There are two distinct threads in this, both are interesting and relevant.

The second thread is a question, are we good at national branding? The article comes to the conclusion that we could do a lot better. It is probably right, but we have some good campaigns to encourage tourism and trade missions have been a successful program for many years. What we need is a more coherent strategy with a lot more imagination.

The fist thread is potentially the most interesting. There was a common theme in those that criticised the re branding of the plane, they tend to be remainers who are “ashamed” to be British. The idea of Johnson arriving at an international conference in a plane with a Union Jack (right way or wrong way up) embarrasses them. They would rather we where represented by the EU and Johnson took that away from them!

Thanks Mary – point well made.

Whilst I personally don’t like subjectively the tail art on the aircraft, it absolutely is fitting for our leaders (military and political) and diplomats to look the part.

For all of Cameron’s other faults, it was pathetic him being lambasted for commissioning his “air force cam” to replace the old BAE 146s that were old, slow, unreliable and hideously inefficient. Furthermore it completely cast in shadow the factual reality behind the jet – which is multi role as a troop transport and air-to-air tanker. By characterising it as “cameron’s” jet it neglected to point out that it’s a plane shared by many many people in government, diplomatic service, the royal family and the military. It’s a very well-spent investment.

Finally, whether we like it or not, the UK is the 5th largest economy in the world and one of the most influential nations. Flying about in knackered old planes is just embarrassing and looks cheap. Mary is right – the UK needs every help it can get to “sell” itself.

All children like boundaries, enforced with lots of love and very importantly, fairness. If you don’t set boundaries when bringing up your rugrats you are doing them a great disservice.

“The Church of England was created because Henry VIII was a megalomaniacal sex-pest whose ego was so huge and fragile he would take no lessons from the bishop of Rome.” Do you really think so, Giles? Do you completely eliminate the possibility that Henry VIII might not have been interested in having a male heir, which he regarded as necessary to the continuation of the Tudor dynasty and the stability of the realm?

“Conchita Wurst’s Eurovision victory in 2014 seemed to set the seal on Austria’s new-old identity.”
Really ?

Baer writes about “the false claims that mail-in ballots are prone to fraud”. It is false to claim that these are false claims. Take a look at J. Christian Adams’s “On Vote by Mail”. See also John Fund and Hans von Spakovsky’s “Who’s Counting? How Fraudsters and Bureaucrats Put Your Vote at Risk”. Their book highlights the case of Greene County, a heavily black county in Alabama where the Republicans were uncompetitive but where fraudulent use of absentee balloting allowed a small clique of Democrats to decide who won the Democratic primaries. The widespread use of mail-in-ballots allows the abuses of absentee ballots to be hugely expanded.
Let’s also not forget non-citizen voting fraud, which American political scientist Jesse Richman estimated accounted for 834 thousand votes out of Hillary Clinton’s margin over Trump in the popular vote in 2016. (This could well be an underestimate, for a number of reasons. For instance, Richman accepts the Census estimate of the undercount of illegal immigrants, which is almost certainly substantially too low. Widespread use of mail-in balloting obviously increases the likelihood of non-citizen voting. In January 2018, President Trump shut down his Presidential Advisory Commission on Election Integrity (PACEI), which is a real shame. It got very poor co-operation from state governments anxious to hide voting fraud, but he should have let it soldier on as best as it could and present a report on recommendations for reform.

A bit like Brexit, then…

A striking approach to this subject, and one of the very few I’ve encountered that looks at the statue bashing and, implicitly, the thinking that lies behind it, by standing on secure philosophical and ethical ground. The ground is explicitly Christian; but there is one aspect of Rev Fraser’s discussion that seems to evade some important, even central, implications of that Christian grounding.

I write as a member of the Church of England, and as a Reader (licensed lay minister). So I was delighted to see how this article grapples with the messy origins of that church.

I am glad to see his acknowledgement that non-Christian thinkers and writers can disclose important ideas, and drive us to ask important questions. Being a Christian, I cannot find the general influence of either Sigmund Freud or Edward Said to be entirely for the good of human beings; but that is no reason to do what many Christians do, and reject them in their entirety. Such rejection smacks too much of the kind of search for purity on which the statue-bashers are engaged. As Rev. Fraser points out, we are all sinners and cannot escape the reality of that condition, not even by choosing essentially pro-Christian writers with the creative and intellectual brilliance of Tom Holland.

Like the Apostle Paul when preaching in Athens (Acts 17:16″“34), Rev. Fraser knows that glimpses of the divine can be found in things profane or pagan; and it is good to see that reality acknowledged. However, I also find it striking that while one important word from the Bible, from Christian thought and practice, appears repeatedly ” redemption, another does not appear at all ” forgiveness. The New Testament in particular repeatedly uses both words; and they are often inextricably linked, most obviously in the prayer Jesus taught his disciples.

An important pointer is this sentence: “I also think of psychoanalysis as a quasi-redemptive exercise.” The “quasi” matters, because it underlines that such redemption cannot be accomplished in Christian terms ” or in ways consistent with the only true redemption.

The Bible and orthodox Christian teaching, all the way back to the earliest Church Fathers, says that true redemption can be accomplished only via what Jesus accomplished via his life, death and resurrection. We cannot accomplish it for ourselves, and the most fundamental thing we are expected to do is to forgive.

So the only troublesome thing I find in Rev. Fraser’s article is its emphasis on action without mentioning that the most effective action that we can take ” the action that renders all the other redemptive actions and aspirations “quasi” ” is to forgive. In so many ways, the main conclusions of the article are a bullseye:

Both religiously and psychologically, they [the statues] remind us of how much work we have to do, of the complicity of the faithful with the forces of evil, of how even our best intentions can be requisitioned by darkness.

But it was Jesus himself, who showed that the human search for purity is bound to fail because it has been only he who “shines in the darkness” (John 1:5) and who shows us that true redemption involves forgiveness. One of the most fundamental characteristics of the statue-bashers is not merely their lack of forgiveness; it is that they have espoused a creed that explicitly rejects forgiveness.

Last refuge of the scoundrel. Who ever sees these planes?

Well said Mary! Kick their asses BoJo. Rule Britannia and all that!

Hmm. So how come, in this general decline of civilisation, you’re still managing to get it right? Just blessed or is your argument shaky? And if you’re blessed, then maybe many others are, too. Or is it that all of us have to learn as we go, and one of the things we learn as we go is where and what boundaries are important. (Isn’t it odd how the older generation always sees the decline in the younger one? Just as their parents did to them…)