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Seven hundred years after his death, updating Dantes Divine Comedy continues to be an enjoyable pastime. What, for example, would Minos, the mythological judge in Inferno, make of Boris Johnson? Snake-tailed and scowling, Minos sits at the mouth of hell, assessing sinners before sending them to their appropriate location in the nine circles of torment. Popes, emperors and Dantes personal enemies are all blown downwards to their just deserts by a bitterly cold wind.

For Mr Johnson, the upper circles, where sins of passion and unrestrained appetite are punished, might seem a natural home. Alternatively, remembering the notorious 350m for the NHS Brexit pledge, the eighth circle where falsifiers and promoters of schism languish could be a good fit.

The artistic aspirations of the Divine Comedy were, of course, more profound than a mere settling of scores with people Dante didnt like. His great work, completed in 1320, helped structure the theological imagination of the Catholic world. But as this years anniversary celebrations begin, it is the poets reflections on politics that strike a particular chord. He was as preoccupied with the consequences of factionalism and tribalism as we are.

The explanation for that lies in Dantes own turbulent biography. Prominent in the ferocious power struggles of medieval Florence, he at various points took up arms, held high office, was double-crossed by Pope Boniface VIII and subsequently died in exile. Writing the Divine Comedy, the author deals ruthlessly with those who engineered and profited from the poets banishment. Bonifaces card is marked in Canto XIX of Inferno. Filippo Argenti, a political rival, is placed in the fifth circle of hell, reserved for the wrathful, where he bites lumps out of himself for all eternity.

But as Dante is guided by Virgil towards heaven, he learns how politics should be done differently on earth. The Roman poet embodies the four cardinal virtues of the ancient world: prudence, courage, justice and moderation. In Paradiso, Saint Thomas Aquinas emphasises the need for moral and intellectual humility. Fallible human beings, he tells Dante, should never become too sure of themselves. In Canto XVIII, we learn that the souls of just rulers dwell in the temperate sphere of Jupiter, well away from the extremes of fiery Mars and cold Saturn. Saint Thomas acidly sums up heavens view of opinionated blowhards at the end of Canto XIII: Let not every Bertha and Martin think/ Because they see one a thief, another respectable,/ That they see how they are in the eyes of God;/ For one may rise, and the other one may fall.

In our own age of divisive culture wars, this celestial wisdom, dutifully written down and delivered to the world by Dante, could be very usefully deployed. In recent years, hectoring Berthas and Martins have dominated far too much of the political stage. If we could channel some of the pacific spirit of Dantes Paradiso into our everyday lives, it would be a fitting anniversary tribute to Europes greatest poet.

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The Guardian view on Dante: heavenly wisdom for our troubled times - The Guardian

On Thursday afternoon the governments preferred candidate for the chair of the BBC, Richard Sharp, will appear before the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) committee as part of the process that leads to his formal appointment to a four-year term at the apex of the BBC hierarchy.

When news of Sharps appointment broke last week, left-leaning commentators were quick to call it another example of Tory cronyism: Sharp has given more than 400,000 to the party or its MPs since 2001. He is also reported to have mentored the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, at Goldman Sachs and to have acted as an economic adviser to Boris Johnson when he was London mayor.

Conservative commentators replied, reasonably enough, that Labours record was no better. Twenty years ago, Blair appointed the Labour donor (and Goldman Sachs partner) Gavyn Davies as BBC chair. Davies, who was later forced to resign after the Hutton inquiry, was also very close to the then chancellor, Gordon Brown, whose office was headed by Daviess wife, Sue Nye.

This unedifying debate distracts from the real issue with all these appointments that the chair of an organisation with a self-described mission to hold power to account is appointed by the government. As one BBC insider remarked on Sharps appointment: Whatever you think of bankers, he is very client-friendly, and our biggest client is the government. At best, it is a system that threatens the BBCs independence; at worst, its very public purpose.

The first chair to have ambitions and a mandate to change the culture of the BBC was the Conservative peer Charles Hill. His appointment in 1967 signalled the beginning of the end for the much celebrated golden age of growth and innovation at the BBC under director general Hugh Greene. As chair, Hill marginalised Greene, strengthened governmental oversight and commissioned a series of reports from McKinsey, leading to unpopular organisational reform and a severe loss of morale.

If appointments to the role of BBC chair have usually been less controversial, it is not because the mechanism itself has become more political, but that there has usually been a higher degree of elite consensus. Lord Hill was not appointed by his own party, but by the Labour prime minister Harold Wilson. Davies was certainly close to the Labour party, but he had served as an adviser to the Conservative treasury and as an investment banker, he was hardly a figure of the left. When establishment consensus and constitutional niceties are broken, it tends to be by the right. It was the Thatcher era that saw the most overly politicised appointments to the BBC, with the chair Marmaduke Hussey eventually orchestrating the removal of the director general Alasdair Milne.

To some extent, therefore, Sharps appointment as chair follows the general pattern: an establishment figure with close ties to the government of the day. Just like the incumbent chair, David Clementi, Sharp studied PPE at Oxford, worked in investment banking and has held a position at the Bank of England.

Given the context of his appointment, however, and what we know about his political affiliations, there are very good reasons to be concerned.

First, Sharp will serve alongside a director general, Tim Davie, who was a Conservative party member and business executive, creating a rightwing, market-oriented duo at the top of the BBC. Second, like Clementi, he arguably has more power than previous BBC chairs, who headed boards kept at one remove from the management.

Finally, Sharp is not merely a Conservative, and not even merely a Conservative donor. Since 2002 he has been a director of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS), the Westminster thinktank founded by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph to win over the Conservative party to what would later be called neoliberalism. Given the size of his donations to the Tories, Sharp is also likely to be a major donor to CPS (the CPS refuses to identify its funders).

Sharps family foundation donates to the Institute for Policy Research, an obscure charitable organisation that funnels money to the CPS as well as to other organisations aligned with the right of the Conservative party, among them the Taxpayers Alliance, MigrationWatch UK and News-watch, an organisation that has produced a number of reports alleging anti-EU bias in BBC reporting. His foundation has also funded the controversial counter-extremism organisation Quilliam, which lobbies in support of strict counter-terrorism policies.

Sharps prominence in the British conservative movement is a worry for the political independence of the BBC but what is more worrying still is that he arrives at a time when the future of public media is in jeopardy. BBC supporters breathed a sigh of relief at the departure of Dominic Cummings from No 10, but Sharp is drawn from the same political milieu; if his CPS affiliation is anything to go by, he will be no friend of public service broadcasting. Allegations of liberal-left bias and endless culture wars make the headlines, but what has really driven government media policy is the commercialisation of programme-making and the erosion of the BBCs public service ethos.

Central to the rightwing critique of the BBC is the assumption that culture is not a common resource to be publicly supported, but a matter of personal preference something to be consumed or, for the wealthy, patronised. What truly offends the neoliberal sensibility about the BBC is that citizens are compelled to support an organisation that offers no mechanism for market-based consumer preference. The BBC has never really mounted an effective response to this critique.

Generally, it has instead pointed to the quality of its output and, quite correctly, to the greater efficiency and value for money that public provision offers. The latter point might seem counterintuitive given that we normally associate efficiency with the private sector. But profitable private media requires considerable investment in marketing and customer management, which have significant costs.

The challenge for public provision is that it requires political support. The right has always been more attentive to the politics of the media than the left, and there is now a concerted effort under way to reshape the media environment in the UK, as is evidenced by GB News, Times Radio, and a new broadcaster in the offing from News UK.

The rights strategy is not to take the BBC head on, but to usher in a new media regime dominated by corporate players. The debates and negotiations around the future of the BBC between now and 2027 will determine what shape this emergent media system takes. The present direction of travel promises highly politicised broadcasters and a global oligopoly of rival digital content platforms perhaps with some requirements for public interest content at the margins. Such a system of journalism and cultural production will be no more responsive to audiences than the BBC, and crucially will not offer the universal provision that should be core to its mission.

A BBC headed by Davie and Sharp is highly unlikely to publicly champion universality in news, education and culture, still less a vision of accountability outside market mechanisms or the state, which is exactly what a modern public platform might offer us. If we want a BBC that can deliver on the great promise of public media in the digital age, these arguments and this vision will have to come from elsewhere.

Tom Mills is lecturer in sociology at Aston University. He is the author of The BBC: Myth of a Public Service

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Richard Sharp's arrival at the BBC will entrench conservative influence - The Guardian

The culture wars do not resonate with most Britons, according to a report, which says that despite Brexit the country is actually united on many fronts especially climate change

Brexit, immigration and successive coronavirus lockdowns have left the British public divided and entrenched in partisan views or so the narrative goes. But a landmark study into peoples beliefs suggests that, while a small minority of political extremists have stoked the so-called culture wars, the rest of us have formed broad consensuses around supposedly divisive issues.

Conducted by More in Common, a thinktank founded after the murder of MP Jo Cox, the study used focus groups, academic interviews and a poll of 10,000 voters to gauge the mood of the British public following a tumultuous five years.

The results published in October in a report titled Britains Choice: Common Ground and Division in 2020s Britain concluded that the them v us narrative playing out in newspapers and on social media is largely inaccurate and that the fault lines in society are not as deep as we might believe.

Our conclusion is that Britain is not divided into two opposing camps of remain versus leave, left versus right, north versus south, or rich versus poor, read the report. Instead, we find seven distinct groups, who are distinguished not by who they are, where they are from, or what they look like, but what they believe.

The seven tribes progressive activists, civic pragmatists, disengaged battlers, established liberals, loyal nationalists, disengaged traditionalists and backbone conservatives certainly have differing opinions on subjects such as Brexit. However, they overlap on many issues that some commentators have attempted to weaponise, including climate change, which 85 per cent of participants believed should concern everyone regardless of politics.

There is a lot of consensus on the climate agenda. I have not seen this anywhere else, said Mriam Juan-Torres, the reports lead author, who carried out similar studies in the US, Germany and France. Its astonishing the desire for action.

Despite divisions over Brexit, Britain reportedly remains united on many fronts. Image: Jannes van den Wouwer

Racial and gender equality are other issues on which there is consensus, with 79 per cent of participants claiming they felt proud of Britains progress on gender equality, and 77 per cent agreeing that racism is a problem. However, differing views were offered when it came to how racial injustice should be tackled.

Juan-Torres warned that such divisions have the potential to widen, but hoped the study would help lay the foundations for an agenda built on empathy and understanding, not division and polarisation.

Compared to the picture we get from our screens every day it gives us much reason for hope

There was also agreement on the subject of Britain being too London-centric, including from Londoners. And across the board there was a perhaps surprisingly loose affinity to political parties, with just 13 per cent of people saying they felt proud of their partisan identity.

The picture of our country that comes from this study is sometimes surprising, concluded the report. Compared to the picture we get from our screens every day it gives us much reason for hope.

Illustration: Cristina Estanislao/UN

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British society is more united than we are led to believe, finds study - Positive.News

The Pope is being vaccinated as early as this week. Yet some ultra-conservative groups on the fringes of the Churches prey on the fears of vulnerable people to claim the vaccination programme is part of a conspiracy to rob them of their freedom

Some 1.5 million people in the UK have now received at least one dose of a Covid vaccine, and the NHS working hand-in-hand with the Army is creating new local vaccination centres, hospital hubs and even mass vaccination sites at sports stadiums in a massive national effort to control the spread of the vaccine.

The vast majority of Christians like the vast majority of citizens of other faiths and none will take their place in the queue for a jab. Receiving the vaccine will be a tangible expression of the common good; recognising that our own health and that of others are closely interwoven. Just as we flourish through seeking the flourishing of others, we cooperate with public health measures in an act of solidarity. Unless there is an overriding medical reason for not being vaccinated, its very simple. To show our love for our neighbour means to have the jab.

Some are hesitant about being vaccinated because of concerns over the rapid development and testing of the vaccine; fears that often arise from misunderstanding and misinformation. Some Christians hesitate because some vaccines are grown in cell strains derived decades ago from an aborted foetus; in a Note on the morality of using some anti-Covid-19 vaccines approved by Pope Francis, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith made it clear that it is morally permissible to receive the currently available vaccines. The Pope said this week he planned to be vaccinated and urged others to have a jab. It is an ethical choice because you are gambling with your own health, with your life, but you are also gambling with the lives of others. But there are more troubling reasons why some Christians are vaccine-hesitant or even anti-vaccination. Vaccination is becoming a new front in the culture wars.

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The Christians who fear vaccination - The Tablet

White Ridge, green lungOfficially, last weeks decision by the appeals committee at the district planning committee to approve the construction of thousands of housing units on Reches Lavan (White Ridge), just outside of southwest Jerusalem in the area of the Jerusalem Zoo, Kiryat Hayovel and Moshav Ora, means the deed is done. Yet Naomi Tsur, founder and chairwoman of the Jerusalem Green Fund and a prominent opponent to the project, says the game is far from over. Tsur will appeal to the High Court of Justice against the plan, which will ruin or at least significantly reduce one of the most important green lungs in the Jerusalem region and surroundings. Simultaneously, Tsur and several environmental associations, including the Society for Protection of Nature, are advancing their alternative project for that area a national park that, if approved by the district committee, will prevent the implementation of the construction project there. One of the main objections to the construction, which is actively promoted by the municipality, is that contrary to the promoters declaration, it will destroy a large part of the natural resources in that area, which are a public asset for leisure and nature and need to be saved from destruction by this project, which includes some 5,000 units in several 12- to 15-story towers. For now, a committee that will include representatives from the district committee and the city engineer will supervise the plans to minimize damage, but members of the city council, from both the mayors coalition and the opposition, are skeptical about their ability to protect the area. Expansive maneuverThe culture wars continue, this time in Rehavia. The iconic and non-kosher Cafe Yehoshua on Azza Road is trying to expand, but haredi representatives at city council see this as an alarming threat to Shabbat. Cafe Yehoshua is closed on Shabbat, but some fear the next step after the enlargement would be to change that. As a result, the citys planning and construction committee rejected the request to expand the coffee shops space beyond the current wall. Neighbors in the same building oppose the project, arguing it would change the atmosphere of the small, quiet street (Radak) on the corner. City councilwoman and coalition member Laura Wharton expressed frustration, saying that in light of the severe damage to Jerusalems economic life and restaurant businesses caused by corona, this is a foolish decision.

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This week in Jerusalem - A round-up of city affairs - The Jerusalem Post