Politics

I am not a football fan. Reactions to plans for a European super-league remind me why. According to the BBC ‘critics say the move is being driven purely by money.’ Whereas in the prelapsarian days of, say, last week, professional football was all about craft and community? Free marketeers should be relaxed about this. You could argue that the super league members’ decision is a matter for them and them alone. They are private businesses supplying a product – entertainment – to paying customers in a market. If they want to supply that product via slightly different arrangements, why should anyone else care? If the public anger in today’s headlines

Oh dear. Four weeks after the government’s Sewell report on race relations was released, a group of United Nations experts has decided to weigh in, claiming that it attempts to ‘normalise white supremacy’ and could ‘fuel racism’ in the UK. According to a lengthy press release issued today, the UN Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent on Monday ‘strongly rejected’ the ‘stunning’ report, arguing it ‘repackages racist tropes and stereotypes into fact, twists data and misapplies statistics.’ It argues that: ‘The report’s conclusion that racism is either a product of the imagination of people of African descent or of discrete, individualized incidents ignores the pervasive role that the social

You could be forgiven for forgetting that there is an election happening in Wales. The looming possibility of an SNP majority in Scotland, violence on the streets of Belfast and the death of the Duke of Edinburgh have led to a somewhat lulled campaign in recent weeks. Thankfully, last night’s ITV Wales television debate got things going, to a point. First Minister Mark Drakeford was at the crease to defend his government’s performance throughout the pandemic, as well as Welsh Labour’s record over 22 years in Cardiff Bay. Snapping at his heels was Andrew RT Davies, the Welsh Conservative leader, and Plaid Cymru’s Adam Price, regarded generally as the most

It was a stripped-down service, pared back to its essentials by a prince and by a pandemic. Covid-19 shrunk the congregation and forced the thirty, mostly royal mourners who made the cut to wear masks, observe social distancing and resist the urge to sing, even when it was the National Anthem. Prince Philip had ensured it captured and amplified his affinity with the sea and for the military. He signed off its crucial elements back in 2003. At his insistence there was no sermon. As he once remarked, ‘the mind cannot absorb what the backside cannot endure’. The noises off of recent days were silenced. The fuss over uniforms forgotten.

Dear Prime Minister, As Christian leaders across a range of denominations, we continue to pray at this time for your government “and all in high positions, so that we may lead a quiet and peaceable life in all godliness and dignity” (1 Timothy 2:2). However, we write to you concerning an area of the most serious concern, namely the potential introduction into our society of so-called “vaccine passports” which have also been referred to as “COVID-status certificates” and “freedom passes”. We are wholly opposed to this suggestion and wish to make three points about the potential consideration of any scheme of this type. Firstly, to make vaccination the basis of