Ian Rees's Blog, page 10

A game of thrones

It's been a good week for ecclesiastical enthronements. First the new pope on Tuesday and then on Thursday the new archbishop of Canterbury. The joker in me wants to ask how it is that the Italians can organise a grand ceremony like that in less than a week, while the Brits need the best part of three months. Do Catholics just drop everything and come when they are told, while Anglicans have to have planning meetings to see if they can find a space in their diaries? Maybe the Italians are jus...

What's in a name?

There aren't many positions in life where you get an official opportunity to give yourself another name, but becoming pope is one such occasion. So alongside the other firsts (a Jesuit pope and a pope from the Americas) we now have the first Pope Francis and it is this last first that has attracted some significant interest since it indicates what sort of man he would like to be known  as. His choice of name recalls two prominent Catholic saints: Francis of Assissi, known for his decisio...

The high Pryce of revenge

Go back to 2003 when a speeding fine arrived at the Huhne/Pryce household. It was served on Chris Huhne (MEP at the time) for doing more than 50mph on the closing section of the M11, but Vicky Pryce took the points for her then husband because he already had points on his licence and hers was clean. The matter was forgotten and remained hidden until 2010 when Huhne confessed to a long-standing affair with his PR advisor and announced his intention of leaving Pryce. That set in motion a train...

Cardinal sins in leadership

It's curious how seemingly random events collide. We have two elections in the news this week (the Eastleigh by-election, in case you were wondering, and the forthcoming conclave to decide the identity of the new pope) caused by two resignations (Chris Huhne's catastrophic fall from grace over his wife taking his speeding points, and Pope Benedict XVI's surprise decision to step down from leading the Catholic Church). And now both of these elections are dogged by scandal in which a senior fig...

Closing the floodgates

Back in the days before the ark, when it came to sophisticated communication and entertainment media all we had in our family home was a phone, a record player, a radio and a TV (and only one of each, in case you were wondering). Radios started multipying first, followed by record players and cassette decks as I and my brother got into music, then a colour TV, another portable and, years later, a VCR. We were quite late to this last development – Betamax had passed us by completely – so by th...

The truth is out: Christians are from Mars

On Tuesday the second reading of the Bill to legalise gay marriage passed through the Commons by a majority of 400 to 175, with 75 abstaining or not present to vote. Those who opposed it were mostly Conservatives. The Labour dissenters were either English or Welsh Catholics, or Scots with a strong religious association. 175 is a fairly sizeable minority, large enough to block it if the voting had been in the Church of England synod (see 28 November), but not enough to impede the bill's progre...

Wouldn't you rather know?

Last Friday, 1 February, was the 10th anniversary of the Columbia shuttle disaster in which seven astronauts were killed when the NASA space shuttle burned up on re-entry into earth's atmosphere after a 16 day mission. The craft had been fatally compromised on take off by a falling piece of insulation foam that knocked a hole in the leading edge of the left wing, so that hot gases seeped into the wing as the craft attempted re-entry, causing it to explode. At the time, mission controllers cou...

Pride and Prejudice in 2013

Here's a thought that comes with the 200th anniversary of the printing of “Pride and Prejudice” in mind. Jane Austen only wrote six novels, which basically revolve around the love and marriage prospects of young women (eight principal heroines in the six books, plus a whole host of others). There are all sorts of other relationships described in these stories – flirting, adultery (only hinted at), seductions and skullduggery, bad marriages, unwise liaisons, secret engagements, infatuation, je...

Victory?

I'm not breaking out the champagne over this week's ruling by the European Court of Human Rights to allow Nadia Eweida (above) to wear a cross to work (see my original post on this question), and that's not because another of the rulings made by the European judges went against another Christian. In that second case it seems there was an understandable logic in the hospital authorities not allowing Shirley Chaplin to wear her cross to work for health and safety reasons. There has been a signi...

Guiding principles

Last week the Girlguiding UK announced that it was starting a consultation about changing the wording of the Promise that guides make when they join the organisation. The reason for proposing a change is, according to a press release, that “The Promise is Guiding’s beating heart – it’s the core expression of our values and the common standard that brings us all together. But over the past few years we have heard from more and more girls and Leaders who struggle with the wording, particularly...