Why Scottish pubs are about to get a better beer selection
Scots could see a greater selection of beers at their local pub after new measures for the industry came into force on Monday, the Scottish Government has said.
The Scottish Pubs Code enables tied pub tenants to stock a wider range of beer beyond those supplied by the business which owns the pub.
Ministers say the change will give pub tenants greater rights and protection, while supporting local breweries.
Pub-owning businesses will also have to provide prospective tenants with more information on things like business costs.
An independent Scottish Pubs Code Adjudicator has also been announced to oversee the measures and rule over any disputes between tenants and landlords.
Further measures will be added in June, including allowing tenants to request different leases that ministers say will give them greater responsibility and flexibility in running their businesses.
The new rules had faced some pushback from the sector, with three pub-owning firms – Greene King, Punch Taverns and Hawthorn Leisure Limited – having attempted to seek a judicial review.
Employment minister Tom Arthur said: “This is a good deal for Scotland’s hospitality sector. We are rebalancing the relationship between pub tenants and pub-owning businesses, making it easier to do business and creating opportunities for entrepreneurs in the tied pub sector.
“And it is a boost for customers who could now find a much fuller array of local draught beers in their favourite pubs.
“I will continue to engage with the sector to ensure that the Code places the interests of both tenants and landlords at its heart.”
I couldn’t get over my exes – turned out, I was a love addict
I can’t begin to count how many boxes of Kleenex I’ve got through while sobbing into my pillow like Bridget Jones after a boyfriend has left me – and fantasising for years that they will walk back into my life, proclaiming their undying love.
Sadly, that has never happened. I was just a stuck record, going on and on about them being the love of my life, long after the relationship’s sell-by date.
That’s why it’s no surprise it apparently takes the average person more than four years and nine weeks to get over an ex – even if you’re in a new relationship.
According to a new report, to completely cut the bond (referred to by the researchers as “complete fracture”, where all romantic feelings vanish) takes twice that amount of time – especially if you are the one dumped.
The study, published in Social Psychological and Personality Science, claims it’s the same timeframe for both men and women. A small percent of unlucky people find it even harder to let go, with their feelings lasting decades.
It makes buckets of sense to me. I spent years wondering why I was always left heartbroken and unable to move on. I had to go into therapy to learn how to disentangle myself – and then I discovered it wasn’t just bad luck. I was a love addict.
I’d always thought I was living in a Gothic romance, but I was actually living with addiction and co-dependency. I’d never really analysed it all until I hit a rock bottom, but my love affairs were always epic – on a pumped-up Dr Zhivago level. I never simply “fancied” somebody; I fell head over heels in love with them.
They were always super good-looking – but ran away at the first sign of commitment. And when I finally got it down on paper and took a cold hard look, the findings were hard to ignore. The love addict-meets-avoidant cycle was obvious – just like Bridget Jones and Daniel Cleaver.
There was my first proper boyfriend aged 16, the pretty-boy Robert; followed by the James Dean-type Barney when I was 17. Then the waterskiing TV producer, David, when I hit 22 – and the hippy surfer Adam, when I was around 26. The great love of my life, Alex, came in my thirties. I went on to have kids with him after he died, using his frozen sperm.
All my love affairs had one major thing in common: they left me heartbroken.
I found myself calling them desperately to change their minds, staging an accident outside their house for attention, “pocket dialling” them, acting like I was in Fatal Attraction – or even convincing myself an ex was still around as a ghost, as I’ve done with Alex, in my desperate attempt to maintain the relationship that is well and truly over.
But the time eventually came when I realised that rather than feel like a victim and barricade myself in my bedroom every time I got dumped, crying my eyes out, I needed to take full responsibility. So, I picked up a book about love addiction. And I realised I had an unconscious terror of intimacy.
I got a top love addict therapist. Once she drew me the love cycle diagram on a whiteboard, my dating life took on a whole new meaning,
This was my pattern: I would fall madly in love (or “fall into addiction”, as the therapist rephrased it). I would always choose somebody emotionally avoidant – I found their aloofness powerful and seductive. I’d go on a dopamine high as the “fantasy” was triggered… I’d found nirvana with this person! I was rescued from the pain of loneliness and emptiness… I was loved! Everything was okay! Phew!
We had the honeymoon period and I floated around on a pink cloud for a bit. But soon, they pulled away.
This made me feel incredibly insecure. I couldn’t help asking cringy questions, like: “Why don’t you love me anymore?” I was unable to eat – the craving and obsession for my ex-partner continued around the clock. I thought I was going to die of pain. Then, the cycle continued with a whole new partner.
I decided to meet up with some of my ex-partners and old flames to talk about what had gone wrong – and how I’d acted. One of them didn’t have a clue what I was talking about when I met him in a pub, so I changed the subject quickly. Another ex apologised to me. He said: “I’m really sorry, I have no idea why I split up with you.” No surprise, he was also in therapy.
I now know that I had to learn to stop depending on external validation to show me that I was loveable. I’d grown up believing that I needed another person to make me whole. And I subconsciously chose partners who couldn’t give me what I thought I wanted – to reinforce that core belief.
And so I went to therapy and joined a love addiction support group and went to meetings. It might not be for everyone, but it worked for me – I learned to focus on myself, rather than point the finger at my boyfriends (or, should I say, ex-boyfriends).
Blaming another person for making (or breaking) me wasn’t fair on them. The real solution – cheesy as it sounds? I needed to learn to love myself.
UK set to be hotter than Athens this week as temperatures soar to 21C
Parts of the UK are set to be hotter than Athens this week as temperatures soar to 21C across the country, according to the Met Office.
The forecaster said temperatures will climb gradually this week and could peak at 21C on Thursday in the south of England.
South Wales and Somerset could reach 20C and may be hotter than Athens and Barcelona on Thursday, where highs of 17C and 16C are forecast.
Met Office spokesperson Stephen Nixon said: “It is a fine dry and sunny day for many through the day on Monday, with temperatures well above average for the time of year and that theme is set to continue for much of the week.
“There will be a settled period for the UK’s weather and temperatures will possibly get as high as 21C on Thursday.”
Mr Dixon said high pressure is set to be near or over the UK in the coming week and into the weekend, leading to warm and dry conditions.
He added: “On Tuesday morning there will be the start of some low cloud in some parts of the Midlands and central England but will clear up quite quickly.
“Through the middle of the week it will be a touch breezier in the South West, but it will still feel much warmer than average.”
“On Friday and Saturday we are likely to see a touch of fog in eastern Scotland and north-east England which will subdue temperatures in these areas,” Mr Dixon added.
Although temperatures are likely to gradually drop on Saturday, they will still hover around the mid-teens and are likely to be higher than the average maximum temperature of 12C for the UK in April, forecasters said.
The warm weather still falls some way short of the record high in April of 29.4C, which was recorded Camden Square, London, in 1949, Met Office records show.
The Met Office said the dry weather is likely to persist into the weekend and early next week, though there is less certainty when forecasting much further into April.
Rather cloudy in the northwest with a little light rain, mainly in the far north of Scotland. Otherwise, a chilly start followed by a dry and bright day with long, warm sunny spells and generally light winds.
Remaining dry and fine this evening, though becoming increasingly breezy along the south and west coasts overnight. Feeling chilly too, with a local frost likely in sheltered rural spots.
After a chilly start with a little patchy frost and fog, it’ll be a fine day. Dry with long sunny spells, although rather breezy in the south and west.
High pressure continues to bring widely dry and fine conditions this week. Plenty of warm sunshine by day, but chillier by night. Although generally breezier than of late.
How TikTok became the world’s most controversial app
After amassing more than 170 million users in the US in less than seven years, TikTok is now facing a complete ban if a deal is not made with its parent company ByteDance before 5 April.
TikTok has already disappeared from Apple and Google app stores ahead of the law taking effect on Saturday, which requires ByteDance to sell the video-sharing app to a US owner due to national security concerns.
President Donald Trump gave TikTok a 75-day reprieve from the ban after he took office in January, however ByteDance is yet to secure a buyer.
The US is not the first major market for TikTok to cut off the video-sharing app. In 2020, India issued a complete ban of the app that cut off around 200 million users. The Indian government cited security issues with the app, claiming that alleged ties between ByteDance and the Chinese government posed a threat to India’s sovereignty.
Other countries and areas, including the UK and European Union, have put partial bans in place, which prevent government workers and military personnel from installing the app on their devices.
Various federal and state TikTok bans are already in place in the US, with lawmakers citing national security concerns. These fears have done little to stem TikTok’s growth in the US. The app has proved to be one of the most popular both in America and globally last year with 52 million downloads in the US and 733 million worldwide – despite more than 3 billion people around the world being blocked from downloading it.
This has helped bring the total number of TikTok users around the world to above 2 billion, with only India’s ban nearly three years ago slightly slowing its growth – but only temporarily.
A survey poll from the Pew Research Center last year found TikTok to be the fastest-growing platform in the US, as users beyond the social media app’s typically young demographic began to adopt it.
US adults who have TikTok accounts are increasingly using the app as a source of news, with roughly a third of people aged 18-29 regularly using it to consume news in 2023.
The FBI claims that Chinese state ties to parent company ByteDance could allow the app to “manipulate content” in order to spread harmful propaganda.
Fears around national security have been countered with questions about censorship, with the Electronic Frontier Foundation describing the prospect of a ban as a “seed of genuine security concern wrapped in a thick layer of censorship”.
The US digital liberties group has called on people to “resist a governmental power to ban a popular means of communication and expression”.
In its filing with the Supreme Court in January, TikTok alleged that banning the app would “shutter” one of the most popular speech platforms at a highly political moment.
“The act will shutter one of America’s most popular speech platforms the day before a presidential inauguration,” TikTok wrote. “This, in turn, will silence the speech of applicants and the many Americans who use the platform to communicate about politics, commerce, arts, and other matters of public concern.”
Under the law passed last year and upheld on Friday by a unanimous Supreme Court, the platform had until Sunday to cut ties with its China-based parent or shut down its US operation to resolve concerns it poses a threat to national security.
The United States has never previously banned a major social media platform.
President Trump said over the weekend that he believed a deal would be made before Saturday’s deadline.
Top Tory meets major landlords in bid to scupper Labour rental reforms
Top Tories are in private talks with big landlords in a bid to thwart Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill, it has emerged.
In a bid to scupper the legislation, which overhauls private renting laws to give more protection to renters, senior Conservatives have met landlords to consider options, including a legal challenge under human rights law.
In a meeting between some of the UK’s biggest landlords and shadow housing minister Jane Scott, the group discussed ideas including challenges in the courts and delaying the legislation with repeated amendments in the Lords, it was reported.
Three people in attendance told The Guardian that Baroness Scott also vowed to do everything she could to force debates on multiple amendments to the bill, promising she could delay it until the autumn at least.
Campaign group Acorn said there is a “coordinated attempt by landlords and their supporters within the Lords to frustrate the progress of the Renters’ Rights Bill”.
Policy officer Anny Cullum said: “Unelected and unaccountable Tory peers are using underhand tactics to deliberately delay this vital legislation even more – legislation that many of them supported in its previous guise under the last government.”
And charity Shelter said it is “utterly disgraceful that a handful of self-interested peers are resorting to cynical delay tactics designed to slow the progress of the Renters’ Rights Bill to a crawl”.
The Conservatives did not deny the meeting took place, with a party spokesperson adding: “The Conservatives have been warning that this bill is deeply flawed, as it will lead to a reduced supply of rental homes … As is standard practice with all legislation, the official opposition engages privately with a range of stakeholders to hear their views.”
Labour’s Renters’ Rights Bill sets out a raft of new legislation designed to give greater rights and protections to private renters in the UK.
The key measure in the bill is the abolition of Section 21’s so-called no-fault evictions, under which tenants can be removed from rented housing when a fixed-term tenancy ends or during a rolling tenancy.
Other measures include giving tenants the right to request a pet, with landlords unable to “unreasonably refuse” and able to request insurance to cover potential damage from pets if needed.
It will also strengthen tenants’ rights, with renters empowered to challenge unfair rent increases and plans to outlaw rental bidding wars by landlords and letting agents.
Under the bill, Labour will also make it illegal for landlords to discriminate against tenants in receipt of benefits or with children when choosing to rent out their property.
The party has accused the Tories of having “repeatedly refused to stand up for private renters” with a ban on no-fault evictions first announced by Theresa May in 2019.
Baroness Scott’s meeting included representatives from the property group Get Living, Dexters estate agents and the National Residential Landlord Association, among others, according to The Guardian.
A spokesperson for Get Living said: “We have always been clear that we want to see the Renters’ Rights Bill succeed. Renters deserve a better rental experience, but this needs to be balanced with maintaining an appealing and sustainable rental market for investors and landlords.
“Throughout the passage of the bill, we have raised our concerns with all major parties and want to work constructively with government to make the bill a success for renters and operators alike.”
The Barbados edit: Best experiences, from festivals to foodie feasts
There’s always something happening in beautiful, beachy Barbados, so whether you’re a carnival fan, firm foodie, or love live music, you’ll find incredible experiences to suit every passion. What’s more, travellers heading to Barbados this year can enjoy incredible discounts of up to 65 per cent on select hotels and an array of attractions and activities across the island, while indulging in the island’s vibrant culinary scene through exclusive menu offers from participating restaurants.
Here we delve into just some of the best activities, events and unmissable adventures you can enjoy on this wonderful, welcoming island.
The Crop Over festival transforms Barbados into an island-wide party with music, parades and dancing everywhere you look. More than 100,000 people take part in this annual gathering, which traditionally marks the end of the island’s sugar cane season. This year, the fun kicks off in July and the excitement peaks on the Grand Kadooment Day, featuring costumed revellers in bands, parading and dancing to great calypso songs blasting from the music trucks driving along the sizzling streets. The Crop Over festival is where Rihanna “got her style groove” according to fashion writers. You may just find yours there, too.
Read more: Best adults-only hotels in Barbados
If you’d prefer a smaller but equally fun celebration then Holetown Festival on the West Coast of Barbados is your friend. It’s a bouncy, colourful and family-friendly jamboree that celebrates the arrival of the first settlers to the island back in 1627. With a steel band concert, nightly shows, and a floodlit tattoo and night parade, the week-long event showcases the rich cultural heritage and traditions of Barbados.
Read more: Best family hotels in Barbados
The Barbados Reggae Festival is your chance to plunge yourself into the beating heart of reggae music. Renowned local and international reggae artists gather on the island in April to conjure up a rhythmic menu of reggae and dancehall. The music is only part of the fun: there are several beach parties and themed get-togethers across multiple events, including Reggae On The Hill. This year is the 20th anniversary of this festival, so the vibe is set to be better than ever.
Read more: Best beach hotels in Barbados
Culinary fans should book their trip to coincide with the vibrant Barbados Food and Rum Festival. This event has been named the Caribbean’s Best Culinary Festival at the World Culinary Awards two years running. Held annually in October, food lovers from around the globe descend to enjoy the island’s famed culinary experiences, with local and international chefs joining the eminent local mixologists to serve up fine food, drink and Bajan hospitality.
Another foodie must-experience is the Oistins Fish Festival, held annually over the Easter weekend in the pretty fishing village of Oistins, on the south coast. It celebrates the local fishing industry, with music, crafts and delicious local food. Dubbed one for the whole family, it includes an Easter bonnet competition, egg and spoon races, a fish boning competition and a hilarious contest where youngsters compete to reach the top of a greased pole.
By day, Harbour Lights on the stunning Carlisle Bay is a popular beach club, with loungers, umbrellas, and turtle and shipwreck snorkel tours, but at night, it transforms into a thrilling venue offering pulsating steel pan rhythms, stilt walkers, costumed dancers, and a live band. On Friday evenings you can party under the stars as the venue turns into an open-air nightclub.
For bar-hopping, head to St Lawrence Gap, known as ‘The Gap’ by locals. Here you can watch the sunset with a cocktail at On The Bay or Mimosas Trattoria and Bar, or head indoors for a great dining experience at Cocktail Kitchen, and finally take your pick from the late-night bars where you can party into the small hours of the morning.
Barbados lives and breathes cricket, and you can hear the sweet sound of leather on willow in villages across the island. The cream of the action is at the celebrated Kensington Oval, where you can take in an international Test Match or a One-Day match, soaking up the incredible atmosphere with music, dancing, drinking and delicious food. No one does cricket quite like the Barbadians.
For more adventurous sports fans there’s the Barbados Open Water Festival, with a variety of open water swim races that are open for all ages and abilities, as well as fun social events where the athletes and spectators can rub shoulders. It’s held in November at the Barbados Yacht Club in the tranquil, crescent-shaped Carlisle Bay. If boating is more your drift, Barbados Sailing Week in January promises incredible sailing experiences, races, beach parties and delicious Bajan food and drink. The perfect way to explore the island, cuisine and culture.
For travel information and inspiration and to discover hotel, experience and culinary offers, head to Visit Barbados
Who is fighting in Whitehall’s spending wars?
There’s no respite for Rachel Reeves after her spring statement. As well as worrying whether Donald Trump’s tariffs will blow her economic strategy off course, the chancellor must now divide up a shrinking cake among Whitehall departments before her spending review concludes in June.
The Treasury hoped this process would be more harmonious than previous reviews, but it is not, as cabinet ministers fight hard to defend their budgets. The “protected” departments, health and defence, will get a larger share of the cake, so the slightly bigger cuts announced by Reeves on Wednesday will fall disproportionately on those whose budgets have not recovered since George Osborne’s austerity.
Housing and local government is already down 46 per cent on its 2009-10 level, while culture is down 38 per cent, work and pensions 29 per cent, environment 22 per cent, transport 20 per cent, and justice 19 per cent. Despite that, the Treasury has told these departments to model cuts of 5.7 per cent and 11.2 per cent over the three-year review period.
Several ministers tried but failed to persuade the chancellor to change her fiscal rules earlier this month. She doubled down on them this week, judging that the financial markets would not tolerate higher borrowing. Reeves will be relieved that the bond market dog did not bark, but her decision makes the spending review even more difficult.
Tensions between the Treasury and the Department for Work and Pensions led to this week’s last-minute announcement of a £500m cut in universal credit after the Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) fiscal watchdog ruled that the government’s £5bn worth of welfare cuts would save only £3.4bn. OBR officials complained that the rushed, late figures had not given them enough time to work out the precise savings.
The £500m worth of cuts in injury time gave the game away: for all the talk of (admittedly needed) welfare reform, these rushed savings were really about making the chancellor’s sums add up. History suggests that hurried measures save less than expected.
Despite all the uncertainty in the global economy, Reeves replaced the vanished £9.93bn of headroom against her rules with a new figure of precisely £9.93bn. Old Whitehall hands detect a Treasury trick of keeping the headroom low to redouble the pressure on ministers to rein in spending. But it could come back to bite Reeves if her cushion disappears again by her Budget in October.
There’s also bad blood between the Treasury and the Department for Education. They blame each other for a leak suggesting that Bridget Phillipson, the education secretary, was ready to end free school meals for infants and reduce spending on schools by £500m. A classic “bleeding stumps” move in the Treasury’s eyes – putting up something so gruesome it would be knocked down – as Reeves duly did on free meals.
“Complete rubbish,” replied Phillipson’s allies.
Whitehall is not a happy place. Reeves wants to save £2.2bn by reducing administration costs by 15 per cent by 2030. She has earmarked £306m for redundancy payments, and up to 50,000 jobs could go – a lot more than the 10,000 she trailed.
The chancellor promised that some savings will be switched to frontline services, but civil servants insist that such a cull will harm service delivery. Again, there’s a long history of headline-grabbing efficiency savings that do not live up to their billing.
Ministers are right to encourage underperforming officials to leave rather than be shuffled to their next Whitehall job. But their unnecessarily hostile language, like Keir Starmer’s talk of “an overcautious flabby state”, has alienated civil servants – many of whom voted Labour and, wearing their professional hat, welcomed the fresh start of a new government. “A lot of people are disillusioned; they did not expect this from Labour,” one senior official told me.
Sue Gray, Starmer’s former chief of staff and previously a Whitehall lifer, had a point when she used her maiden speech in the Lords to urge politicians to avoid phrases like “blobs”, “pen-pushers”, “axes” and “chainsaws”.
But Starmer and Reeves have a point too. There are now 513,000 civil servants – 90,000 more than at the start of the pandemic. In 2023, productivity in public services was 0.3 per cent lower than in 1997.
Reeves delayed her cuts until the later years of this parliament, and Whitehall whispers suggest she hopes some will not be needed if she secures greater economic growth. But such hints are not bankable as ministers squabble over their budgets.
Many Labour figures are alarmed that the welfare cuts will push 50,000 more children into poverty. Even though the OBR said the planned housebuilding boost could add 0.2 per cent to GDP, Labour backbenchers are starting to wonder whether Reeves will avoid a “doom loop” in which no or low growth forces more cuts or tax rises, which then further harm growth.
As one MP, a Reeves loyalist, put it: “She has put all her chips on growth. But what if we don’t get it? We’ll lose the next election.”
Welby’s forgiveness of abuser shows further lack of judgement
The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, has emerged from his self-imposed period of silent reflection to declare that he is “utterly sorry” to victims and survivors of child abuse in the Church of England. He feels “a deep sense of personal failure” about not doing enough about the scandals that have so afflicted the Church in recent years.
It is not the first time he has attempted to apologise for his failings, and it may not be the last, but there was, as with his past attempts to exculpate himself, still something deeply unsatisfactory about them. It is, indeed, difficult to know quite what Bishop Welby, as he now is, thought he would achieve by granting an interview to the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. His expressions of remorse leave the organisation he so recently headed, with its 85 million “family” across 165 nations, hardly much better placed to face the future.
For a man to have risen so quickly to the top of the Church and then fallen so precipitously, Bishop Welby still seems to have difficulty with his sometimes unfortunate choice of language, which confirms the distressing lack of judgement that ultimately led to his demise. He is no doubt sincere in his Christianity but, particularly in deference to the victims and survivors of the serial abuser John Smyth, his plain declaration that he had forgiven Smyth – an immediate “yes” in response to Ms Kuenssberg’s query – could have been couched in a more empathetic manner, though he added it wasn’t about him but the victims. He comes across as a cold fish, even if he is not. The former archbishop’s mea culpa was, therefore, not quite as empathetic as it might have been.
Under invigilation by Ms Kuenssberg, he remains uncomfortable about the fact, freely admitted, that he had known, and known of, at least some of the allegations made against Smyth before and after he became Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013. However, Bishop Welby pleads, once again, that his regret about his lack of action in the Smyth case was because he did not know all the details until 2017. He repeated his line that he was insufficiently “curious” and not insufficiently “caring” and that he regretted failing to follow up on what turned out to be inaccurate information about a police investigation.
What remains missing is precisely why he was so incurious about Smyth, a man he knew. Implied, but not yet quite admitted, is that perhaps the then Archbishop Welby hoped the whole Smyth scandal and similar cruelties would just go away while he got on with more pressing matters. The stinging judgement of the Makin committee’s report into Smyth last year stands: “On the balance of probabilities, it is the opinion of the reviewers that it was unlikely that Justin Welby would have had no knowledge of the concerns regarding John Smyth in the 1980s in the UK […] it is most probable that he would have had at least a level of knowledge that John Smyth was of some concern.” The report also criticised the nature of Archbishop Welby’s subsequent outreach to the victims, also echoed by one prominent survivor in the BBC programme as a current issue.
What is new is Bishop Welby’s statement that the sheer volume and seriousness of the allegations that crossed his desk meant that he was so “overwhelmed” that he couldn’t deal with all of them and had to “prioritise”. That is surely the opposite of the correct response. If things were so bad out there, then some sort of inquiry should have been launched into this massive problem straight away. He also explained, fairly, that the police had told him not to interfere in live cases or legal proceedings, including against the appalling crimes of another, convicted, sex offender, Peter Ball, who’d risen to the post of Bishop of Gloucester. But those are not reasons to do nothing about the rest of the pile of allegations.
Bishop Welby stresses that none of this extra background to his lack of curiosity and fatal inaction constitutes an excuse, still less a justification, for his complacency, but he offers it by way of explanation. It remains partial and, thus, unsatisfactory. Bishop Welby sometimes seems almost to acknowledge that but cannot quite admit it publicly.
The lack of judgement exercised by Welby has proved enduring. It is just one apology after another. In his Kuenssberg interview, he even had to express regret about the defiantly jokey speech he made in the House of Lords after he had had to resign. He admits now that “it did cause profound upset, and I am profoundly ashamed of that […] I wasn’t in a good space at the time. I shouldn’t have done a valedictory speech at all.” Yet here he is, at it again.
The former archbishop has to live with the fact that he failed to stop the child abusers, failed to secure justice for hundreds of victims and survivors, and left the Anglican Church in an even weaker state than it was when he took over in 2012. That his wasn’t the only religious movement, or any other kind of environment, from Hollywood to politics, charities to the CBI, to have become scarred by sexual abuse scandals, is context but not full explanation. Yes, he was never, as he states, ever the “chief executive of the Church of England PLC” with untrammelled powers. There was only ever so much he could do.
But, for all his pleas in mitigation, the conclusion is that he and the governing General Synod have not even now implemented the kind of statutory duty to safeguard vulnerable people or the process of an independent investigation that might restore faith in the Church and prevent more children from having their lives ruined. That may sound harsh, but it is what Bishop Welby and the other leaders in the Church of England cannot quite bring themselves to concede, and it is wrong. As the Book of Proverbs has it, “pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall”.