Indigenous players back St Kilda coach Ross Lyon after comment deemed ‘casual racism’
St Kilda coach Ross Lyon has received the backing of his club’s chief executive after a group of Indigenous players – including star Nasiah Wanganeen-Milera – took offence following a comment made at training earlier this month.Lyon made the comment when three Indigenous players lined up together for a drill, saying, “I love the brother-boy connection, but we all have to remember, we are part of the bigger team here”.The players raised their concerns with the coach the following day and the matter was dealt with internally, but became public when journalist Caroline Wilson raised it on Channel Seven on Monday night.Lyon said he had misjudged the moment.“Was I being flippant? Could it be described as casual racism? I learned a lot out of what happened,” he told Wilson.
“It didn’t land where it should have landed, and I have to wear that, and I take full responsibility for what I said.”When approached by media at training on Tuesday morning, the coach accepted his mistake.“Culture is really important and behaviour is really important and I made an error unintentionally, resolved it with my players and I’m thankful for their support,” Lyon said.Saints chief executive Carl Dilena said it was a “pretty innocent oversight” by Lyon that meant no harm, but it was important to assess whether comments were racist by how they are received.“There’d be people out there going, ‘Oh, did it really [cause offence], was that very serious?’ And Ross didn’t think anything of it at the time,” Dilena told SEN on Tuesday.
“But it is very challenging, and as we’ve seen in various instances, it’s how it’s received more so than how it’s delivered,That’s always the challenge with casual racism or unconscious bias,People don’t think of it, but probably need to be more aware of it,”Lyon was reportedly emotional and offered to consider his position of senior coach when he spoke with a group of players at the club, including Bradley Hill and Wanganeen-Milera, three days after the incident,Dilena said he only learned of the matter on Monday night, but he was happy with how it was handled.
“It shows that he’s running a pretty safe environment with our First Nations boys where they were comfortable to raise it with him and discuss it and just sort it out harmoniously,” he said.“They just sorted it out between themselves like any mishap and it was a positive outcome.”St Kilda sit 12th on the ladder after seven games.Lyon, 59, is in his second stint coaching the club, having held the job since 2023.
BP profits more than double as oil prices soar in Iran war
BP has provoked outrage by revealing its profits more than doubled in the first quarter of this year after its oil traders reaped the benefit of the war in Iran.The energy company capitalised on a surge in global oil market prices to report better than expected profits of $3.2bn (£2.4bn) for the first quarter, more than double the $1.38bn it made in the same period last year
Deloitte and Zoom’s trims to parental-leave benefits may hurt them in long run, experts say
Recent moves by US companies Deloitte and Zoom to reduce how much paid parental leave they offer employees could signal a larger reduction in benefits in corporate America, according to labor market experts.American workers are already seen as having less benefits and labor protections than many of their counterparts across the world, especially in Europe.Leadership at huge accounting and communication technology companies likely made the decisions because the labor market has stagnated, meaning that people looking for jobs do not have the same leverage when considering a job opening, the experts say.But while cutting the benefit might help companies save money in the short term, some consultants argue that the moves will ultimately hurt companies because it will make workers less productive, among other negative consequences.“It feels like someone is just looking at a spreadsheet saying, ‘How can I get more hours?’” said Bobbi Thomason, a professor of applied behavioral science at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School
Shares in buy-to-let mortgage lenders fall after report Reeves plans rent freeze
Shares in some of the UK’s biggest buy-to-let lenders such as Paragon and One Savings Bank have fallen after it emerged that the chancellor may make private landlords commit to a one-year rent freeze.In an effort to protect households from rising living costs as a result of the Iran war, Rachel Reeves is considering whether to ban landlords in England from increasing rents for a limited period of time, the Guardian revealed on Monday night.Shares in buy-to-let lenders fell when the London Stock Exchange opened on Tuesday.Stock in OSB Group, one of the UK’s biggest buy-to-let mortgage providers, was down 3.6% at 510p as investors worried the rent freeze would hurt the FTSE 250 company behind the lenders Kent Reliance and Precise Mortgages
Price rises in UK shops slow as retailers apply heavy discounts to lure shoppers
Price rises in UK shops have slowed as retailers applied “heavy discounting” to their goods in an effort to entice shoppers amid weakening consumer confidence, the industry’s trade group said.Shop price inflation rose by 1% year-on-year in April, a slowdown from 1.2% in March and below the three-month average of 1.1%, according to the British Retail Consortium (BRC).Retailers made discounts to clothing, furniture and DIY goods, the BRC said in its monthly survey of its members, compiled with NielsenIQ (NIQ)
Rachel Reeves’s fiscal rules buffer should be ‘significantly larger’, say peers
Rachel Reeves should aim to run a “significantly larger” buffer against her fiscal rules, according to a report from a House of Lords committee that says the UK’s public debt is on an unsustainable trajectory.The chancellor raised taxes at last year’s budget in order to more than double the “headroom”, or buffer, against her fiscal rules to £22bn – some of which is expected to be eroded by the impact of the Iran war.But the Lords economic affairs committee says Reeves should aim to raise it more, and complains that she and her recent predecessors have tended to allow themselves too little room for manoeuvre, compared with the £30bn average between 2010 and 2022.“Despite the recent increase in the size of the buffer, it remains at an historically low level and further substantial increases are still required,” it says. “Significantly larger buffers must become the norm
Nationwide should give its boardroom challenger a fair run
James Sherwin-Smith, who is aiming to become the first customer to be voted onto the board of Nationwide in nearly 25 years, deserves top marks for perseverance. A year ago his attempt to get his name on the ballot paper was stymied, or so it seemed, by data protection rules and so forth. This time, he has the necessary 250 nominations to be a candidate at the July annual meeting.It is a development to welcome. As argued here a year ago, there is something of a democracy deficit at Nationwide
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