Why does Skype 5.7 on Lion require Adobe Flash? Does anyone know why Skype requires Flash? Is this new? Are there any "recent" versions of Skype that do not?

I'm guessing it requires it solely for it's "Skype Home" section, which is pretty annoying since I don't need that section in Skype and it makes me have to run flash (which in turn makes me sick and my battery unhappy).

thanks!
I am running Skype 5.7 on a Mac without Flash installed. It does not complain about its absence. The 'Home' screen initially showed a blank box which was clearly a Flash video with a demo for something. That has now disappeared. It looks like Skype will use Flash if its installed but it is not required.