The Bishop of Leeds and Ripon has refused to live in his posh house in Ripon, preferring more modest accommodation in Leeds. The Bishop of Southwell is desperate to leave his 22-bedroom palatial accommodation in Nottingham. But others clearly relish living in earthly splendour.At the least, the Church of England must sell its housing in inner cities to landlords with a track record for providing homes for lower-paid workers, not businessmen whose prime interest is in recouping their investemt.Keep up! Skinny jeans man lets his seams outAt the Christian Dior menswear show in Paris last week, Hedi Slimane, the most influential menswear designer in the world, shocked the assembled journalists, pop stars and female fans – such as Charlotte Rampling – when he unveiled baggy trousers! This is the man whose trademark super-skinny jeans were so favoured by Kate Moss, Mick Jagger and Pete Doherty. The tenants have since been told by the new owners that they face 6 per cent rent increases this April and a further 6 per cent next year.Now the church is to sell three more estates in some of the poorest parts of the inner city – Waterloo, Walworth and Vauxhall – for up to £200m, in a deal involving more than 460 homes, many of which are small flats rented by tenants on low incomes.If the Church of England is not in the business of ethical stewardship of its assets and demonstrating a clear sense of social responsibility, then who is? The church’s synod begins tomorrow, and may I suggest that the bishops ask themselves why the church needs more than 40 grand houses, including nine palaces and 13 heritage properties, and for them to show us that “the meek shall inherit the earth”. The church has declared it is not in the business of “social” housing, but is committed to investing in “better-performing” assets.Last year they sold three estates in Stoke Newington, Maida Vale and Waterloo for £70m. At the same time, key workers on low incomes who live in property owned or formerly owned by the Church Commissioners in London are in for some bad news. A week later, it emerged they had spent well over £2m buying a house (and then plan to modernise it) for the next Bishop of Oxford, in a city with an acute housing crisis for lower-income workers.Bishops earn just £40,000 a year, but don’t worry, your pad comes rent-free, even though it would cost about £9,000 a month on the open market.

Last month, it launched an appeal begging us to cough up £60m to save dilapidated churches. Now, after two years of lobbying, more than 200 farms and butchers are selling mutton, with more people discovering it every day.Food is classless, which is why it’s depressing that something which was once so important to the humble workers of this country has ended up being championed by the middle classes and the aristocracy.If we want British eating patterns to change – helping the poor and ill-educated to cook more nutritious fare – then we need roadshows in shopping malls and free samples for schools and pensioners, not black-tie events at hotels in central London.In the church’s portfolio are many mansions…Want to live in an eight-bedroom luxury detached Victorian house with a garden of an acre and a half, worth at least £2.5m? Then I suggest you apply to become the Bishop of Oxford (of course, only men need apply at present, but that’s another issue).The Church of England makes some rum decisions, and how it houses its senior staff is certainly, at best, embarrassing. Mutton tastes great, is good value for money, and is a doddle to cook. So why am I gutted that the Prince of Wales, my particular b? noire, is being feted as the great saviour of this wonderful product? Could it be because I was not invited to the swanky black-tie dinner held last week at the Ritz attended by people who sell, raise and breed mutton, as well as top chefs, food writers and the inevitable celebrities?The guest of honour at this auspicious occasion was HRH, who has been made patron of the Mutton Club for his efforts to revive one of Britain’s most distinctive dishes. So we have an increasing number of pre-packed “baby” vegetables; Lilliputian corn on the cob; weeny little flavourless spinach leaves; dwarf turnips like golf balls; carrots the size of my little finger; aubergines the size of tomatoes and tomatoes the size of marbles.
There’s asparagus that looks like a pack of pencils and baby gem – was there ever a misnomer for this particularly flavour-free salad ingredient? – lettuces that wouldn’t give a hamster a full meal.There are shelves of pallid, bland poussins that have probably never seen daylight; lamb cutlets trimmed so they look like dainty bits of jewellery and fish fillets with all the bones, heads and signs of their watery provenance removed.Since when did food have to be judged by the same criteria as those by which we choose socks, hats or underwear?One of the most soul-destroying aspects of celebrity chefs and TV cooking programmes is that they are obsessed with presentation and not concerned enough with taste.

But tastes change and over the past 20 years the time we spend preparing food has shrunk, just as the time we spend working has increased Mutton needs slow cooking and good root vegetables. It’s not something you can assemble in 20 minutes and garnish with a packet of frozen peas. When you walk around a supermarket today you see products aimed at people who know nothing about cooking or nutrition but everything about fashion and appearance. One hundred and fifty years ago, mutton – meat from sheep more than two years old – was, like oysters, the mainstay of a working-class diet. There is no doubt that many Muslims are angry, but what none of their leaders has successfully explained is why the cartoons justify this extraordinary and belated (they were first published several months ago) degree of outrage. Throughout the Muslim world, millions of people live in miserable conditions, denied basic human rights such as free expression, fair trials and freedom from torture. Publication of a dozen cartoons in Jyllands-Posten, a Danish newspaper most Muslims had not heard of until last year and have certainly never read, does not alter these circumstances one jot.

More from Joan Smith.

Arab governments have withdrawn their ambassadors from Copenhagen, editors who re-published the cartoons in France and Jordan have been fired and there is every sign of the row reaching the fever-pitch of The Satanic Verses affair 17 years ago. In the past few days, Muslim protests against the publication in a Danish newspaper of cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohamed have escalated into violent street demonstrations, threats to kidnap and kill Europeans, a grenade attack on a French cultural centre in Gaza and an incursion into the Danish embassy in Jakarta. As he evolved from pink-cheeked Thatcherite to technocratic Howardist he and his friends nurtured a growing conviction about how a centre-ground strategy might work. This was not a matter of policy but of positioning – and above all of “character”.

More from John Rentoul.