Bluntly, it cannot be our job as the public to keep ourselves safe from the police. It is the job of the police to keep the public safe

Baroness Casey of Blackstock, The Times, 21 March

The headlines scream of the Casey report which excoriates the Met Police as institutionally racist, sexist and homophobic. Today we remember all victims of racism and prejudice, in the many institutions of our country. We also remember the many who have kept silent for far too long

Rosemarie Mallett, Bishop of Croydon, Twitter, 21 March

Baroness Casey is clearly one of the most competent, articulate and passionate women of integrity in our public life

Heather Cracknell, Director of HeartEdge, after an interview at St Martin-in-the-Fields, Twitter, 21 March

Who determines what is impartial? It should not be the Government

Christopher Chessun, Bishop of Southwark, House of Lords, debate on BBC impartiality, 15 March

I have visited Rwanda and was warmly welcomed there, but not as a person displaced from the UK and exiled

Paul Bayes, former Bishop of Liverpool, Twitter, 18 March

The proposed shutdown of the BBC Singers displays an irony: the corporation, while claiming to support creativity, is axing a body that contributes wholeheartedly to this

Robert Saxton, senior research fellow, Royal Academy of Music, letter in The Times, 18 March

It [the BBC Singers] is not theirs to throw away: it belongs to us, the audiences for whom it was made. We must fight tooth and nail for it to be restored

Simon Callow, actor, letter in The Times, 18 March

We talk about post-pandemic, but we aren’t post-anything. The repercussions are so present, especially in kids. I meet people who had a fantastic lockdown and other friends who were stuck in a tiny flat for two years and are now deeply anxious. We were not all in the same boat, just the same sea, and some boats had holes in them. Yet we’re all supposed to have reached the shore and be getting on with it

Charlie Mackesy, artist, The Times, 18 March

I love Instagram but social media can be very shouty, with people flinging accusations at each other. It’s a pity. I get abuse but I leave them to it. . . We have lost the art of disagreeing well and still being affable

Ibid.

My own belief is that if God wants us to have the Bible, this is evidently the sort of Bible he wants us to have — one that isn’t, at least in human terms, perfect, at least not perfectly simple, but complicated

John Barton, biblical scholar, lecture at St Paul’s Cathedral, 21 March

Football fills a God-shaped hole, I think. Because it makes you feel connected to something besides yourself. It is, in a small way, eternal. If you’ve been going to Chelsea, as I have, for 40 years, you think: ‘I have watched players come and go and die. And I’m still here. And I feel connected to the a priori idea of Chelsea and football, which is sort of beyond the here and now. It’s identity, and it’s tribalism, and it’s opposition to other tribes. It feels very religious

David Baddiel, writer and comedian, The Guardian, 18 March

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