Thanks for the moving gesture of solidarity, Harry Kane
Thanks for the moving gesture of solidarity, Harry Kane
Armbands supporting LGBTQ rights were abandoned before they were even worn
Shocking myself with my own versatility, I have managed to write an article on the subject of sportsball! Naturally, it relates to the unavoidable politics of sport, the only part of it I have any awareness of apart from the changing rooms. Thank goodness for my editors adding in the sentence about the score and match commentary, because I would otherwise be completely lost. See more on this below the page divider.
I would also like to draw your attention to the new Britain Remade campaign, which was recently launched by Sam Richards, Jeremy Driver and Sam Dumitru with a simple policy focus: making Britain grow again.
Moving beyond just identifying Britain’s myriad problems, Britain Remade is to be a campaigning organisation focusing on policy development for solving said problems. Dumitru’s latest Substack post covers the sheer complexity of the planning process for national infrastructure projects, including seemingly endless environmental impact documents for – you guessed it, green energy infrastructure.
One implication of having an uncertain, but highly formalistic regime is planning lawyers try to cover every base in order to preempt any legal challenge. You can see evidence of this in the extensive documentation for major planning projects.
To secure approval for Hornsea 3, the developer Ørsted had to submit over 1,400 separate documents, commissioned numerous wildlife studies, attend 15 hearings, and answer over 700 questions.
Looking across all projects to have gone through the NSIP regime, the trend is striking. The number of documents submitted per application has tripled on average from 381 in 2012 to 1143 in 2020.
You can imagine how this level of documentation, bureaucracy and exposure to judicial review makes infrastructure both less likely to reach completion and more expensive, leading to higher prices and worse outcomes for consumers. I’ll be watching their campaign with interest and suggest you do too.
Thanks for the moving gesture of solidarity, Harry Kane
As a gesture, it was already hollow. ‘#OneLove’ armbands were due to be worn by players from England, Wales and several other European nations as a symbol of solidarity towards LGBTQ people while the World Cup was held in one of the world’s most sexually repressive countries.
But Richard Of York did not Give Battle In Vain for the rainbow on these armbands — instead the spectrum on offer was red, black, green, magenta, yellow and cyan. Even this was deemed too offensive for the mediaeval Qatari hosts, forcing FIFA, football’s governing body, to threaten immediate yellow cards for players wearing the bands.
Having intended to highlight how gay men face heavy fines and seven years of imprisonment, if not the death penalty, in the tournament’s host country, the teams promptly folded…
To read this full article on the moral cowardice of western liberals attending and participating in the World Cup without protest, please visit UnHerd using the link here: https://unherd.com/thepost/thanks-for-the-moving-gesture-of-solidarity-england/