The British”, my American friend said, “are a nation of hysterics masquerading as stoics.” The particular occasion of this comment was a shared copy of our local newspaper, which carried as its front-page picture-story - under the headline of “Fan denied her Sex and the City” - the tale of how a thirtysomething woman had not been able to book a single ticket online for a double sofa in the upmarket cinema round the corner.

There she was, the deprived person, looking mournful with the film poster in the background, although the cinema manager had pointed out that she could have phoned him and all would have been sorted out.

Where would have been the fun in that? If she had called, there wouldn't have been a grievance and she wouldn't have held up the front page. A week earlier my wife was listening to a BBC phone-in about the tax on elderly gas guzzlers, and had heard a van driver ring in to complain bitterly about the extra that he'd have to pay. His anger only doubled when it was pointed out to him that, actually, his vehicle was exempt because it was too old. “Yeah, cars maybe, but what about vans?” he demanded, not at all anxious to relinquish his grip on victimhood.

We are all victims and we must all have compensation. Even the church. Or rather, the Church. As Ruth Gledhill revealed on these pages on Saturday, a new report commissioned by the Church of England and entitled Moral, but No Compass, contains some pretty robust complaints about the institution's treatment at the hands of the Government. The report, according to the combined archbishops yesterday, “reveals a depressing level of misunderstanding of the scale and quality of contribution faith-based organisations make to the civil and civic life of our nation - our common good. This is particularly true in relation to the contribution of the Church of England.”

This is the polite version. The blogging Bishop of Buckingham, Alan Wilson, writing from his troubled, tenement-strewn dystopolis of Great Missenden wrote in support of the report that: “Politicians haven't, by and large got a clue about majority religions in this country on the ground. They don't even know, or apparently care, how many people and buildings there are, let alone what they do! It's pathetic.”

Makes you wonder what happens at all those MPs' surgeries that deprives politicians of the insights gained by rank-and-file prelates.

There is, too, an interesting sub-theme. The report contains the line: “The Government has focused so intensely on minority faiths that it has failed to develop a coherent evidence base for the largest religious body in the UK, the Christian Church.”

This is, of course, a leap of logic. Has the intense focus on “minority faiths” (ie, Islam) anything whatsoever to do with inadequate “mapping” of the CofE? One doubts it.

That focus is surely the consequence of the dangers posed by radicalised members of a growing faith about which, before 9/11, we all knew far too little.

Had former choirboys at Salisbury Cathedral begun stockpiling fertilisers and detonators, while recording last testaments to be played after their self-immolation (perhaps against the backdrop of a picture of the Archbishop of York), there might have been an intense establishment focus on what even the Bishop of Buckingham had to say. As it happens even an atheist like me can recite the Lord's Prayer in full.

So it is hard to understand this report as anything other than a cry of “What about us?”. And I enjoyed the inevitable implication, made by the author of the preface to the report, Bishop Stephen Lowe, that the Conservatives seemed to have a better grasp of what more should be rendered by Caesar unto the Church.

The Tories, he suggested, better comprehended the local activities of the Anglicans and how the Church's role could be advanced. Though he might have reflected on why that was. Was it possibly that a disproportionate number of practising Anglicans live in Conservative areas? Or that a disproportionate number of members of other faiths live in Labour ones?

But above all what struck me was the tone of grievance. Would you have guessed from all this that a quarter of all primary schools and a twentieth of all secondary schools in England are state-funded Church of England faith schools, and that this number has steadily grown under “Moral, but no compass” Labour? Some of these operate with a real social conscience, and some are just selective middle-class boltholes.

Would you imagine that 26 members of the House of Lords - free to intervene and vote in all debates - are bishops of the Church of England? What kind of job have they been doing if no one in government is aware of their activities? Perhaps a woman bishop or two might liven things up, but somehow, even in 2008, you can't have women bishops.

I am emphatically not saying that faith organisations are unimportant or that they don't do many good things. But why should the Government, as the report recommends, give taxpayers' money to church organisations specifically to invest in areas such as education and art? Is it really for the benefit of the poor?

What I hear in the undertone of this report is the whining and unsacred tone of middle-class entitlement; you're giving the dosh and recognition to the Muslims, not to us. It's a noise that will rise in a crescendo as our economic difficulties deepen.

This week the Government has announced that it will allow Manchester to bring in a congestion-charging scheme. Immediately the “no” lobby, as it did in London, concentrates it opposition on the supposed impact on “poor” drivers. Crocodile tears! Nearly a third of Greater Manchester households - the poorest - have no access to a car, and might benefit from improved public transport. In the same way, opposition to polyclinics being established in London is being sold on the basis that it is somehow bad for the poor. Actually some GPs - who are not poor - are much more worried about the impact on themselves.

A young Cabinet minister once told me that the principal problem in his constituency was that the poor made too few demands on the system, not too many. They failed to claim benefits, where middle-class folks were assiduous at claiming theirs. They tended not to vote, not to complain, not to write to local papers, not (one imagines) to make a fuss if they couldn't get a single-sofa seat. They were - unlike the Church of England, the BMA and me - lacking in a sense of entitlement.

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