Britain is the fat champion of Europe; the PM is considering a so-called fat tax. But it’s our choice, it’s our business, it’s not the government’s job to tell us how to eat. It’s another example of our ‘nanny knows best’ culture.e.

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The ‘F’ word is ok, just cheery badinage. ‘Black, in what is thought to be the wrong context, induces apoplexy. Another sign, says Buerk, of ‘a vertiginous decline in civility…a growing coarseness in our public (and private) life’.

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The News of the World became the biggest-selling newspaper by printing as much sordid detail of people’s private lives as it could grub up and get away with. But, remember, ‘we loved it’.

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Yes, bankers have ‘nationalised their risks while privatising their rewards’ – but the St Pauls’ protestors, ‘spoilt children of capitalism, living lives beyond the dreams of previous generations’, offer only ‘vapid sloganising’.

What would Jesus do? they ask. The only possible answer is: God knows.

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As the 7 billionth human being is born, one problem, says Michael Buerk, underpins nearly all others in the world, but it’s the one we don’t talk about: ‘There are too many of us’.

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Britain’s ethnic minorities call our country’s care of the elderly ‘horrible’ and ‘a betrayal’. For them, it’s culturally taboo for strangers to look after the elderly – and they also see the failings of our care home system. Do they have anything to teach the West? Interviewing care home nurses, relatives, and former 'Pensioners Tzar' Joan Bakewell, Louisa Bolch goes On The Inside...

There are 200,000 abortions every year in the UK. Is that too many? Shouldn’t you be able to ask the question without being labelled a nutter? But, in the end, is it the wrong question? Emma Barnett ‘interrogates’ Suzanne Moore of The Guardian and Dr Peter Saunders of the Christian Medical Fellowship.

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We’ve got ourselves into a mess over human rights, says Michael Buerk, especially those enshrined in law. Human rights are not god-given. Human rights don’t come from some natural law. They’re not absolute, or inalienable. They’re qualified, subjective, and fashionable. And they change all the time.

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The war in Iraq claimed many thousands of victims, but forgotten among them were the multitude of religious minorities. First, they faced persecution. Later, many were killed. Finally, thousands were forced into exile. Edward Stourton reports from Iraq.

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Wendy Robbins on Europe’s ‘holocaust’ obfucators’ – growing in number and arguably more dangerous than ‘deniers’

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