UK News
Insights from the UK and beyond
PCC rules on Moir’s Gately column
The press watchdog has rejected a complaint over a controversial Daily Mail article which described the death of gay Boyzone singer Stephen Gately as not “natural” and “more than a little sleazy.”
Singer Gately, 33, died in Majorca last October and a post mortem concluded that his death was caused by fluid on the lungs.
Mail columnist Jan Moir, in an article headlined “A strange, lonely and troubling death,” wrote that something was “wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun.”
“Whatever the cause of death, it is not, by any yardstick, a natural one,” she wrote.
Remembering the dead – or “poppy fascism”?
This week, hundreds of thousands of people will join the annual act of remembrance to commemorate those who have died in war, proudly wearing a poppy to honour the fallen.
However the simple flower emblem, which has been used since shortly after the end of World War One as it was the only thing to grow on the devastated battlefields of Belgium and northern France, has once again become an issue in itself.
Unchristian comments about BBC’s new head of religion?
The BBC is coming in for flak about its religious coverage, much of it centring on its incoming head of religious broadcasting.
The publicly funded broadcaster has appointed Aaqil Ahmed from Channel 4, a move that has dismayed a Church of England member who is proposing to discuss the matter at the church’s General Synod, the church’s parliament.
Parliament set to make another costly mistake?
Parliament’s election of a new Speaker is supposed to solve a lot of the woes it has brought upon itself by the expenses scandal. But it won’t, newspaper editorials predict.
The House of Commons needs to appoint somebody who can restore the integrity of the chamber and public trust after many MPs were found to be claiming for lavish and sometimes inappropriate expenses.
MPs shoot themselves in foot over expenses
The online release of MPs’ expense claims has only served to further dent their already battered reputation.
Forty-two days after the Daily Telegraph began to investigate MPs’ expenses the Houses of Parliament finally got round to publishing official details of them. Or rather it didn’t, as lots of key information was blacked out.
Reform of UK’s monarchy laws – enlightened or meddling?
Discussions between the British premier and monarch to reverse religious discriminatory laws going back 300 years have sparked consternation in a conservative newspaper while attracting little response from the Roman Catholic church.
Proposed changes of the 1701 Act of Settlement would allow a future king or queen to marry a Roman Catholic, but would still preclude a royal of that faith becoming monarch.
Brown flatters, but are we still best of friends, papers ask
“Brave” was how most of the British press responded to Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s speech to both houses of Congress in Washington.
Brown was the first European leader to be invited to Washington by the new U.S. administration and was only the fifth British prime minister to speak to a joint session of Congress.
Has “Auntie” got it right?
After a week of media frenzy, the BBC hopes it has taken action to end the crisis caused by the crude prank call made by Jonathan Ross and Russell Brand on the latter’s Radio 2 show.
Brand has quit and Jonathan Ross has been suspended after the presenters left lewd comments on the answerphone of 78-year-old “Fawlty Towers” actor Andrew Sachs. The head of Radio 2 Lesley Douglas has also resigned.
Editorials praise Brown’s energy package
Unions and energy watchdogs lashed out at Gordon Brown’s aid package aimed at helping householders cope with soaring energy bills, saying it was ”too little, too late”. Even pensioners’ charities gave a frosty response.
But newspaper editorials on the whole were supportive, describing it as “bold politics. More importantly, it was good policy”, as The Times said.
Palin – the next Thatcher or Diana?
The British press, like their American cousins, doesn’t seem to able to get enough of Sarah Palin.
The self-described hunting, shooting and hockey “mom” is the “biggest hot-button political story in the English-speaking world”, says Martin Kettle in The Guardian on Friday.
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The Wall
