Press: THE Times/Australian story
about Robert Waddington on Saturday was a good, memorable piece of
journalism. Waddington, as Dean of Manchester a decade ago, was an
assiduous and successful abuser of young boys.
Press: Releasing the attendance figures is
a bit like changing the dressing on an oozing wound in public, but
it would be better to release them generally under a rather longer
embargo, so that stories could be discovered that might make bits
look better.
Press: THIS was the week when The Guardian got
sucked into the Syrian civil war. A really determined effort, which
is still under way as I write, was made to break into our computer
systems.
Press: IS NEWS bad for us? Apparently
someone has been telling The Guardian's journalists
this. Madeleine Bunting wrote: "Imagine a news-free life - no
radio, no television news. What would you miss? According to the
Swiss novelist Rolf Dobelli, the answer is not much.
Press: PEOPLE talk as if Margaret Thatcher did
nothing for the Church of England. At least her funeral seems to
have kept the latest lucubrations on marriage by the Faith and
Order Commission out of the headlines.
Press: Last week, the Daily
Mail produced one of the most brutal and brilliant
headlines of the past 30 years. The picture of Mick Philpott, who
killed six of his own children in an attempt to discredit one of
his mistresses, filled the front page, beneath the headline "Vile
product of Welfare UK".
Press: THE strange ungainly bellowings of Lord
Carey, running around in his retirement like a bewildered elk at
the Grand National, do a great deal to explain the Church of
England's current problems.
Press: THE pictures from the inauguration
were spectacular: the commentary a little less so. From inside the
Church, it looks as if Justin Welby is going to do and say all
kinds of interesting things. To the outside world, it means a
resumption of the sex wars.
Andrew Brown is impressed by the new Archbishop of Canterbury's
lack of drama and self-pity
Press: The Archbishops' and Bishops'
letter to The Sunday Telegraph looked like a
return to the days of Thatcherism. If anyone today could remember
what Marxism was, there would have been a Tory MP to denounce the
whole proposal as Marxist.
Press: THIS week belonged entirely to Catherine
Deveney, who broke the Cardinal O'Brien story, and, in a series of
follow-ups, demonstrated exactly how to handle difficult and
painful stories.