Pope Benedict XVl delivered his controversial lecture at the University of Regensburg on Friday 15th September. His lecture was controversial because it included a quotation from a 14th century text that was highly critical of Islam. The inclusion of that passage ignited massive protests around the world from Muslims who claimed that it had insulted… [Read More]
Today’s Times reports senior members of the German government to be critical of the decision by the German national opera to cancel its planned run of a Mozart opera for fear that a recently added coda in which the hero appears brandishing the severed heads of several religious leaders, among whose is that of Mohammed’s,… [Read More]
Should Pete Doherty ever find himself banged up for possessing hard drugs, he would soon discover that incarceration had not remotely put them beyond his reach. This is especially so, should he have been incarcerated north of the border. According to a report in yesterday’s Times, so easy has it become for inmates in Scottish… [Read More]
In a Times op-ed on Monday of this week, William Rees-Mogg defended Pope Benedict for having spiced up a lecture last week with a quotation describing Islam as a violent religion. Despite recognising the quotation to be offensive to Muslims, Rees-Mogg defended the Pope for including the quotation in his talk on the grounds that… [Read More]
After a fortnight of concern about the ‘state’ of childhood, the Archbishop of Canterbury has stepped in: to warn us about the huge pressures that children are under. A key strain Rowan Williams highlighted in an interview this morning with BBC Breakfast, was the ‘relentless’ testing children are now subject to, which starts from a… [Read More]
Some deep-seated problems, including high crime, falling education standards, unsustainable immigration, the low quality of the NHS, and rising welfare dependency are not being properly confronted by our political leaders. In particular, political discussion of public services like health and education still seems wedged halfway between the age of collectivism and a more consumer-friendly alternative.… [Read More]
In what threatens to be a rerun — mercifully, on only a more sedate and much smaller scale — of last year’s Danish cartoons furore, an ecumenical group calling itself the Churches Advertising Network (CAN) is rapidly becoming the centre of controversy over a poster it commissioned for display this coming Christmas. The poster is… [Read More]
A batch of newly published educational statistics reported in today’s Times makes troublesome reading. They show boys are progressively falling behind girls at school in the 3R’s. Neither boys nor girls, however, would appear to have much to write home about concerning their respective attainment levels in these areas, assuming, that is, they know how… [Read More]
Today’s Times contains a report about a former University of Cambridge Chaplain and ordained Anglican priest whom the Church of England has apparently given license to continue to officiate at its services, despite his having converted to Hinduism, having changed his name to Ananda, and his having gone in for blessing daily a Hindu congregation… [Read More]
In a display of rhetorical prowess that would doubtless immediately qualify him for the award of an A-level in Logic should this subject be offered at that level, Bulgaria’s Prime Minister Sergei Stanishev has recently strung together an astonishing series of non sequiturs in support of his country and Romania being allowed to enter the… [Read More]