"You wait ages for an atheist bus and then 800 come along at once," said Ariane Sherine at the culmination of her campaign to put anti-faith slogans on the sides of UK buses. Throughout, she has been the antithesis of the shrill, dogmatic and shouty atheist that is so beloved of religious caricaturists. She is charming, smiley and wonderfully unintimidating and her campaign has captured the imagination of thousands of people.

Last summer, she was irritated by an advert on a bus from a religious organisation that expressed a profoundly threatening message (essentially, think what we think or "you spend all eternity in torment in hell"). She wondered if there was a classier and more thoughtful way of putting the opposing point of view.

The result ? thanks to £135,000 raised mainly through small donations ? is a national fleet of 800 buses with the words "There's probably no God, now stop worrying and enjoy your life" on the side, plus a series of adverts on the London Underground. The phrase is a genius of understatement. They are the weary words of so many of us who have had to listen tight-lipped to endless wild-eyed preachers presuming to tell us we were born sinful and are destined for eternal damnation. Those silent millions have suddenly found a voice.

With the low December sun glistening off the gold of the Albert memorial in the background, the atheist bus campaign's press launch felt at times more like a Church of England coffee morning. There were warm greetings, hugs between old friends and purposeful-looking people marching back and forth with clipboards looking stressed about whether the catering would be adequate. The cast was a mini-Who's Who of British atheists: evolutionary biologist Professor Richard Dawkins; the philosopher AC Grayling; president of the British Humanist Association Polly Toynbee; comedian Robin Ince. Even Stephen Fry sent a goodwill message from New Zealand (not enough cash yet for a live video link up).

Ince, who hosted the event, pointed out that the buses were not technically atheist, but agnostic. "That is the scientific viewpoint because we can't ultimately prove that there is no God. But I'm taking the risk," he said.

Dawkins is another man who is taking the risk. "I would have chosen a slightly stronger slogan," he confided, "but I wouldn't have wanted to say there's definitely no God just as I wouldn't want to say there's definitely no Father Christmas."

All in all, Sherine's campaign has been a magnificent and surprising achievement. The original fundraising target of £5500 was reached in just 3 hours ? and at its peak, the campaign's Just Giving website was clocking up £17 per minute. The site has continued to attract new donors on every single day since its launch.

For my money, it is Sherine's amusing and charming slogan that has prompted so many people to part with her hard-earned cash. Pledging support was a way for non-believers to make a statement about what they didn't believe ? and in the process, to make some other people smile and perhaps think a bit on their way to work. Atheists are by definition free-thinkers who don't follow the crowd. The atheist bus gave us a way of speaking with a single voice ? and it feels great. As Sherine put it, "I don't feel alone anymore."

Ariane Sherine explains where the idea for the Atheist Bus Campaign came from and Polly Toynbee talks to Richard Dawkins about the word 'probably'

The early release of knife crime statistics by the Home Office last month flouted new official guidelines in 10 different ways, the UK statistics authority said today.

The UKSA published its code of practice today alongside a final judgment by the UKSA on the Home Office's misuse last month of knife crime statistics suggesting the offence was under control. The UKSA said that any figures that failed to comply with the code in future would be refused a stamp of approval.

Yesterday the UKSA said that that release flouted its code in 10 ways, making "unsubstantiated" claims and "selective" comparisons, drawing "inappropriate" conclusions and failing to provide contextual information, among other things.

The report adds: "Some of the conclusions drawn are based on small numbers, and may therefore be unsafe."

Yesterday the UKSA issued a detailed deconstruction of the Home Office's knife-crime press release. It said: "No evidence is given to back up the claim that 'those caught with knives are now three times more likely to be sent to prison'."

Sir Michael Scholar, the head of the UKSA, wrote to Downing Street last month to complain about the Home Office release, which he said was "premature, irregular, and selective".

Chris Huhne, the Liberal Democrats' home affairs spokesman, said: "I cannot remember a more damning verdict on the government's distortions of figures since the Tories' pillage of the unemployment statistics in the 80s."

The shadow home secretary, Dominic Grieve, said that ministers were relying on "dodgy" statistics instead of focusing on solving knife crime.

He said: "This government's reliance on spin and manipulation has completely eroded confidence in government statistics, which will only serve to undermine our fight against crime."

The home secretary, Jacqui Smith, offered a limited apology for the release last month. She told the Commons on December 15: "I am sorry that I think we were too quick off the mark with the publication of one number in relation to the progress that had been made with tackling knife crime."

When the Home Office issued the memo on December 11, it also emerged that the national statistician, Karen Dunnell, told the permanent secretary at No 10 that the release of the figures would be a breach of protocol but was ignored.

The UKSA also published a list of 340 sets of official statistics not currently covered by the code but which it thinks should be.

Scholar said: "The publication of our new code of practice for official statistics marks the beginning of a new chapter for the statistics authority.

"We now have the guiding principles in place against which we will assess official statistics to determine whether they meet the standards necessary to be labelled as 'national statistics'."

Newsnight's Michael Crick has got hold of an internal Conservative party memo which reveals that officials have been discussing how to deal with flaky parliamentary candidates.

Care needs to be taken over the candidates that have the potential to embarrass the party ? there will now be a fortnightly meeting to assess the watch-list of candidates ... The public output eg blogs, websites, press releases of candidates will now [need] to be monitored.

You can read the whole document here, and Crick's written about his scoop on his blog. He says it shows the Tories are adopting some of the centralising techniques developed by Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson and New Labour.

But the Tories are saying it is "standard" for a party to monitor its candidates and they've got a point. It would be surprising if they weren't on the look-out for candidates likely to cause trouble.

Are there many of them out there? Unfortunately, the memo doesn't name names. I've just been reading the Hugo Young Papers, the notes the late Guardian columnist kept of his meetings with politicians over 30 years, and that takes you back to the era when there was no shortage of Tory nutters. He writes about a meeting with Tristan Garel-Jones in 1996 at which Garel-Jones told him that John Major was "surrounded by lunatics". Garel-Jones also mentioned a recent discussion with Kenneth Clarke: "He was extremely cheerful on every subject until I mentioned the Conservative party. He thinks they have all gone barking mad."

In those days it was very easy to find Tories "with the potential to embarrass the party". These days, I suspect, they are far fewer on the ground.

Why is the government so reluctant to legislate against the gambling industry? Gerry Sutcliffe, the sports minister, today announced plans to impose a statutory levy on the industry to raise £5m a year (not an enormous sum) to fund measures to deal with the problem of gambling addiction. But if you read the small print of the announcement, you'll see that he's not committed to using compulsion.

Gaming firms already spend some money on anti-addiction initiatives on a voluntary basis and Sutcliffe is willing to give them one last chance to make the system work. "If the industry can agree the improved voluntary arrangements in the meantime, the door is not closed," he says.

Fair enough. Except, as the Liberal Democrats' culture spokesman, Don Foster, has pointed out, the government has been issuing warnings of this kind for more than five years. In November 2003, when the Gambling Act (which gives Sutcliffe the power to impose a levy) was still a draft bill, Tessa Jowell, the then-culture secretary, said she would rather not use that power, "but I won't flinch from doing so if I must".

Foster has found 12 instances of ministers issuing such threats to the gaming industry, including one from February last year when Andy Burnham (Sutcliffe's boss) said: "Unless the industry delivers a substantial increase in contributions by the end of this year and makes contributions in a timely fashion, I will seek the approval of the house for a statutory levy."

What is it with Labour and the gambling industry? Yesterday, Sam Coates in the Times reported that the Department for Culture is going to let gamblers bet more, partly because the industry is finding "trading conditions very difficult in the present economic climate", yet today the industry has been given a final warning on addiction funding ? arguably for the 13th time. Foster brands the way ministers are dragging their feet a "disgrace". I asked him why he thought the government was so reluctant to legislate.

There's been very extensive lobbying from the industry to prevent this happening ... You may say that £5m is peanuts. But, remember, there has only been one year, 2006-07, when the industry has coughed up the target that was set them. They are just not willing to do so.

I've put a call in to the culture department asking them why they don't just commit themselves to legislation now, given all the warnings the gambling industry has already had. When I get a response, I'll put it up.

Anyone who has spent a chilly half-hour waiting for a double-decker may already have doubted the existence of a deity. But for those who need further proof, a nationwide advertising campaign aimed at persuading more people to "come out" as atheists was launched today with the backing of some of Britain's most famous non-believers.

The principal slogan ? "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life" ? can already be seen on four London bus routes, and now 200 bendy buses in London and 600 across the country are to carry the advert after a fundraising drive raised more than £140,000, exceeding the original target of £5,500.

The money will also pay for 1,000 advertisements on London Underground from next Monday and on a pair of giant LCD screens opposite Bond Street tube station, in Oxford Street. Organisers unveiled a set of quotes from public figures ? including Albert Einstein, Douglas Adams and Katharine Hepburn ? who have endorsed atheism, or at least expressed scepticism about a Creator. The words "That it will never come again is what makes life so sweet" are quoted from the poet Emily Dickinson.

At the launch in a heated marquee next to the Albert Memorial, the television comedy writer Ariane Sherine, creator of the campaign, said: "You wait ages for an atheist bus and then 800 come along at once. I hope they'll brighten people's days and make them smile on their way to work."

She suggested the campaign in a Guardian Comment is free blogpost last June, saying it would be a reassuring alternative to religious slogans threatening non-Christians with hell and damnation. At today's launch she said the sheer number of donations, which were still coming in, demonstrated the strength of feeling. "This is a great day for freedom of speech in Britain. I am very glad that we live in a country where people have the freedom to believe in whatever they want."

Joining Sherine were Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, Hanne Stinson, from the British Humanist Association (BHA), the philosopher AC Grayling and Graham Linehan, who wrote Father Ted, Black Books and The IT Crowd. There were messages of support from the actor Stephen Fry and the writer Charlie Brooker.

According to the BHA, "huge numbers" of people in Britain have non-religious beliefs ? between 30 and 40% of the population, with a higher figure, between 60 and 65%, in young people.

Hanne Stinson said: "We all, whether we have religious or non-religious beliefs, have a right to be heard, and no one particular set of beliefs has any more right to influence the public debate than any other. The message isn't aimed at people with religious beliefs ? it's aimed at atheists and agnostics."

Most commentators recognised the slogan as a simple statement of non-religious belief and appreciated that it was designed to reassure people there was no reason to worry about being non-religious, she said. "People can lead a happy, enjoyable and rewarding life without religion."

Prior to the launch, Sherine was concerned that the posters would be banned from buses operated by Stagecoach, the second largest public transport company in the UK. Its co-founder Brian Souter is a member of the Church of Nazarene, an international evangelical Christian denomination.

A Stagecoach spokesman said all adverts on its buses were vetted before being published. "This particular advert is being carried on a number of bus operators' vehicles across the UK. We took advice from the Advertising Standards Authority in advance of publication and we have been advised the advert complies with the relevant guidelines and legislation."

The theology thinktank Theos welcomed the campaign, saying it was a "great way" to get people thinking about God. "The posters will encourage people to consider the most important question we will ever face in our lives. The slogan itself is a great discussion starter. Telling someone 'there's probably no God' is a bit like telling them they've probably remembered to lock their door. It creates the doubt that they might not have."

A statement from the Methodist Church thanked Dawkins for encouraging a "continued interest in God".

The success of the British initiative has inspired atheists around the world. The American Humanist Association launched a bus advertising campaign last November with the slogan, "Why believe in a god? Just be good for goodness' sake", appearing on the sides, rear and insides of Washington DC's 230 buses.

The subsequent news coverage generated mostly negative phone calls and emails, with the largest number going directly to the organisers. Hundreds of complaints were sent to Metro, the government body responsible for the city's buses and subways. The poster provoked two counter-campaigns by devout Christians.

From Monday, buses in Barcelona bearing a Spanish translation of the British slogan will hit the streets, to the consternation of the city's Catholic hierarchy, while Italy's Union of Atheist, Agnostics and Rationalists plans to roll out atheist buses.

Atheists in Australia have fared badly with their campaign. Attempts to place slogans such as "Atheism ? sleep in on Sunday mornings" on buses were rejected by Australia's biggest outdoor advertising company, APN Outdoor.

Owners and skippers of six vessels that work out of one of Britain's most important fishing ports weretoday ordered to pay more than £200,000 for fiddling catch quotas.

Some of those involved in the black fish scam, in which precious fish were landed and recorded as a different species, claimed the penalties would have a severe impact on the Cornish port of Newlyn. They said the black fish ? species such as cod or hake ? would have been thrown back into the sea dying if they had not landed them.

But Judge Philip Wassall said the system, designed to protect endangered species, was clearly open to abuse and called for the government to tighten it up.

Martin Edmunds QC, prosecuting, said: "These offences show a wholesale and systematic operation to breach the quota limits. These were deliberate and well-organised deceptions. Paperwork was systematically falsified to hide the landing and sale of fish in excess of quota and thus to profit commercially from overfishing."

He added: "By the deception, masters and owners maximised their profits because they did not have to buy in or lease extra quota for the species they caught, even though it was available at the time. Such falsification appears again and again."

Truro crown court was told that at the heart of the case was the firm W Stevenson & Sons, which has been in business since the 19th century and controls much of the fishing out of Newlyn, as well as an auction house.

Edmunds said: "It is clear from the scale of the offending this was a system operated at this auction house and can only have occurred with the active connivance of the auctioneer and other staff acting for W Stevenson & Sons and those responsible for the preparation of the false documents. There is a lot of money to be made from selling black fish."

The court heard that much of the black fish was hake ? a quota fish ? that was being passed off as turbot, which was not subject to the quota system.

W Stevenson & Sons admitted 45 offences of falsifying or failing to submit sales notes, and auctioneer Julian Bick admitted five similar offences.

The owners and masters of six trawlers admitted or were convicted of a total of 59 offences of falsifying landing records.

Judge Wassall imposed fines of £115,000 with £87,000 costs on the owners and skippers of six vessels. Elizabeth Stevenson, a leading figure in the British fishing industry, is to be sentenced at a later hearing over her firm's involvement in the scam.

The judge said: "What I am dealing with is in essence a conspiracy. There was an agreement to commit these offences. It seems to me the system is patently open to abuse and I recommend strongly the government review the present regulations in light of this case. The motive for this offending was the profit to be made by the owners and masters."

After the case one of the owners, Donald Turtle, 84, said it had caused him to sell his boat, the Ben Loyal, which had been skippered by his son John, 44.

He said: "This case has been a nightmare. There have been so many boats gone out of Newlyn because of the treatment we have had from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It has demoralised the crews so much and has taken Newlyn out as the foremost fishing port in the UK. Fishermen should not be forced to throw good fish back into the sea. What is supposed to be a conservation measure is in reality just polluting the sea."

Turtle's wife Joan, 72, said: "This has ruined our retirement. I was only a nominal owner of the boat, but now I have a criminal record."

David Cameron said today that he would introduce league tables for prisons to cut reoffending rates with an increased emphasis on rehabilitation and follow-up care after release.

The Tory leader also indicated that he was against the government's "Titan prisons", which he thought were a "bad idea".

"The idea that big is beautiful with prisons is wrong," he told 20 handpicked members of the public in Manchester, in a session led by Channel M television presenter Andy Crane.

"I have spent some time in prison ? purely in a professional capacity ? at Wandsworth prison and was profoundly depressed by the size and impersonality," Cameron said. "I asked the governor what percentage offend when they leave prison and he couldn't tell me.

"The system is not designed that way; it is just designed to put them in prison and hold them there, locked in cells for up to 23 hours a day, and then let them out. Every other public service is paid for by result."

Cameron said there was a need to incentivise prisons. "Are you saying league tables for prisons?" asked Crane. "Yes," ­Cameron replied.

Edward Garnier, the shadow justice minister, said: "Prisons should be places where people can be contained humanely, rehabilitated and taught to read and write, and get off drugs. This is most unlikely to be achieved in enormous Titan prisons.

"Jack Straw [the justice secretary] insisted that the design for three Titan prisons was predominantly based on cheapness rather than value for money and also that they should be designed to accommodate more than 2,500 prisoners. They are designed for overcrowding before they dig the first foundations; that to us is ridiculous.

"Experience suggests to us these large prisons are dangerous and inefficient. We suggest prisons become part of prison rehabilitation trusts similar to hospital trusts. In charge of each trust will be a highly skilled and experienced person and his job is not simply to lock up prisoners but take real and active interest of rehabilitation of offenders and promote reduction in reoffending."

Such a duty would be rewarded on the basis of the lowest reoffending rate, Garnier added.

Earlier, at a meeting at the Lowry arts centre in nearby Salford, 60 business people gathered with Cameron at his inaugural Get Britain Working Forum, which will tour the country.

A chartered surveyor told him that the government's VAT cut was a "damp squib" and suggested the housing market needed to get going as the engine of the economy. Mortgages were being advertised, but were only available to first-time buyers with a 35% deposit, and he suggested emulating an Australian scheme in which taxpayers fund first-time buyers' deposit.

"It seems to me the most important thing is to get banks lending again to businesses," Cameron said. "Businesses large, medium and small are all writing to me saying effectively the same thing: my credit line has been withdrawn, my overdraft facility has been taken away ? I'm having to lay people off."

The Tory leader said that government borrowing was a reason why sterling had fallen and said he was a firm believer in floating exchange rates, as he was in the Treasury during the exchange rate mechanism debacle of the 1990s.

"I see no circumstances in which joining the euro would be a good thing because I want us to set our own interest rates. We just need a government that puts fiscal responsibility at the heart of what it does." He made it clear that when he is prime minister "we will keep the pound".

Yesterday, Cameron offered tax breaks worth a total of £5bn to millions of pensioners and savers. The Tories have also promised a £50bn loan guarantee scheme with the government "standing behind" loans to firms.

At the later session in Manchester, the Tory leader contradicted Eric Pickles, the shadow minister for communities and local government, over the abolition of regional development agencies, saying that councils in north-west England "may come together and keep the Northwest Development Agency, but in other parts of the country, like the south-east, the councils may say no".

There was only one sour note struck at the forum, when a retired man asked a question on the basis that "every immigrant who comes to this country gets benefits and the benefit system is totally abused". An audible intake of breath could be heard from other members of the audience who clearly disagreed with his view.

Cameron answered a different question and said immigrants came here to work and that he would target instead the 2.6 million people claiming incapacity benefit.

A statue of the crucifixion has been taken down from its perch on a church in Sussex because it was scaring local children and deterring worshippers, a vicar admitted today.

The Rev Ewen Souter, the vicar at St John's Church in Horsham, West Sussex, ordered the removal of the 10-foot sculpture of Jesus on the cross just before Christmas, branding it "unsuitable" and "a horrifying depiction of pain and suffering".

The 10ft resin sculpture, by Edward Bainbridge Copnall, a former president of the Royal Society of British Sculptors, will be replaced by a more "uplifting" stainless steel cross ? to the dismay of more traditional parishioners.

Souter, formerly a cell biologist, said: "The crucifix expressed suffering, torment, pain and anguish. It was a scary image, particularly for children. Parents didn't want to walk past it with their kids, because they found it so horrifying.

"It wasn't a suitable image for the outside of a church wanting to welcome worshippers. In fact, it was a real put-off.

"We're all about hope, encouragement and the joy of the Christian faith. We want to communicate good news, not bad news, so we need a more uplifting and inspiring symbol than execution on a cross."

St John's Church was opened in 1963 and the crucifix was installed within a year. The sculpture was removed unceremoniously on a low-loader truck and delivered to nearby Horsham Museum, where it will be displayed

A long-standing member of the church, who asked not to be named, said: "The crucifix is the oldest and most famous symbol of the Christian church. Pulling it down and putting up something that would look more at home on the side of a flashy modern shopping centre is not the way to get more bums on seats.

"Next they'll be ripping out the pews and putting sofas in their place, or throwing out all the Bibles and replacing them with laptops. It's just not right."

Souter, who has been vicar at St John's since 2001, believes the modern new cross ? designed by artist Angela Godfrey ? will present "a positive message of hope" on the side of his church.

A spokesman at Horsham Museum said: "Thanks to the generosity of St John's we have been given the remarkable sculpture of Jesus on the Cross by Edward Bainbridge Copnall. The museum was keen to have the figure because it is a stunning example of Edward's ability and skill as a sculptor.

"Being made out of coal dust and resin it represents the cutting edge of materials, as well as being a dramatic interpretation of a well-known image."

The enormous pressure inside the gas pipeline grid that supplies UK homes is set to be harnessed to generate clean electricity.

Work to place small turbines inside the gas network will start later this year at Beckton in east London. This first scheme will produce 20MW by 2010 from the natural gas that rushes through the pipes. Repeated across the country, the technology could generate up to 1GW ? equivalent to the output of a conventional coal or nuclear power station.

Andrew Mercer of company 2OC, which has developed the "geo-pressure" technology, said: "We're very lucky that somebody else has built this pipeline infrastructure. We can borrow it to produce renewable energy."

When natural gas is drilled from underground reservoirs it is at far too high a pressure to be used safely in homes. "It would just blow up your gas cooker," Mercer said. Instead, the pressure must be released at hundreds of sites across the supply network known as letdown stations.

Currently, the energy contained in this released pressure is wasted. The new technology aims to capture it to generate electricity.

2OC has teamed up with the National Grid, which owns most of the gas pipeline network in the UK, to build mini-power stations at eight letdown stations over the next few years. They will install devices called turbo expanders that generate electricity as the gas pressure is reduced. The turbines used are compact ? 20cm in diameter ? but can generate 1MW of electricity each.

The idea is not completely new. US companies experimented with turbo expanders in the 1980s and Mercer said a handful of similar efforts have already been set up in Europe. "But this isn't a cheap way to generate electricity. The reason it hasn't really taken off is that it's expensive."

Blue-NG, the joint venture developing the UK projects, aims to reduce costs by combining the turboexpander with a combined heat and power (CHP) engine, which generates both electricity and heat. Mercer says this boosts the efficiency of the CHP unit to over 70%. The CHP engine would run on vegetable oil squeezed from local rapeseed, though 2OC is experimenting with other fuels, such as synthetic oil made from wood.

Electricity may not be the only useful product of the turboexpander technology. Reducing the gas pressure also brings about a sudden drop in temperature, typically from 10C to -30C. Mercer calls this "free cold" and says it could be used as a cheap and green way to replace refrigeration units and air conditioning. He says 2OC is in talks with two companies that are interested in siting computer data centres, which require massive cooling, near UK letdown stations.

The technology could also cool the London Underground network he claimed, though Transport for London has balked at the likely cost.

Another use could be to provide cooling for giant concentrated solar power plants, which are gaining credibility as a future large-scale energy source. One plan is to site such plants in desert regions of north Africa, and to transport the electricity generated to Europe. Mercer says a lack of available cooling water could cripple such schemes. Siting solar plants near letdown stations, which are common in gas-rich North African countries and the Middle East, would halve the costs and double the electricity generated, he said.

After just five years, the romance between the football club owner and the little dancer is over: a rare sculpture by Degas is up for sale again ? this time with a £12m transfer fee on her head.

The current owner, Sir John Madejski, was knighted in the New Year honours list for lavish philanthropy, such as donating millions of pounds to create a new courtyard garden at the V&A museum and to restore the Fine Rooms, now named in his honour, at the Royal Academy.

The art collector is better known in football circles for steering his club, Reading, into the Premier League last year, and paying most of the £25m cost of its new stadium. The club was relegated last season.

He insists his decision to part company with the sculpture is no credit crunch sale, saying merely that he is moving on: "My collection is constantly evolving and developing into new areas."

He bought the Degas, Petite Danseuse de Quatorze Ans (the little 14-year-old dancer) for £5m in 2004, at the height of the art boom. It is one of a handful of bronze casts still in private ownership of the only sculpture Degas exhibited in his lifetime, when the girl's tired but defiant stance and wrinkled tights were seen as shockingly realistic.

Despite the now faltering market, Sotheby's predicts the piece will now make up to £12m. "This is a market for masterpieces," said Melanie Clore, head of the auctioneer's impressionist department.