Reading
Suggesting Britain could sign the withdrawal agreement with its fingers crossed makes perfect sense for a government of liars
Everybody knows Boris Johnson can lie for England. To his supporters, it was one of his best assets. They believed he could bamboozle the European Union into giving him the only Brexit deal that is really acceptable – one that gives Britain all the advantages of being in the EU without any of the botheration of being a member. The problem is that congenital mendacity isn’t just for foreigners. If you lie for England, you will also lie to England.
This week, these two streams of fabrication finally became one. In openly admitting that it signed the withdrawal agreement with the EU in bad faith, Johnson’s Vote Leave government also implicitly confessed that it lied wholesale to the electorate in December’s general election. The cross-contamination of domestic politics by the deceit that is Brexit’s DNA is now complete.
The international theological journal Concilium has recently published, open access, a special issue "Masculinities: Theological and religious challenges", tackling the old problem of the connections between religion, men and patriarchy. There's interesting material in it, even for the theologically challenged! Among other things discussions of sexual abuse in the church, Putin's regime in Russia, masculinity & race, clerical masculinities, and more. I wrote the lead article, about social-scientific approaches to the issue. You'll find it all here: https://concilium.hymnsam.co.uk/issues/20202-masculinities-theological-and-religious-challenges/.
Working at SCU back in 2007-8 was a quiet gig. I had plenty of time to mull over things. I would cycle to work in the morning and have my day’s work mostly done by smoko. In the …