A timely piece for political life, and indeed for anyone in any position of leadership: there is only so much you can gain from listening to what people already believe and do. You have to believe in what you're about, or else you'll end up going nowhere and bringing no-one with you.

That US peace plan for Ukraine in full:

Feels like just about time for a rewatch. I think Liz Truss was PM last time I watched it! (It was a quick gallop through…)

Two things have struck me about how we talk about refugee status in the UK: 1) moral imperatives really aren’t part of the discussion at all 2) how important symbols are. Taking jewellery especially, but also limiting refugees stays achieves little, but symbolism seems more important than policy.

A policy that will raise virtually no money (what, is the Home Office going to have an eBay & Pawn Shops Officer now?) and has historical resonances that, at best, leave most people feeling a little uncomfortable… Plus, the far right will still say ‘Woke Open Borders Labour.’

Yeah, basically all of these hit. Whereas now ‘control the memes of production’ would probably garner at least 5%. And ‘do away with rights for minorities and women’ would probably be well north of 10%.

"Thank Heavens Reeves froze the thresholds," says the median voter in 2029 as they walk past the derelict sports centre and down the empty high street to cast their vote.

I mean, one of Labour’s great electoral successes too… which just goes to show that you can do everything right in terms of winning elections efficiently, but without a vision, the people perish.

Just think how long her budget speech is going to be. It's like a Radio 4 panel game show. "You've got 120 minutes to raise £30 billion pounds and you can't mention income tax. And you're time starts....."

Unbelievable dithering. Running scared of their shadow. They're polling 20%! They aren't going to make any friends with the next budget anyway; they might as well do what's right for the country (basic rate rise, NI-income tax swap) and show the markets they have some idea what consistency is.

This will kill the heat pump market. And that means cuts in investment in the whole system: tech, skills, supply chain, business investment. And the subsidy is not a *benefit*, it's designed to equalise the choice between gas and electric. www.theguardian.com/politics/202...

Do you have plans for Holy Week? Would you like to have plans for Holy Week? Come and join us! Grants available for ordinands, students, and those in need.

So basically the song had Hitler and Goering the wrong way around?

Do keep thinking that much discussion about the failings of the BBC is in the same category as 'the bus doesn't stop in front of my house so all buses are rubbish'. The BBC has lots of problems, but problems in society won't be removed by removing the BBC.

Maybe Keir should demand the heads of major US news networks any time they imply Britain is on the brink of civil war or that we live under sharia law. Or does it not work both ways?

Look forward to my holiday funded by US government debt! (I mean, probably should put it somewhere else, should this crazy scheme come to anything, but somehow the particular form it may come makes me think I'd better spend it quick before it evaporates!)

One of the reasons rail electrification is so expensive in this country is because, wait for it, we do it in bits and wait for years before restarting, and have never had a rolling programme of electrification. Guess what we're doing here?

"Communism is Soviet power plus the electrification of the whole country" (Lenin) Vs "Starmerism is Labour power plus lack of electrification of the whole country"

Rutter tomorrow (definitely the poor relation, but we had Duruflé Thursday), and then… a storm is coming.

Not sure what they aspire to here? An Anglican communion made up of *checks notes* Nigeria, Uganda, the Diocese of Sydney, ACNA (although they're already starting to fall out over LGBT+ issues), maybe South America... and Ireland!?

One of the more moving things I’ve ever done. John J Wallace, Priest RIP. (And yes, the mayor and our host put on poppies for the occasion!)

The former curate of @frjonathanbish.bsky.social’s old parish, Outwood, John J Wallace, who had become a chaplain with the 8th Gloucesters, was fatally wounded on this day in 1918, having gone to the aid of a comrade. www.twixtaireandcalder.org.uk/we-will-reme...

A total and utter hero

Let's just take a moment to reflect on the self-sacrifice and hope this person embodies - not the evil, hateful monsters thirsting for violence.

Stanley Hauerwas: "One reason why we Christians argue so much about which hymn to sing, which liturgy to follow, which way to worship is that the commandments teach us to believe that bad liturgy eventually leads to bad ethics...."

This is what winning looks like.

Terrible news. As someone who uses the ECML regularly and lived within earshot of it for six years, it feels very close to home. Will be praying for the good folk of LNER, who have got me home safely so many times, and for those who might not have made it home safely tonight.

“This fragile earth, our island home,” as the Star Trek prayer puts it. It’s rather beautiful, if terrifying, to think about how close we are to space!

I’m really starting to suspect that most of the tech bros haven’t actually read Tolkien, as they certainly don’t understand it. The gentle hobbits save the “hard men” of Gondor, largely through compassion and selflessness. Not the other way around. The Christian parable is barely hidden!

Crossrail's own project estimates were that £4 BILLION of its costs were directly related to building skills and industrial capacity back INTO the supply chain, so they could build it. Because every time we finish a big infra project in the UK, we don't start another. And bleed that capacity away

It’s impossible to avoid the conclusion that large parts of Westminster remaining on X - a platform that tolerates and amplifies extremism and racism - has led a great many people to normalise what previously was unacceptable.

Hooray! It’s a Quincunque vult day! If you don’t know what the Athanasian Creed is or how the Church of England uses it in worship, then I can do no better than point you to @mthrjo.bsky.social’s lecture on the subject from the Prayer Book Society Conference this year! m.youtube.com/watch?v=rkwi...

I'm quite happy to "take" a small contribution to stopping Ukrainian citizens being slaughtered in their hundreds of thousands.

Boss move of the ICS to insist on the correct definition of liberty. After all, there’s nothing in negative liberty that makes it a particularly desirable virtue for a state to have (except insofar as it sometimes helps in pursuing other virtues).

The US & UK constitutional traditions both assume that the best way to constrain a tyrant is to ensure parliamentary control over "the power of the purse". If a president can pay troops via a private donor, & impose taxes at his personal whim, a key pillar of Anglo-American constitutionalism falls.

Somebody tried this with a listed pub here in the UK and got a fuck off fine and a court order to rebuild it brick by brick. just in case the feds need any ideas how to respond idk

I have been blessed by ministering alongside a Nigerian priest in my parishes and he has greatly enriched our life together. As Dr Christian-Iwuagwu says, focusing on faithful mission does far more good than stirring up division about what we already know we disagree on.

worth reiterating again that “the executive can raise and spend money however he likes” has been anathema even under monarchies for centuries we’re not rolling back anything in US history here, we’re rolling back the English Civil War

I find the idea of getting someone from the police/social services to chair this inquiry to be utterly mind boggling. I mean, can we imagine the outcry if the Jay inquiry had been chaired by a retired bishop?!? There’s real tone-deafness and assumptions that ‘we’re the good guys’ going on.

I'm biased, I did my undergraduate thesis on Victorian architecture But maybe the "burn everything to the ground" is not the right answer to every question

Home Sec describes a widely held public perception (UK is the destination of choice for asylum seekers in Europe) + endorses it as true. Home Office data shows it is not true. Whatever merits of her policy change, should not make false factual claims www.thesun.co.uk/news/3709465...

The number of posts and quotes that amount to 'just sell it for flats/turn it into a museum/let the Qataris have it' and 'build a modern replacement in *insert regeneration destination of choice' is so depressing. A nation of gradgrinds with no love of their history.

Bring back the idea that warships are something we buy more than one batch of, rather than fail to purchase all the batch we originally intended…

You may have heard about UK ministers' plan to double to 10 years the time needed to reached settled status in the UK. But did you realise that it threatened access to pensions for the 180,000 people who came from Hong Kong on the UK government's visa scheme? My dispatch: www.ft.com/content/8b91...

Agreed. Folk don’t believe it can happen here, even when there’s very clear indications it can (and in some places is already starting). My long held belief is that somewhere that we think of as a ‘normal’ country will slide into the abyss where post-war moral and political norms no longer apply.

What's more 200+ Chicago-area clergy — Protestants, Catholics, and evangelicals — have signed a letter decrying ICE's efforts and voicing a willingness to put their "bodies on the line" for migrants, saying, "What Kristi Noem and her ICE agents are doing is immoral." religionnews.com/2025/10/21/a...

Whoa! What a statement! I mean, Catholic social teaching is what it is and I’m all for a lot of it, but this is really quite something. Hard to imagine it coming from a British or Irish bishop, although I’d like to think in the right circumstances we might hear this.

This strikes me as a really stupid thing to do in an era of global instability when a lot of English speaking professionals might want to work in Britain for a while and when our economy needs all the talent it can get. But hey, what do I know? I’m only a vicar.