Justin Welby is a God botherer not very bothered by God… now we wait for another simpering liberal to take over reins

WELL at least Justin Welby can be thankful he wasn’t Archbishop of Canterbury a few hundred years ago.

We English have not always been kind to Archbishops once they have got on our nerves.

There was the humourless William Laud, for example. He was beheaded during the Reformation and even his friends weren’t that bothered.

Or the rather commendable Thomas Cranmer, 100 years before. The great reformer was burnt at the stake for ­heresy, having been forced to watch his mates suffer the same fate.

We’re a bit more lenient today.

Justin Welby will depart Lambeth Palace with a decent pension and his head entirely connected to the rest of his body.

Which is probably fair enough.

But it doesn’t disguise the fact that he was one of the weakest leaders of the Anglican church ever seen.

A church in which the congregations shrink on a daily basis. A church that you might argue has sadly outlived its usefulness. Largely because it keeps appointing people like Justin to run it.

Welby was forced to resign because, like the bureaucrat he was, he connived in covering up the hideous crimes of a Church of England ministry worker John Smyth.

Smyth was a perv and a paedophile. His hobby was whipping public schoolboys — sometimes with 800 lashes.

His crimes went entirely unpunished because the church covered them up.

Welby said he knew nothing about Smyth until 2013. An independent report suggested that this notion was a bit hard to believe. And so, after trying to cling on for a bit, he handed in his cards and is gone.

The average attendance at Church of England services in the year 2000 was 950,000. At the last count it was 549,000.

This is our established church and it is disappearing before our eyes. And the reason is people like Justin Welby, nice chap though I am sure he is.

Welby was most happy grandstanding on liberal political issues, rather than telling people about God.

He was particularly fond of asylum seekers. And he intervened to castigate the Government about its treatment of them.

He introduced a blessing for same-sex marriages. He moaned to the high heavens about Brexit.

Where was his Godliness during Covid?

Rod Liddle

He rather, weirdly, offered support to the head of the Post Office, Paula Vennells. She was said to have been covering up a scandal of her own, if you remember.

But where was his Godliness during Covid? He — and the Church of England — went AWOL. At a time when worshippers needed it most, the church doors were very firmly closed. This was a disgrace, I would argue.

But God never seemed to be a terribly prominent figure in Justin’s world.

Even when he was warning the country to be cautious about assisted dying, he didn’t invoke the Christian response that life is sacred.

He seemed to think that God and the Bible and so on were a bit boring — and past it.

Desperately uncomfortable

I don’t doubt he meant well, in his way.

But he was just another member of the liberal elite who was desperately uncomfortable with the tenets of the church on a whole host of difficult matters.

Such as same-sex relations, transgender stuff, how families should live and bring up their children.

And as a consequence the churches that do adhere to a strictly Christian ethos grew in number by the week.

As the CofE declined month on month, the pentecostalists and the evangelists were drawing larger and larger congregations.

So goodbye, Justin. I’d like to say we’ll miss you but it wouldn’t be wholly true. And now we wait for them to choose another simpering liberal to take over the reins.

And drag the church further towards oblivion.

Shocked at how crocked our footie stars are

I WAS slightly disappointed not to have been called up into the England squad for tonight’s Nations League qualifier against Greece.

A whole bunch of people I’ve never heard of look likely to get a start. There have been eight withdrawals form the squad, including Declan Rice, Bukayo Saka, and Jack Grealish.

If, like me, you’re of a certain age, do you remember footballers being injured all the time 40 odd years ago?

I recall watching the same Millwall 11 step out week after week for games.

These days you’re lucky if you can field the same team two weeks running.

Why are today’s footballers so susceptible to injury?

Novel take on justice

ON Remembrance Sunday, two coppers turned up at the home of award-winning journalist Allison Pearson.

She claims they were investigating a “hate crime” which may have been committed in a tweet she posted over a year ago.

She says they wouldn’t tell her who had lodged the complaint or what the tweet had said!

Pearson said: “I have hundreds of black and Asian followers on X/Twitter, none of them ever suggested I’d said something bad or hateful.

“Besides, who decides where you set the bar for what’s offensive? This is supposed to be 2024 not 1984, yet the police officers seemed to be operating according to the George Orwell operational manual.”

What the hell is happening in our country? And don’t Essex police have more important things to do?

THE loneliest city in the country is London, according to a new study.

People there just don’t know anyone. My suspicion is that if they did know anyone, they wouldn’t like them.

When visiting the capital I am usually struck by how awful the people are.

And on the train back to the North, all the passengers have relieved looks on their faces.

For various reasons, it’s not the city I once knew and loved.

COP a load of idiocy

THE private jets have been flying into Baku for the COP29 beanfeast. Hundreds of them.

It was reported that at a previous climate change summit, COP26, there were 400 private planes in attendance.

My guess is that if you added up the carbon footprint of the 29 summits you would have enough emissions to drown 47,500 polar bears and melt even the most stubborn glaciers.

What they’re trying to do now is get you – yes you – to fork out a trillion quid because unfortunately Bangladesh is built on a flood plain.

And might disappear the next time it rains.

I have no doubt that climate change is happening and is largely man-made.

But the grandstanding and leftish politics of the eco-warriors – not to mention the hypocrisy – sticks in the throat.

And it will rebound on the politicians who sign up to the various asinine pledges.

. . . And just in case you think our energy in the future would be best coming from bird-mincing wind farms, take a step outside. Feel any wind?

Nope there hasn’t been so much as a breath for two weeks.

Now imagine what that would mean if we were actually dependent on those infernal machines . . .