Matthew Dancona

There is something utterly shaming in the RAF uniform story. However isolated the instances of mockery near RAF Wittering, one is too many. Those who put their lives on the line to protect the nation should be feted and honoured by civilians – not urged to wear their uniform with discretion so as not to provoke the public. It says a lot about the hollowing out of patriotism that this is even an issue: we celebrate British sport, pop music and fashion but not, it would seem, the valour of British servicemen. I am reminded of Wilfred Owen’s poem, The Send-Off: Down the close, darkening lanes they sang their way To the siding-shed, And lined the train with faces grimly gay. Their breasts were stuck all white with wreath and spray As men's are, dead.

Danny Finkelstein has a must-read column today on the Tory tax row, which has already prompted response over at Conservativehome. Quite apart from his formidable intellect, Danny has something which most of those commenting on the pros and cons of tax cuts don’t, which is scars on his back. As a close adviser to William Hague when he was leader, he saw at first hand how this argument worked in practice rather than theory. He knows of what he speaks. The least persuasive argument for the Tories to embrace radical tax cuts is that previous proposals have been timid or unclear. The fact is that Labour made sure that the public knew in 2001 and 2005 that the Opposition was proposing cuts and the electorate delivered its verdict unambiguously.

As a sporadic but enthusiastic follower of British athletics, I find the Dwain Chambers story very dispiriting. There is something utterly compelling about the sprinters – from Jesse Owens, via Jim Hines’s 9.95 seconds in the 1968 Olympic 100m final, to the prodigious Carl Lewis, our own Linford Christie, and beyond. Britain has done well in these explosive events, and particularly so in 4x100 relay: black youngsters have performed with particular magnificence over the years, and acted as superb role models to children in deprived communities. So the selection of Chambers for next month’s World Indoor Championships sends all the wrong signals.

One might have guessed that the Archbishop of Canterbury would find a verbally tortured way of explaining himself. “I must of course take responsibility for any unclarity,” he told the Synod this afternoon. What a curious word to use. In this case, I suppose, “unclarity” begins at home. It has been said by one or two more astute commentators since the row over sharia began last Thursday that Dr Williams’s whispering diffidence conceals an intellectual arrogance that lies at the heart of the problem. He admitted that the matter had been handled “clumsily” and made an allusion to unintended hurt from the Psalms. But, on the whole, I thought this was a pretty unrepentant performance.

And so, with his job now on the line, the Archbishop's fightback begins. It is, predictably, the Prufrock Defence: that wasn't what I meant at all. On his website, he insists that he was not proposing 'parallel jurisdiction' of sharia and British law. No indeed: the phrase he actually used was 'plural jurisdiction' which is much further-reaching and more radical, implying a smorgasbord of legal traditions from which the modern citizen can pick and mix. Charles Moore is - as ever - a must-read in the Daily Telegraph, as is Matthew Parris in The Times who advances the fascinating thesis that the practical implications of the Archbishop's thesis are not liberal at all but local-communitarian and (potentially) deeply conservative.