It looks pretty clear they are going to back off from the church bashing side of it. And I suspect they'll likely do something similar to reducenthe adverse effect on school concerts and so forth. The bits we are more worried about are just as crazy, but we can't rely on having a bunch of bishops in the House of Lords ready to make trouble.

Still that letter sounds like the letter of a man who is feeling uder pressure. Notably that paragraph: "If an unintentional result of the Licensing Bill is that the future of church music is threatened, then we will amend it. As I told the House of Commons on December 16, we are reconsidering our position on this issue and we will announce our conclusions as soon as possible."

I hope someone will make sure that Kim Howells and the Daily Telergaph readers are remindeed that there has been at least one case, even under the present law, where people singing Happy Birthday did actually result in a prosecution. (I haven't got the details to hand or I'd do it myself.)

Here's a snippet from a BBC potted biography. The son of a Communist lorry driver, Howells was caught up in the revolutionary atmosphere of the late 1960s while a student at Hornsey College of Art. Like many of his contemporaries, he was involved in "sit-ins" and other demonstrations before becoming disillusioned with student politics.

It's bloody weird the way a man with Howells background and experience back in the 60s could get into this kind of nonsense. What happens to man that he ends up standing on his head and attacking the libertarian and comuniitarian principles he once probably sincerely held.

Hornsey wasn't "student politics" in the sense of the stuff that apparatchik creeps like Jack Straw (currently Foreign Secretary) was involved in. It was about the most wholesome episode of student activism of the period, genuinely directed towards matters of direct importance to the students. Including lots of live music and no bloody Public Entertainment Licences.