Tag Archives: Country: United Kingdom

Daily Mail: An electrician facing the sack for displaying a small cross in his company van was backed last night by the former Archbishop of Canterbury Lord Carey. He said it was ‘outrageous’ that Colin Atkinson had been told by the housing association he works for that he cannot show the Christian symbol of his faith on the dashboard.

The Telegraph: The Department of Health is making a High Court challenge today to stop figures being published on the number of late abortions on “less than perfect” foetuses with physical abnormalities, including cleft palate and club foot.

Daily Mail: All this propaganda — for that’s what it is — seems to be part of a drive to soften up public opinion so that any recommendation made by this commission to make assisted suicide legal will be accepted

Christian Concern for our Nation: A CHRISTIAN employee of a private not-for-profit organisation is currently under investigation and faces possible disciplinary action because of his display of a small palm cross in the company van he drives.

Children as young as 12 are to be allowed drugs to block puberty while they decide whether to have a sex change, it has been revealed.

Daily Mail: Baby boomers have become a generation of loners, with millions living without partners or children.The numbers of those in their late 40s to early 60s who live by themselves has risen by almost a third in a decade, official figures showed yesterday.

BBC: Police say they are continuing to investigate an incident in which the alleged burning of a Koran was filmed.

Telegraph: Waiting lists lengthened over the winter as NHS trusts cancelled planned operations to care for critically ill flu patients, but are likely to increase still further as health authorities begin in earnest to make savings of £20billion over the next four years.

Telegraph: “A university has elected a student with links to Muslim extremism as president of the student union, prompting fears that it has been infiltrated by radicals.”

Tom Chivers at The Telegraph: As you can probably work out from the headline, for the first time in the UK, men who have had sex with other men are expected to be allowed to donate blood for use in transfusions, but only if they have not had sex with any men for at least 10 years.

NewsMax: Police say they are continuing their investigating of Sion Owens, a high-ranking member of the far-right British National Party, over a video clip showing he burned a Koran, the Guardian reported.

Washington Post: Here is a look at legislation and debate about face-covering Muslim veils and Muslim headscarves in various countries . . .

Daily Mail: Increased life expectancy is to blame for dwindling church attendances, according to researchers. They say that longer lifespans bring with them the temptation to put off making peace with one’s maker. Not only do the young in wealthy nations begrudge spending a large proportion of their life at church, they see little point when death seems so far away.

Daily Mail: She will grow up to call her Auntie Emma. But an extraordinary rearrangement of Chris and Sandra Barlow’s family tree means that Emma Vaughan is actually baby Maia Barlow’s mother. The 29-year-old barmaid effectively gave birth to her own cousin after agreeing to become a surrogate mother to help her aunt Sandra’s 15-year fertility battle.

Telegraph: The most seriously ill patients in the NHS have become the victims of “neglect” as surgeons are forced to focus on hitting waiting list targets for pre-planned operations, leading emergency doctors warn.

Express.co.uk: BUILDING a mosque with 100ft minarets overlooking Sandhurst military college would cause needless and drastic changes to an historic town, it was claimed yesterday.

BBC: The Civil Partnership Bill 2011 comes into force on Wednesday, meaning couples can register for a ceremony to take place as early as next week.

Christian Concern for Our Nation: The Christian couple from Derby at the heart of the controversy over whether couples with mainstream Christian views on marriage and sexuality can become foster parents have re-submitted an application to foster to Derby City Council asking the Council to change its policy on carers.

BBC: Surgeons say patients in some parts of England have spent months waiting in pain because of delayed operations or new restrictions on who qualifies for treatment.

Express.co.uk: SCOUTS in their mid-teens will be able to ask their leaders any questions they like about sex from today, but angry family experts last night attacked the new policy.

Peter Saunders at Christian Concern for our Nation: According to the Sunday Times, an 84 year old British woman committed suicide at a Swiss facility last month because she did not want to die of old age.

LifeSiteNews: A group of MPs have launched a parliamentary bid to “tighten” abortion restrictions and require women to undergo “counselling” before having abortions. The move, however, has been met with strong skepticism by the country’s leading pro-life political lobbying organization, the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children (SPUC), who said that such efforts have backfired badly in the past.

Daily Mail: Schools have banned Christians from handing out Bibles to avoid angering other faiths. The Gideons have become famed for handing out signature red Bibles to young children during school assemblies. But they have been told to stay away from some classes because it may spark complaints from different faiths.

Chuck Colson writes at Crosswalk: But London’s High Court has just ruled that the Johnses are unfit to foster. The reason: The Johnses are devout Christians, and their views about homosexuality may harm the children in their care . . . These things are happening in a country founded on the principle that citizens should be allowed to hold whatever beliefs they want, regardless of what their fellow citizens think of them. But in recent years Christians have been targeted again and again by activist groups and judges who support their agendas. This is why we must support the efforts of Christian liberties groups like the Alliance Defense Fund and the Becket Fund and others, which defend the rights of all religious believers. I also urge you to sign the Manhattan Declaration to defend traditional marriage, human life, and religious freedom.

AP: Women and girls as young as 13 in Wales can get the morning-after pill free without a prescription from pharmacies, beginning Friday. The legal age of consent for sex in Britain is 16 . . .

Rose McDermott writes at the Wall Street Journal (via Google): Polygamy—or more specifically polygyny, the marriage of one man to more than one woman—has been widespread in human history. And it is becoming increasingly common, particularly in Muslim enclaves—including in Paris, London and New York.

Reuters on Yahoo: A printing error helped a 12th century English village church realize it owned a rare 400-year-old King James Bible, the book that changed the world. The edition that had been sitting on a ledge in the pretty Anglican church in Wiltshire, central England for the past 150 years, barely touched and much less read, is one of only a handful that still exists . . .

The Independent: Marriage rates in England and Wales are at their lowest since records began, new statistics show. Just 21.3 out of every 1,000 males aged 16 plus were married in 20 . . .

Daily Mail: Education bosses in Blackburn with Darwen, Lancashire, have radically restructured the RE syllabus to accommodate non-religious beliefs. Youngsters will continue to learn about the six major faiths – Christianity, Buddhism, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism and Sikhism – but they will also be taught humanism, the belief that there is no God or Gods, and that moral values are founded on human nature and experience.

Christian Concern for Our Nation: “The aim of the amendment is to ensure that every woman considering an abortion has a right to independent pregnancy counselling before being referred to an abortion provider.”

Christian Institute (includes video): “Intolerance, injustice and unfairness” have been bred in the place of tolerance as society obsesses about rights and equality, a former Home Secretary has said. Lord Waddington made the comments in a Parliamentary debate while raising concerns about proposed new equality regulations which are part of the controversial new Public Sector Equality Duty.

Catholic Culture: “About 90% of Ireland’s primary schools are currently administered by the Church. The education minister, Ruairi Quinn, plans to cut that figure to below 50%. Quinn said that the recommendations of the new advisory panel could be put into practice by January 2012.”

Daily Mail: Britain’s abortion laws would be tightened for the first time in more than 20 years under cross-party proposals to be unveiled today.

Daily Mail: Children as young as 11 could soon be asked about their sexuality without their parents’ consent, it has emerged. Teachers, nurses and youth workers are being urged to set up pilot studies aimed at monitoring adolescent sexual orientation for the first time. A report commissioned by the Government’s equalities watchdog found that it was ‘practically and ethically’ possible to interview young children about their sexuality.

Daily Mail: “A lesbian couple are to open Britain’s first gay-only fertility centre. Natalie Drew and Ashling Phillips, who have two children by a sperm donor, said they decided to set up a centre exclusively for gay people after their own experiences in trying to start a family. The Gay Family Web Fertility Centre opens its office on Monday in Birmingham where it will ‘match-make’ potential parents with sperm donors, egg donors or surrogates . . . ”

Guardian: “The UK can learn from Europe by enshrining dignity as a fundamental part of – rather than adjunct to – our human rights.”

Anglican Mainstream: “Eileen Mohr, who owns Crossbridge Books, said that a hotel in Worcester refused to host the launch after learning of the demonstration.”

Japanese researchers cultivated small pieces of tissue from the testes of baby mice on a gel bathed in nutrients. After several weeks they collected viable sperm from the tissue.

Andrew Brown at the Guardian: If the law of England is no longer based on Christian texts but on the idea of foundational rights – and this seems to be what recent court cases have concluded – it’s worth remembering that very few people believe that human rights exist – rather fewer, at a guess, than believe that God exists. Certainly very few people defended that position here on Cif belief when it was up for discussion. But if human rights are simply a political construct, they rest on political consent. That will be withdrawn very quickly if they come to seem an instrument in a political struggle.”

Christian Institute: “The Government’s controversial equalities watchdog is set to be stripped of a number of its responsibilities, the Home Secretary announced yesterday.”

The Christian Institute: Sex education resources should be licensed to ensure they are age-appropriate, an MP has said, following concern among parents about “inappropriate” materials. Andrea Leadsom’s comments come in the same month that a report by The Christian Institute highlighted shocking resources being pushed by public bodies for use in schools.

Independent: “The number of foreign students and their dependants coming to Britain could be cut by around 100,000 a year under plans.”

Guardian: “Government spokesman says the education secretary is ‘crystal clear’ that teaching creationism is at odds with scientific fact.”

BBC: “Cardinal Keith O’Brien has attacked plans to increase aid to Pakistan to more than £445m, without any commitment to religious freedom for Christians.”

The first baby with three biological parents could be conceived next year after the Government announced a major review of Britain’s fertility laws.

Telegraph: “High-quality religious education faces being killed off in schools because of swingeing teaching cuts and its exclusion from new-style league tables, academics warn today.”

LifeSiteNews: report issued in the UK earlier this week, called “Too Much, Too Young,” unmasks the extremely explicit nature of sex education material that public groups are pushing on school children as young as five-year-olds

Paul Driessen writes at Townhall: “Welcome to the Third World, Europeans, where costly electricity is available only from time to time, at unexpected hours, depending on bureaucratic whims and how much power wind turbines and other “environment-friendly” generators can muster.”

Christian Today: The application of law has moved far beyond non-discrimination and tolerance to the effective enforcement of a particular morality.

Peter Saunders writes at his blog: David Cameron, by his comments yesterday about homosexuality, demonstrates that he does not understand what true tolerance actually is.

The judges think it is wise and humane to assert that there is no hierarchy of values, and that all creeds are equal. But this is both absurd and nihilistic. Some values will always trump others.’

“The Courts are so set against religious freedom for Christians that an appeal is likely to only make matters worse.”

AP: “A British court has ruled that a transgender woman is not entitled to have breast enlargement surgery paid for by the state-funded National Health Service.”

Telegraph: “Hundreds of thousands of doctors, civil servants and other public sector workers will be denied early retirement to cut the cost of their pensions to the taxpayer, a report will signal.”

Christian Today: “The Christian Institute is calling upon the Government to put a stop to the use of explicit material in sex education classes.”

EuroNews: “Britain is being urged to join European efforts to tackle human trafficking. London has so far been reluctant to opt into an EU directive that seeks to create common, Europe-wide legislation and send a united message to traffickers.”

Daily Mail: A husband helped his disabled wife commit suicide and filmed her doing it to show no one had killed her.

Daily Mail: David Cameron has stepped into the row over the Christian couple who have been barred from fostering children because of their belief that homosexuality is wrong. He appeared to back the courts by saying Owen and Eunice Johns had been dealt with in an ‘appropriate way’, and added that Christians must be ‘tolerant and welcoming’ towards homosexuality.

LifeSiteNews: “Following the decision of London’s High Court last week that a Christian couple could be banned from foster care due to their unwillingness to support the homosexual lifestyle, some commentators are pointing out that the decision amounts to a ruling on what is and is not authentic Christian doctrine.”

ChristianConcern.com: “Christians in Oxford are celebrating after their local authority rejected a licence application for a “sexual entertainment venue” to operate yards from a church. Members of St Ebbe’s Church in Oxford as well as local residents have praised the Council for its decision.”

“A British court has ruled that a Christian couple cannot care for foster children because they disapprove of homosexuality.”

Europe News: “Four men launched a horrific attack on a teacher in which they slashed his face and left him with a fractured skull because they did not approve of him teaching religion to Muslim girls.”

BBC: “A publicity drive has started for the census, now just five weeks away, but the survey is being criticised for its question on religion. So is it even possible to accurately measure how religious the UK is?”

Daily Mail: “Whatever else this Government might achieve I was not expecting a reassertion of Parliamentary sovereignty to be on the list. My pessimism was based on the coalition with the Lib Dems – a party which regards fighting for our national independence as a thoroughly outdated concept. But even the Lib Dems are not entirely immune from public opinion. Do they really want to be shown up as the Party that forces us to bow down and accept votes for convicted thugs and a Paedophiles Charter? Is that really something they want to insist on as the junior coalition partner? . . . ”

AP: “The British government on Thursday announced plans to allow gay couples to hold civil partnership ceremonies in houses of worship – a move gay rights activists say is a step in the right direction towards marriage, but falls short of affording full equal rights.”

Telegraph: “Gay couples will be able to marry for the first time under a radical plan to overhaul marriage laws, the Coalition announces today.”

Daily Mail: “How long does it take for a simple message to sink in? During and since the Commons debate on prisoners’ voting rights, there have been regular allusions to Britain’s or Parliament’s ‘sovereignty’. Such sovereignty has not existed since we became members of the EU, or Common Market as it was then called, in 1973.”

Christian Today: “When it comes to equality legislation, permission often turns rapidly into coercion. In a country where faith-based adoption agencies have been forced to close or cut their religious ties by equality law, where Christian marriage registrars can be dismissed for their religious views on marriage and where Christian B & B owners are forced to pay compensation to same-sex couples, Christians will need a great deal of reassurance that the Government is not about to do something that will make their situation even worse.”

Daily Mail: “European judges will not have the final say on whether prisoners should be given the vote, the Attorney General said last night. In a sign of the Government’s growing anger over prisoner voting, Dominic Grieve hinted that Britain could seek to limit the power of the European Court of Human Rights over the issue – and even withdraw from its jurisdiction altogether . . .”

Christian Today: Mr Nazir-Ali, originally from Pakistan, said multiculturalism had created “segregated communities” that were “fertile” for extremists. He said: “The reason multiculturalism came to be invented was the loss of public discourse rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition. It is this discourse, and the making of moral and political decisions in its light, that needs to be recovered.”

Pink Paper: “Islamists in East London have sparked anger after flyposting stickers which called for a gay-free zone.”

AP: “A British judge ruled Tuesday that more evidence is needed before deciding whether to grant a mother’s wish to have her mentally disabled daughter sterilized – a case that is troubling medical ethicists.”

Doug Giles writes at Townhall: It appears as if this multicultural smack we’re being sold in the U.S. didn’t work out too well in the U.K. Just this past week British Prime Minister David Cameron echoed German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s sentiments from last October that their country’s Pollyanna policy of multicultural yumminess toward Islam’s “way of life” was, in retrospect, really stupid—as in really, really, really stupid.

AP: “Britain’s High Court has rejected an attempt to loosen the law so that women can take a second dose of a pill at home to complete early abortions.”

The Independent: “Men with historical convictions for consensual gay sex are to have their criminal records wiped clean, it will be announced today.”