A thing of beauty from Yorkshire Tea

Ping. A press release from Yorkshire Tea drops, and it is almost a work of art.

You will have read that Yorkshire County Cricket Club is in a horrible mess over racism allegations.

Here is the statement in response from Yorkshire Tea, in full — a thing of beauty.

“We were upset to read about the experiences of Azeem Rafiq during his time at Yorkshire County Cricket Club. We wholeheartedly believe that cricket should be a sport for everyone, but his experiences and the way the panel report has been handled don’t reflect that.

Our current partnership with YCCC was naturally coming to an end but we have taken the decision to end it with immediate effect.”

There’s not too much room for doubt there about what they mean. And the decision to just bin the business arrangement suggests sincerity.

There isn’t a contact number on the release which is a) increasingly common b) really annoying, but we’ll let that pass this time.

Issues like this are plainly going to become more common (until such a time, we hope, that they disappear altogether).

I think Yorkshire Tea called this one right, but it may not always be so straightforward.

Perhaps there will be occasions when the braver thing for the corporate sponsor to do will be to use its influence to change the organisation with the problem.

So, Legal & General holds stakes in oil-polluters if it thinks they are open to reform. It bins the shares when it decides the polluters aren’t listening.

That might be nobler than just a blanket boycott, sometimes.