Best Of

We need to cancel the King's visit to America.

US President Donald Trump has again taken aim at the UK's military support in the Middle East, denigrating its aircraft carriers, HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales, as "toys".

Speaking at the start of a White House Cabinet meeting on Thursday, Trump criticised the speed at which the UK sent help in the days following the joint Israeli-US attacks on Iran almost one month ago.

"We had the UK say that ‘we’ll send’ – this is three weeks ago – ‘we’ll send our aircraft carriers’, which aren’t the best aircraft carriers by the way," he said. "They're toys compared to what we have."

“But ‘we’ll send our aircraft carrier when the war is over’. I said ‘Oh that’s wonderful, thank you very much. Don’t bother. We don’t need it,'” he added.

https://www.itv.com/news/2026-03-26/trump-says-uk-aircraft-carriers-are-toys-compared-to-us-ones

Oh YouGov, can't you get anything right?

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpwjxx5eyn1o

Church attendance report pulled after YouGov finds 'fraudulent' responses

A report claiming the number of young people attending church in England and Wales had skyrocketed has been retracted, after the underlying data was found to be flawed.

The Bible Society's "Quiet Revival" report had been widely reported on since its publication last year and became an accepted part of discourse among many Christians.

Now YouGov, which carried out the research, has told the Bible Society that an internal review of the data found that some of the respondents who completed its survey were "fraudulent".

It has said that quality control measures, which usually remove such responses, were not applied due to human error.

It never rang true as anyone who goes to church on Sunday, or even passes by on the way to the pub can see that there are not hordes of youngsters going.

Plenty in evangelical churches in big cities, Tottenham Court Road Hillsong church is packed with young people of all ethnicities each Sunday

Yeah, but no more than there were.

Mega churches I think are bigger amongst under 30s than they were pre 2000 and especially attract lots of young black British. Even C of E churches are more ethnically diverse than they were, especially in urban areas.

Plenty of younger Eastern Europeans in Roman Catholic churches in the UK too

We used to live down the street from the Polish Catholic church in Ealing. Half the congregation at Mass had to stand outside.

Interesting thread from @RochdalePioneers. Not sure I agree with all of it but I do agree on the key points in his last paragraph.

1. The current systems and solutions offered by Tory and Labour have clearly failed.
2. The insurgent parties - primarily Reform and The Greens - have recognised this and realise radical change is needed.
3. The solutions they are offering are not going to make things better and will probably make things a lot worse.

So the question that I have been considering is whether actually there is no viable practical solution to the problems facing us. Anything radical enough to deal with the problems (assuming we can even agree on what the problems are) may be so radical and disruptive it leads to large sections of the electorate simply refusing to go along.

Are we and much of the rest of the democratic West becoming ungovernable?

Our elites now read less than the average member of the population and it shows.

'Britain’s elites no longer look like they did in the 1950s: droopy-moustached old white blokes with a grouse moor somewhere in their background. They are younger, more urban, more multi-ethnic, make rather than inherit their money. That’s all, we may think, to the good. But as The Telegraph’s Great British Class Study discovers, they are less likely than any other sector of society to spend their spare time reading.

For fewer than one in three members of the new “Elite” read for pleasure, according to polling conducted by the opinion-research firm Public First. Too busy with socials, or crypto, or the gym. By contrast, 45 per cent of the “Left Behind” group – whose members typically score the least economic and cultural points in the new system – are readers, as are 60 per cent of the typically older, more financially stable “Quietly Comfortable” class.'
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/books/news/britains-elites-have-abandoned-intelligence/

I used to read a lot for pleasure.

Then I started reading PB instead.

Yeah, I'm exactly the same. But I feel ambivalent about it. I enjoy the snappy points on PB and the way the arguments develop with many informed contributions but I can't help lamenting how long it is since I read a novel from beginning to end. I seem to be losing the ability to simply be absorbed in a different world and I miss it.

One of the reasons I booked a series of long train journeys for this summer, Paul Theroux style, was to get me back into reading a book every few days. As it happens I’ve started back up months ahead of time, because the pile of books (a mixture of novels and travel writing) I ordered ahead of the trip have been sitting there asking to be started.

Sounds a good plan.
My partner loves train travel so we’re training it from Glasgow down to London then the Eurostar to Lille for four nights in May. I’ve pencilled in a reread of The Tin Drum then Flesh (Booker Prize winner) plus something non fiction for leavening. Will try not to dip in and out of tomes and ration internet time, time to rediscover some self discipline.

My son took the train up to Glasgow recently to visit a friend. A very long journey but more visually attractive than the East coast main line to Edinburgh. I’d love to think he devoured a few books but I suspect he spent the whole journey on Roblox and TikTok.

...what? Impossible to beat Holy Island, the Tweed, Durham Cathedral.