Today I learnt that if you dress up as a donkey on Teams you can’t actually see if the children can see you, because you can’t see the screen.

Eleanor Robertshaw, Team Rector of Snaith, 24 March

There will be other pandemics and other major health emergencies. No single government or multilateral agency can address this threat alone. . . To that end, we believe that nations should work together towards a new international treaty for pandemic preparedness and response. . . It would also include recognition of a “One Health” approach that connects the health of humans, animals and our planet. . . Pandemic preparedness needs global leadership for a global health system fit for this millennium. To make this commitment a reality, we must be guided by solidarity, fairness, transparency, inclusiveness and equity.

24 global political leaders, including Boris Johnson, Emmanuel Macron, and Angela Merkel (but not Presidents Biden or Xi), 30 March

The reason we have the vaccine success is because of capitalism, because of greed, my friends. . . Actually I regret saying it. Forget I said that

Boris Johnson to the 1922 Committee of MPs, 22 March

He is right. . . The response to Boris’s remarks, however, has been all too predictable. . . Labour politicians, Anglican bishops, and Left-wing commentators have fallen over each other to denounce Boris, and we haven’t even heard from the Duchess of Sussex on the subject

Andrew Roberts, column in The Daily Telegraph, 24 March

A lack of professional curiosity appears to underpin the explanations given as a rationale by Revd Hastie-Smith when questioned by the Reviewer for why concerns about John Smyth were not pursued by him or others or were easily dismissed. Revd Hastie-Smith states that by his own assessment, he must have been either “grotesquely insensitive” or “extraordinarily incurious” as he had never become aware of anything nor did he ask any questions prior to 2014. Victims stated that they felt there was a level of “willful ignorance” demonstrated by the wider evangelical community and that “seemingly comprehensive accounts were actually studies in obfuscation”

Gill Camina, author of the John Smyth Independent Case Review for the Scripture Union, executive summary, 25 March

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