Those wishing to leave Islam and its culture behind are surely the least likely to replicate those conditions abroad. But in any case, for all Islam's faults, the Syrian war is primarily political, not religious.

The question is, what is that the migrants are trying to leave behind, and what would we therefore be returning them to? In most cases, probably not the imminent threat of death. But in Syria's neighbouring countries, they are mostly confined to camps, unable to work. There's presumably a reason why they're desperate enough to risk drowning to reach Europe.

Our current policy is the worst of all worlds: encouraging them to come, but forcing them to turn to people smugglers to do so. Allow them to come by legal means, and none of them will drown.

In defence of Revd. Mann, it is possible that the liberal preoccupation with the mistreatment of certain minorities - usually ethnic and sexual minorities - might undermine a more general anti-bullying message by encouraging too great a focus on these highly politicised forms of bullying.

Feminists are often quite dismissive of the idea of misandry, which may be a consequence of viewing everything through the prism of patriarchy, and likewise the notion that, say, a Christian could be a victim, rather than an oppressor of minorities, may be dismissed by teachers in thrall to the politically correct narrative of victimhood.

Well, there was no decline in the rate of smoking between 2007 and 2009 - as even this shamelessly partisan BBC article concedes http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-18628811 - and there is nothing, to my knowledge, that suggests that any decline since is due to the smoking ban, or indeed any of the other measures you refer to.

This is at least an honest argument for the smoking ban. But against the benefits of cleaner air in pubs (which I as a non-smoker gladly concede) you have to weigh the pleasure denied to smokers, the infringement of the property rights of publicans, and, perhaps most importantly, the pubs, clubs, casinos, bingo halls and so on put out of business by the ban.

'I'd say that last percentage was a policy win.'

How do you figure that? Why assume that it has anything to do with government policy? And which policy are you referring to exactly? Surely not the smoking ban - the rate of smoking has remained the same nationally since 2007.

As this piece suggests, contrary to Malthusian assumptions, overpopulation is a product of poverty more than poverty is of overpopulation. This is of course because the poor need a large number of children in work just to sustain themselves.

A case in point: 'In 1953 a team from the Harvard School of Public Health came to Manupur [a village in India] to try out one of the world's first family planning programs... They... instructed people about modern methods of birth control and handed out free contraceptives.

The Harvard team expected that the birth rate would fall... At the beginning of the Harvard study their birth rate was about 40 babies per 1000 people per year. Six years later the birth rate had gone down a little, to 37.7. But the birth rate had also gone down all over the Punjab, even where there were no family planning programs.

The Harvard researchers concluded that the villagers were not so ignorant after all. Family size had always been controlled with crude methods such as abstinence and self-induced abortion. Increasing prosperity caused people to want smaller families, because there was less need for children to work in the fields or support parents in their old age. Once that happened, birth rates went down.

Mamdani [another investigator] reported that only the rich in Manupur used birth control. The poorer the person he interviewed, the more that person needed many children simply to stay alive... The villagers informed Mamdani that they had never used Harvard's contraceptives.

By 1982 the village's population was 2400, double what it had been in the 1950s. Most of the mud houses had been rebuilt with brick and cement. Nearly half the farmers owned tractors. School enrollment had increased greatly... The birth rate was down to 31 per 1000.'

Not allowing the niqab to be worn on state property would be tantamount to banning it, since any property that is not privately owned is state-owned, including most public areas. No-one has any choice but to use these, and of course everyone has to pay for them as well, so they should be treated differently from private property.

'Rather, it's about sending a message about what kind of society we want to see.'

This seems to me to be the crux of the debate. Proposals to ban the niqab are just another manifestation of gesture politics, a way of appeasing the 'something must be done' brigade, rather like the recurring bans on new legal highs, which are ostensibly designed 'to send a message', but which nobody expects will be seriously enforced or do anything to stop the emergence of more such drugs.

Banning the veil would likely make the situation worse for those few women who are forced to wear it, while having little effect on the attitudes responsible (other perhaps than to inflame tensions between extremist Muslims and the state).

I am, however, of the view that employers and private institutions should be free to discriminate against women who wear the veil. A former teacher of mine confessed to us on one occasion that he would not consider employing a woman who wore one, for obvious reasons, and it seems to me quite wrong that he should be liable to be dragged before some tribunal for exercising his best judgement.

Following the lead of the 'Jedi census phenomenon', as Wikipedia describes it, those of us who object to such questions should answer 'Prefer not to say' whenever and wherever possible. As well as being an effective form of protest, this would allow anyone reticent about disclosing their sexuality not to do so without it looking as though they have something to hide.