Has the FT developed an interest in religious affairs? On Friday (11/3/2016), they reported on two matters. First was the revelation that to become a saint, you need strong financial backing. Apparently the Pope is cracking down on financial abuses in the sainthood business. It can cost as much as £750,000 to get a person promoted to sainthood and paying more speeds up the process.
Second was their reporting of Archbishop Justin Welby’s views on Brexit as published in the parliamentary magazine “The House”. He overtly backed neither side in the debate it seems although he indicated that those who wished the UK to depart should “set out what Britain would look like having left” but he also said it was reasonable for people to fear mass immigration.
On the subject of Brexit, the Editor of ShareSoc’s Informer Newsletter has received the following letter:
To all editors of national news media
I recognise your sympathies regarding the issue of Brexit. One editorial on the subject would have sufficed to give me your views. But multiple ones are not necessary.
Likewise I recognise that articles reporting on the Brexit debate may be of interest to your readers, but do you really have to be so selective about whose views you cover? As a reader of the Financial Times, the Daily Telegraph and several other publications where I see a definite bias in which “news” is reported in their pages, I am not fooled by this partisan reporting.
So please put both sides of the argument. Give us the facts about the benefits, or otherwise, of Brexit – such few as there are available. But a little more neutrality in your publication would not be amiss.
From someone undecided.
Roger Lawson
I am astonished by the ease with which financial commentators advise the Brexit option.
As with all investment decisions, it’s a matter of risk and reward. In other words, Are the potential benefiits worth the risk?
We would lose the economic freedoms guaranteed by the EU treaties; i.e.to live where we like, to set up business where we like, to recruit the best workers in the EU for our businesses and to move capital where we like. We are also now more or less on a level playing field, with no monopolies and no unfair state aid. There is no guarantee that would remain
In return our poiticians would be free to remove and impose regulations and restrictions as they alone think best. It’s worth remembering in this context that the Queen no longer has the prerogative to call an election to solve a political crisis. That went in 2011. So now a majority in the Commons has a clear run for at least 5 years, and is free to extend its term if it wishes. Such power would be unmatched anywhere in the Western world.
I am not so enamoured of our elected representatives to want to give them that unfettered power,
Robert Morfee