our twice-yearly Public Accounts Commission hearings and I for only the second time chair a Committee of the Whole House and take a division. An amusing experience.

“O Lord remember me out of the love you have for your people.”

FRIDAY

I speak on the deportation of foreign criminals. And my ten minute rule bill on reform of the House of Lords finally bites the dust. Later we have a dinner at the Hickman Hill Hotel in Gainsborough which I always enjoy and it reminds me of my selection there thirty years ago.

Today a passage from John 7. One of those amazing monologues.

“Yes you know me and you know where I come from. Yet I have not come of myself. No, there is one who sent me and I really come from him and you do not know him.”

I could say: and nor do I.

SATURDAY

I let Monty off into the vast Lincolnshire countryside and he vanishes for twenty minutes, bounding back for his piece of chicken. It’s lovely to see him run – he is made for running. I take him to his dog den. He walks round and round in circles with twenty other dogs and is as good as gold.

I do a surgery at Market Rasen and go to our village church to read Psalm 78.

“Give ear, O my people, to my law: incline your ears to the words of my mouth. I will open my mouth in a parable: I will utter dark sayings of old. Which we have heard and known and our fathers have told us. We will not hide them from their children, showing to the generation to come, the praises of the Lord.”