As Christmas draws near many among us who are Christians turn our thoughts to the birth of Christ, the story of the Nativity and beyond to Easter next year and the Passion, the story of the ordeal that Christ endured at the hands of the Romans, ending in his crucifixion on Mount Calvary, and it is this second story that has particular symbolism for we British at this time as we witness a passion play…

By Frederick Dixon: In August I wrote a short piece about the Rotherham child sex grooming scandal, and wondered if at last the left/liberal ice which has kept us in a political and intellectual deep freeze since the sixties was beginning to thaw. As the months go by I become more and more optimistic that the ice age is, at last, drawing to a close; I know that it doesn’t always seem like it when schools can be punished for being too…