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Children’s book cut over First Nations portrayal

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Children’s book cut over First Nations portrayal


Celebrity chef Jamie Oliver has pulled his new children’s book from the shelves after complaints it stereotyped Indigenous Australians.

The 400-page fantasy novel, Billy and the Epic Escape, features an Aboriginal girl with mystical powers living in foster care who is abducted from her home in central Australia.

First Nations leaders have said the book reproduces “harmful stereotypes” and trivialises the “complex and painful” history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children being forcibly removed from their families under government assimilation policies.

Oliver – who is in Australia promoting a new cookbook – has apologised and said he was “devastated” to have caused hurt.

“It was never my intention to misinterpret this deeply painful issue,” he said in a statement.

Publisher Penguin Random House UK said that a consultation with Indigenous Australians requested by Oliver had not happened due to an “editorial oversight”.

Critics said the book contained language errors and oversimplified the identity of First Nations character Ruby.

“This superficial treatment of Ruby’s character dehumanises her, and by extension, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples,” said Sharon Davis of the First Nations educational body Natsiec.

Among the complaints is that Ruby is given the ability to read people’s minds and communicate with animals and plants, because “that’s the Indigenous way”.

Sharon Davis said that reduced “complex and diverse belief systems” to “magic”.

The character is also at the centre of an abduction plot, something community leader Sue-Anne Hunter called a “particularly insensitive choice,” given the “painful historical context” of Australia’s Stolen Generations.

During the 20th Century, tens of thousands of Indigenous children were removed from their families under official government policies aimed at assimilation which assumed black inferiority and white superiority. This government policy continued officially until the 1970s.

“The story’s flippant approach to narrating the theft of a First Nations child dangerously trivialises the ongoing trauma associated with Australia’s violent history of child removal,” Natsiec said.

They added that today, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children are 10 times more likely non-Indigenous children to be removed from their families into foster care or other systems.

Critics have also pointed out language errors in the book. The character is from Mparntwe or Alice Springs in the Northern Territory but uses vocabulary from the language of the Gamilaraay people of the states of New South Wales and Queensland.

Sharon Davis said this showed “complete disregard for the vast differences among First Nations languages, cultures, and practices”.

Oliver said he and his publishers had decided to withdraw the book from sale around the world.

A statement from Penguin Random House UK added: “It is clear that our publishing standards fell short on this occasion, and we must learn from that.”

Natsiec said it acknowledged and recognised their apologies and “swift action” in removing the books from sale.



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Gebrselassie ends Olympic dream

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Former marathon world record holder Haile Gebrselassie gives up on his dream of competing in the London 2012 marathon.



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Archbishop of Canterbury quits over abuse scandal

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Archbishop of Canterbury quits over abuse scandal


grey placeholderReuters Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby looks on as he speaks with the press after a visit to the grave of Saint Oscar Arnulfo Romero, during a visit to El Salvador. Welby is wearing a black blazer with a bright purple shirt. A silver cross dangles from his neck against his chest.Reuters

Justin Welby became Archbishop of Canterbury in February 2013

The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced he will step down from his role following a damning report into a prolific child abuser associated with the Church of England.

The review found that Justin Welby, 68, “could and should” have reported John Smyth’s abuse of boys and young men to police in 2013.

In a statement, Mr Welby said that “it is very clear that I must take personal and institutional responsibility” for his response after he was first told about the abuse.

“I believe that stepping aside is in the best interests of the Church of England.”

“I hope this decision makes clear how seriously the Church of England understands the need for change and our profound commitment to creating a safer church,” Mr Welby said.

“As I step down I do so in sorrow with all victims and survivors of abuse,” he added.

A spokesperson for Prime Minister Keir Starmer said he “respects the decision that has been taken and his thoughts remain first and foremost with all the victims”.

Last week, an independent report found inaction from the Church represented a “missed opportunity” to bring Smyth to justice before his 2018 death.

In his resignation statement, Mr Welby said he was “told that police had been notified” at the time and that he “believed wrongly that an appropriate resolution would follow”.

He also spoke of his “profound sense of shame at the historic safeguarding failures” of the Church over the days since the report was published.

“For nearly twelve years I have struggled to introduce improvements. It is for others to judge what has been done,” he said.

The Archbishop of Canterbury is the head of the Church of England and leads 85 million Anglicans in 165 countries around the world.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell said the Church had made “real progress” in safeguarding under Mr Welby’s leadership but added: “There is much further to go.”

The Church’s lead safeguarding bishop, Joanne Grenfell, said the archbishop’s resignation “does not absolve any of us from bringing about the wholesale changes in culture and leadership that are essential”.

Former vicar Mark Stibbe, a survivor of Smyth’s abuse, said Mr Welby had “done the right thing” in resigning.

“What I think the survivor group would like is more resignations because that means more accountability,” he told Channel 4 News.

The archbishop had been facing mounting pressure to resign in the days since the report’s publication.

A member of the Church’s parliament, the General Synod, who had started a petition calling for Mr Welby’s resignation, said: “I think it’s sad that it’s taken so long for meaningful action to take place.”

The Rev Dr Ian Paul added that he hoped that Mr Welby’s decision would be the first step towards “cultural change in [the Church’s] senior leadership”.

Clare MacLaren, Canon Provost of Sunderland Minster, told the BBC Mr Welby’s resignation was “not before time”.

“It’s something that’s been brewing for the last 24 hours at least,” she said. “It would have been good if he’d done it immediately.”

grey placeholderReuters Archbishop Justin Welby holding a crown over King Charles's head, while Charles sits on a throne. Both are wearing golden robes.Reuters

Justin Welby presided over several high profile ceremonies during his 11 years as archbishop, including the King’s coronation in May 2023.

The independent report into the Church’s handling of John Smyth’s abuse published last week found that from July 2013, “the Church of England knew, at the highest level, about the abuse that took place in the late 1970s and early 1980s,” naming Mr Welby specifically.

It found that “several opportunities were missed” to formally report the abuse to police.

One survivor of Smyth’s abuse told the BBC the archbishop and the Church had effectively been involved in a “cover-up”.

The archbishop said in his statement that the report had exposed a “conspiracy of silence” about the abuse.

Smyth was a prominent barrister as well as a lay preacher – a member of the congregation who delivers sermons but is not ordained – who ran summer camps for young Christians.

The report accused him of attacking up to 30 boys he had met at the summer camps during the 1970s and 1980s with a “clearly sexually motivated, sadistic regime” of beatings.

He singled out boys attending the camps and in sessions at leading public schools, including Winchester College, before taking them to his home and beating them with a garden cane in his shed.

Smyth then relocated in the 1980s to Zimbabwe, and later South Africa, where he is alleged to have abused a further 85 to 100 “young male children aged 13 to 17”.

Smyth is believed to have continued his abuse in South Africa until he died in Cape Town in 2018, aged 75.

grey placeholderGetty Images Archbishop Justin Welby, in red, white and black robes, stands in a large room beside Queen Elizabeth II, who is wearing a beige dress and pearls. Getty Images

Mr Welby met Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace shortly after he became archbishop in February 2013

It was not immediately clear when the archbishop would leave his post.

Mr Welby was educated at Eton and the University of Cambridge. He spent 11 years in the oil industry before retraining as a priest.

He was ordained in 1992 and became a vicar in Warwickshire, a Canon of Coventry Cathedral, the Dean of Liverpool, and the Bishop of Durham before being appointed Archbishop of Canterbury in 2013.

Mr Welby will be remembered as a political archbishop.

He spoke frequently in the House of Lords, attacked the payday lender Wonga, openly backed Remain in the 2016 Brexit referendum, and heavily criticised the Conservative government over its immigration and welfare policies.

He tried to move the Church away from focusing on its internal debates. But he leaves a national church that is smaller, and as divided as ever.

Archbishop of York Stephen Cottrell told the BBC the ordination of women as bishops and his work in racial justice were key parts of Mr Welby’s legacy.

BBC Action Line: If you have been affected by issues in this story, find out what support is available here.



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Donald Trump win provokes trade-offs and dilemmas for UK

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Donald Trump win provokes trade-offs and dilemmas for UK


Some MPs are delighted Donald Trump will be America’s president again.

“I’m emphatic the world is a safer place now that we have Donald Trump in the White House,” Suella Braverman, the former Conservative home secretary, told the BBC.

Others are pleased, but most, from all parties, offer a rather more fruitily negative view about the president-elect’s victory, ranging from the mildly concerned to the downright horrified.

Plenty, too, ponder what Trump’s win might say about the more conventional political class being so tin-eared about the concerns of millions and millions of people that he has triumphed again.

What might that mean for British politics in the future?

It is an issue the prime minister has been alive to ever since he won the general election.

One cabinet minister I spoke to the other day waxed lyrical about plans for their connections with a Harris administration.

And what happens if Trump wins? I asked.

“Who knows” was the sentiment of their reply, albeit expressed more crudely.

That is not to say the government hasn’t put in the ground work in recent months.

It has.

But planning for a potential scenario is different from dealing with its reality – and that reality starts now.

First up, the call between the prime minister and the president-elect, seeking, in Downing Street’s description of it, to describe a tone of warmth, even bonhomie between the socialist former human rights lawyer and the billionaire wheeler-dealer New Yorker.

“The prime minister offered his hearty congratulations,” we were told, adding “the leaders fondly recalled their meeting in September” – a reference to their first get together at Trump Tower in New York.

“Hearty” and “fondly” stand out to me, given how anodyne and bland these statements so often are.

The read-out of the call from No10 also seeks to leverage “President-elect Trump’s close connections and affinity to the United Kingdom” – his mum was born on the Hebridean island of Lewis.

But just how Anglophile is he really, some ponder, given his mantra of “America First”?

Sir Keir had the conversation on his mobile in his office next to the cabinet room in No 10.

Team Trump rang the prime minister, after the government had requested a call with them to send their congratulations.

I’m told Trump had spoken to some other leaders first, but seemingly not many.

The plea from some in government, to themselves and an audience beyond Westminster, is to judge Trump by his actions, not by his words.

The verbal fireworks seem inevitable: that is the Trump way but don’t get distracted by them, is the mantra for some.

Not least because brash controversy and wild unpredictability is just the start of it. There is policy to think about too.

Take Ukraine.

If the soon-to-be president starts cutting support for Kyiv, how does Europe respond?

Does it remain broadly united or start to splinter?

If he demands again as he often has that Europe pays more for its defence, does it?

Can the British government afford to crank up defence spending more quickly? Can it afford not to?

Then there is climate change – and then the crucial issue of trade.

The president-elect has talked up the prospect of huge tariffs or import taxes on goods being brought into the United States.

What might this mean for Sir Keir Starmer’s central mission to try to catalyse economic growth?

If the European Union responds with retaliatory measures of its own, how should the UK respond?

Hug Europe close, or use the flexibilities of Brexit to choose a different approach?

Those who observed the first Trump administration closely tell me his significant mandate this time, and the wider Republican victories, mean the next president will be less restrained than last time.

They are better prepared to ensure they get their own people into the right jobs to get done what they want to get done and more quickly.

The implications, choices, trade-offs and dilemmas for the UK provoked by what has just happened in America are legion.



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Just a moment…

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Just a moment…



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