Monday roundup

Cathedral goes green - I saw this story on the BBC news site. Congratulations to the congreration of Bradford Cathedral for acheiving this accreditation from the Eco-congregations organisation. This is the first I have heard about this ecumenical organisation. I think I will read some more.


Temper temper - One of the things I like about cricket is that, compared with some other sports, it is a civislised affair. There are many reasons for this, and I think one of them is that players get fined for incidents that, in other sports, would be seen as very minor. I think this 'sets the bar' for the players in terms of acceptable behaviour at a high level. Of course, the other thing that makes cricket the most civilised sport is that they stop for tea.

Good old Catholic tat - I missed this one last week from the Church Mouse. It seems that Mouse is somewhat underwhelmed by the range of 'tat' on offer to commemorate the visit of the Pope to the UK. Since visiting Malta a couple of years ago, my eyes have been opened to a whole realm of 'Catholic Tat' (it's a recognised proper noun phrase in the Lanky household), and I'm actually quite excited by the tat potential of a Papal visit. My favourite bits of Catholic Tat are the snow globes (depicting scenes where it never snows) and glow in the dark statues of Mary, just in case you feel you need a ghostly, luminous apparition when you wake up in the night. Unlike Mouse, I will be actively seeking a bit of Papal tat for the Lanky household.

Well done Pakistan - It was beginning to look like the current test series between England and Pakistan would be something of a whitewash. Whilst it is satisfying to see your own team in a dominant position, it's disappointing to see the opposition buckling so easily. It was good, then, to see a defiant lower order batting performance from Pakistan yesterday. England will face stern tests in unfavourable conditions when they go to Australia later in the year, and it's good that they are made to work a little harder than they have done of late.

The death of British film-making? - In an unlikely show of support for the UK film industry, Clint Eastwood has written to George Osborne about the proposed 'axing' of the UK Film Council. I know times are hard - we're even reassessing the merits of 'milk-snatching' - but I think it is a bit shortsighted to start hacking so brutally at some of our major cultural organisations. Without the UKFC, a large number of recent UK films would not have been shot, and our cultural life would be weaker for it.