Street Pastors are one of those religious ventures that even the irreligious find hard to object to. If you want to spend your Friday and Saturday nights picking up drunks from the gutter and listening to revellers tell you (quietly) that they are not as happy as their state of inebriation might suggest, then fine. It's your choice.

Still, if the irreligious can't object, you can rely on the religious to do so. In an article in the Islington Tribune (where a Street Pastor scheme has recently been established) a Unitarian Church minister, Andrew Pakula, branded the initiative an "absolute transparent recruiting drive sponsored by our government", and "called for an end to the patrols...unless they agree to hand out other religious scriptures, such as the Qur'an or Hindu writings.

It doesn't matter that police and partygoers believe that Street Pastors are a good thing. It doesn't matter that, as anyone even vaguely familiar with them will know, Street Pastors do not go around cramming Bibles down the throats of vulnerable merrymakers. (What mug would stand outside a nightclub handing out copies of KJV to the ravers who stagger out at 3am?)

There is no religious initiative so transparently decent that cannot be smeared with the accusation of underhand proselytism, however ridiculous. "Kids are afraid of the police," Mr Pakula claimed. "In order to protect themselves from the police they may take up the Bible."

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