Anglo-Saxon Platitudes

Pride is no longer a sin provided it is racial pride, according to a burble in the Barclayguff by a fat man wearing a silly frock. The Archbishop of York has been doing the old modernisation thingy, recycling pieties which wore out their restrained British welcome a dozen years ago during New Labour's contortions over the proud regionality of our eternal unificatination within the Britishness of the Englishness of our Britishness. Pandering to his far-right readership in true Blairite style, the Archbishop took care to castigate the metropolitan élites and to praise those great English institutions, founded by the Scotsman Reith and the Welshman Bevan, which the plucky yet misunderstood salt of God's English earth has consistently voted to starve and cripple in favour of showing Johnny Migrant what's what. From a transcendent plethora of abstract nouns, his Grace particularly recommended two: the courage of a trading island nation, presumably by way of contrast to the abject common ruck of tradeless continental nations; and the compassion of a nation facing up to its colonial past by protecting statues and deporting coloureds. If nothing else, the Archbishop has certainly provided an eloquent demonstration of what passes in the Church of England for new and expansive vision.