It's the kind of headline that could almost have you wondering whether you had one too many after all on New Year's Eve, and have just woken from a long and boozy slumber to find it's April Fool's Day already. Check the date - it's not 1 April, and these people mean it.

Letting go and giving stakeholders a louder say in how things are run is now - paradoxically - a core component of staying in control for many large organisations, whether capitalist or communist, or a fashionably modern mixture of both.

Guilting children into finishing their dinner with "there are starving families in Africa" might be a well intended and sometimes successful parenting tip, but how much more effective if we could start guilting adults and corporations with the same line.

Christians and the rest of us need to realise that there is a choice to be made between corporate power and real democracy.

Conor's words reflect a general feeling in the Occupy London camp outside St Paul's cathedral that this is a Church that has lost its way. The protest was never aimed at Christianity; it was intended to challenge the corporate greed of big business but, say the protesters, the cathedral's reaction has highlighted just how pervasive the problem is in our society.

In my student days our thermodynamics lecturer gave us a little talk regarding examinations. He started with the usual advice about reading the quest...