Of course he does. What's the problem?

Outreach Media, a subsidiary of the non-denominational FEVA Ministries, produces a monthly series of colourful signs with attention-grabbing Christian messages, which it syndicates to churches around the country (mostly in Sydney, though I saw one in Newcastle recently).

Some examples of their handiwork, including a very clever Telstra parody, can be seen on their website. Last month, the theme, timed to coincide with the Ashes, was "Would you worship Jesus if he scored 10,000 Test runs?"

"People can say a lot of ridiculous things and they should be able to say ridiculous things in a democracy..."

ELLEN FANNING: Prime Minister, part of what was chilling yesterday was seeing a lot of people in between the violence doing things that you'd see at the cricket, singing "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi", wrapping themselves in the Australian flag. What do you say to people who use the Australian flag in that way?

PRIME MINISTER: Look, I would never condemn people for being proud of the Australian flag. I don't care – I would never condemn people for being proud....

Throughout the Ashes, I'll be watching the Prime Ministerial website for cricketing references in John Winston Howard's media interviews. I'll also be keeping score on the number of references he makes to Darfur or any other major African conflict. (As regular followers of this blog will already be aware, the number of times that John Howard has used the word "Darfur" in public as recorded either in Hansard or in the pm.gov.au transcript archives currently stands at zero.)

Let's kick it off with JWH's interview with Virginia Trioli at 2BL ABC Local Radio Sydney on November 13: