I was just on a bus coming back from my daily trundle, when I heard some people behind me talking about religion. They weren’t being particularly loud or offensive, just chatting about which church they go to and what pastor they liked. Even so, I felt a very strong urge to turn around in my powerchair and tell them not to sound so proud about their baseless delusions. On days like this especially, it infuriates me that people still cling to such nonsense, and that we as a society have yet to outgrow what boils down to a form of social control based on a few anachronistic myths. The fact that it happens to be easter was the lead item on all of today’s BBC news bulletins, as if the inane spewings of some self-appointed men in silly robes and hats are as important as what is currently happening in Ukraine or the middle east, or as though such mystics hold the authority of elected politicians or academics, frankly struck me as perverse.

Yet this afternoon I kept myself to myself and said nothing. To have made such an intervention would just have been rude. As much as the idea of people worshiping a supposedly loving, all powerful god sickens me, at the end of the day I know that, in a multicultural, multi-ethnic world city like London, human diversity must be respected. That includes religion, faith, superstition or whatever you want to call it. We might urgently need to outgrow such divisive, anachronistic, oppressive social mechanisms, but shouting at people on busses won’t help.