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The Spectator
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Witch 2
Why is the Church of England so obsessed with sex?
Four bishops and a retired civil servant shut away in a palace, talking about human sexuality — it sounds like the beginning of a bad joke. But the resulting Pilling Report is, in spite of 200 pages’ worth of double entendres, neither funny nor enlightening. It has been clear ever since the Lambeth conference in 1998, which contained the ponderous resolution that ‘we commit ourselves to listen to the experience of homosexual persons’, that the Anglican church’s position has been to agree not to agree on the issue. From the Jeffrey John affair to the debate over gay marriage, the church has handled the question like a whoopee cushion at a vicar’s tea party — with a mixture of bemusement and embarrassment.
Letters: Charles Saatchi’s challenge to Taki, and the battle over Benefits Street
On Benefits Street Sir: Fraser Nelson asserts that people in charities do not want to talk about what life is like on poverty (‘Britain’s dirty secret’, 18 January). To those of us who have experienced poverty or supported others stuck in it, there is no secret. We didn’t need a sensationalist pseudo-documentary to know that life with no money is grinding, miserable and soul-destroying. However, few answers to the problems of the poor are offered by low-paid workforces combined with flawed markets deciding the value of essential goods and services. The real means to help people out of this poverty trap would be to reduce rents, utilities and childcare costs while creating a much more generous withdrawal rate of benefits when people start work.
Portrait of the week | 23 January 2014
Home George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that he was in favour of increasing the minimum wage by an amount greater than that of inflation. The International Monetary Fund raised its expectation of growth for Britain in 2014 to 2.4 per cent, from a forecast of 1.9 per cent last October. Unemployment fell to 7.1 per cent. More than 3.3 million people between the ages of 20 and 34 were living with parents in 2013, 26 per cent of that age group, the Office for National Statistics said, and a number 25 per cent bigger than in 1996. London’s share of national output reached 22.4 per cent in 2012, according to official data.
When they warned you about eight for the road
One for the road Road safety campaigners were angered by the opening of the first pub at a motorway service station, on the M40 in Buckinghamshire. — Drink-driving campaigns pre-date the motor-car: it was in 1872 that the first law was enacted that made it an offence to drive carriages, horses, cattle and steam engines under the influence of alcohol. — The law didn’t catch up with motor cars until 1925, when a more general law made it an offence to drive any vehicle while drunk. — The first drink-driving advert on TV appeared in 1964, warning drivers that after eight whiskies they were 25 times as likely to have an accident. A blood alcohol limit did not arrive until two years later.