22 reasons to stay out of Syria

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30 November 2015

President Assad is the only gurantor of stability in Syria and the UK can only defeat Islamic State with his army as ground forces. — President Assad is the only guarantor of stability in Syria and the UK can only defeat Islamic State with his army as ground forces.

I was in favour of bombing Islamic State in Syria until very recently. But evidence to the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee and Mr Cameron’s shiftiness in the House of Commons last Thursday have changed my mind.

(1) Two years ago, thank God, the House of Commons voted against bombing President Assad’s forces in Syria. If the vote had gone Mr Cameron’s way, Syria would be in a worse mess now, loss of life would have been greater, Islamic State would be far stronger and there would be far more displaced people queuing up in Hungary. The Christians in Syria would be history, as would the Druze and the Alawites.

(2) The Foreign Affairs Select Committee has heard evidence that airstrikes from Britain will make no difference whatsoever to the collective effort.

(3) The Foreign Affairs Select Committee has also heard evidence that airstrikes must be supported by ground troops. Mr Cameron gave a figure of 70,000 which he said came from the Joint Iintelligence Committee together with the impression that these could be those ground troops. Yet they include some ten groups and literally hundreds of different factions who are all in the far west of Syria. ISIS is based in the east and north. The 70,000, even if they could be persuaded to switch from fighting the Syrian army to fight ISIS and trek all the way from western Syria to the east is frankly preposterous. In short, they are in the wrong place with the wrong focus. It could well be, as Craig Murray argues, that no-one actually believes Mr Cameron, but few have challenged him on the figure, not even the official Opposition. ‘70,000’ wil be Mr Cameron’s ’45 minutes’, a figure which was also stated by the JIC.

(4) The Foreign Affairs Select Committee heard evidence in September that the Free Syrian Army is a ‘busted flush’. The evidence said it would be absurd to try to differentiate between radical and moderate Islamists among the opposition to President Assad.

(5) As David Winnick MP reminded the House on Thursday, the Prime Minister made the same sort of passionate arguments two years ago. He was wrong then and he has not made any case that shows he is right now. It is still the same old bluster.

(6) The Free Syrian Army have either given or sold equipment given to them by the United States to the Al Nusra Front, an Al Qaeda offshoot. I searched Thursday’s debate in vain for any mention of Al Nusra. Does the Prime Minister regard them as moderate or radical?

(7) The Foreign Affairs Select Committee also heard evidence in September that the only guarantor of stability in Syria is President Assad. ‘It’s Assad or the Deluge’, said one.

(8) If oil wells are liberated from Islamic State, whose will the oil be? There is no strategy or understanding.

(9) I noted the Prime Minister said in the debate: ‘(ISIS) … get their money from selling oil to Assad’. As Mr Denis Skinner pointed out, it is well documented that ISIS get far more money from selling oil to well-placed individuals in Turkey. It was duplicitious of the Prime Minister not even to mention Turkey and then when challenged to say that Turkey had ‘taken action’ about that. On the very same day that the Prime Minister made his statement, President Erdogan flatly denied Turkey was buying any ISIS oil at all. But the Guardian reported on Tuesday last week: ‘Turkish businessmen struck lucrative deals with Isis oil smugglers.’ The sum involved is said to be $10m per week.

(9a) One Mr George Haswani was identified in March as the middleman between ISIS and President Assad in an oil deal, but the sums involved in these alleged Syrian deals have yet to be spelt out. I am not actually surprised that enemies are doing deals with one another over oil resources. In one sense, it is better than blowing them up. But when a NATO member is profiting from Syrian oil and denying it, I should expect our Prime Minister to at least acknowledge that fact.

(10) On the subject of Turkey, if Mr Cameron is serious about ground troops including Kurdish fighters, what representations did the UK make to Turkey when Turkish forces attacked Kurdish fighters in July, killing hundreds of souls?

(11) This summer, Turkey sent three hundred air strikes against Kurdish forces fighting ISIS and only three against ISIS itself. What representations did the UK make to Turkey about that?

(12) In early September, Turkey violated Iraqi air space to attack Kurdish fighters and violated the territory of Iraq to pursue them as well. The only ones to gain from that were ISIS. Seeing Britain has an interest in Iraq, what representations did the UK make to Turkey about that violation of sovereign territory?

(13) In ‘The Independent’ on 4th October, Patrick Cockburn reported that the US had betrayed the Syrian Kurds in a deal with Turkey. This is despite the fact that the Syrian branch of the PKK has apparently been the most successful ground ally of the US at retaking areas from ISIS. Are these the same Syrian Kurds who are now expected to be the northern ground troops to follow up UK airstrikes? And will you support removing the UK’s ‘proscribed’ classification of the PKK, who pose no threat to Britain at all, under the Terrorism Act?

(14) Mr Cameron said he had learned the lessons of Iraq and Libya. The Iraq invasion was in 2003 and the first elections were held in 2005. Iraq was well known to be a disaster by at least 2007. The UK intervened in Libya in 2011. No lessons were learned from Iraq to be put in place in Libya, so north Africa is now flooded with Islamists and arms. Why should we believe the Prime Minister now? ‘Regime Change’ is illegal and ends in death and destruction.

(15) The issue of unintended consquences has not been remotely addressed. The most recent direct consequence of our intervention in Libya was the 22 deaths in Bamako in Mali.

(16) There are certain to be civilian deaths in places like Raqqa, violating at least one principle of the ‘Just War’ principle. In the war in Iraq, which was waged for regime change and nothing else, an estimated 165,000 civilians died. Those MPs who voted with Tony Blair for war in 2003 have that blood on their hands.

(17) I recognise that Air Chiefs of Staff want to see how their latest bits of technology work in the field and Mr Cameron wants to appear tough and militaristic when he meets other leaders but these are just positions of vanity.

(18) UK jets have been operating in Iraq, but the only success to date is the liberation of Sinjar. What other success in Iraq can Mr Cameron point to?

(19) At a time of continuing austerity, Mr Cameron has not even presented the cost of a Syrian operation to Parliament. Every two-plane mission with each plane discharging four Paveway bombs and two Brimstone missiles would cost the taxpayer £1 million. The cost could soar into billions all of which will have to be borrowed.

(20) No coherent strategy has been presented, let alone an exit strategy.

(21) United Nations Security Council resolution 2249 ‘Calls upon Member States that have the capacity to do so to take all necessary measures, in compliance with international law’. International law does not allow the United Kingdom to violate Syrian air space. The Prime Minister did not tell the House of Commons how or even if he proposed to seek permission from President Assad to overfly Syria. If he does not, the action will be illegal.

(22) Pursuant to paragraph (3) above, any force wanting to liberate Raqqa or other eastern Syrian towns will need the cooperation of the Syrian army under President Assad. Yet the Prime Minister has ruled out any approach to or support for President Assad, maintaining his ‘Assad must go’ mantra. Without the involvement of the Syrian army, we are wasting our time, as your colleague Dr Julian Lewis has said.

For all the reasons given, please urge your Member of Parliament to vote against UK air strikes in Syria.

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70,000: the new 45 minutes

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Stephen

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28 November 2015

7

David Cameron counting moderate Syrian rebels.

David Cameron’s assertion in the House of Commons on Thursday 26th November 2015 that there are ‘seventy thousand’ moderate Syrian opposition forces ready to back up UK air strikes is unravelling fast.

Dr Julian Lewis MP, chairman of the Defence Committee, said in the debate, ‘I have to say that the suggestion that there are 70,000 non-Islamist, moderate, credible ground forces is a revelation to me and, I suspect, to most other Members in this House.’

The Independent reported that Mr Lewis would be tabling a question in the House of Commons demanding Mr Cameron clarify the claim. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said the 70,000 figure was based on the “best intelligence and analysis we have”, adding: “The figure was provided to him by the Joint Intelligence Committee; they provided that intelligence and analysis independent of the Government.”

That will be the same Joint Intelligence Committee which apparently assured Tony Blair, after some arm-twisting, that Saddam Hussein could fire a long range missile with a chemical warhead at the UK in the famous figure of ’45 minutes’. It looks suspiciously as if ‘70,000’ will turn out to be Mr Cameron’s ’45 minutes’.

The Independent says Mr Lewis asked Sky News: ‘Where are these magical 70,000 people and if they are there fighting, how come they haven’t been able to roll back Isil/Daesh? Is it that they’re in the wrong place? Is it that they’re fighting each other? Or is it that in reality they’re not all that moderate and that there are a lot of jihadists among them?’ He urged the Prime Minister to start working with President Assad to defeat Islamic State. “Sometimes the best you can do is choose the lesser of two evils,” he said.

Writing in the Spectator, Charles Lister, a Visiting Fellow at the Brookings Doha Center and a Senior Consultant to The Shaikh Group, wrote to verify the figure. He came up with 65,000 fighters in ten separate groups with names like ‘Daybreak’ (Faylaq) and ‘Front’ (Jabhat) sporting memberships from 1,000 to 25,000. The biggest forces were the ‘Southern Front’ with 25,000 men in fifty-eight different factions and the ‘Northern Free Syrian Army’ with 20,000 in fourteen factions. Having coordinated meetings with up to a hundred other separate rebel militias, he counted a further 10,000 men in these groups.

Immediately, however, Mr Cameron’s claims start to unravel. He said the 70,000 were ‘principally of the Free Syrian Army’ whereas only 45,000 of them are. Then he said these are people ‘with whom we can co-ordinate attacks on ISIL’.

The first obvious problem is, these fighters are all in the extreme south-west and north-west of Syria. Now, according to a helpful map at the bottom of this article in the Guardian, Islamic State has a pocket of ground in the south-east, and another in the north-west. These are areas being patrolled by Russian aircraft from their base in Latakia, on Syria’s North-West coast.

The second obvious problem is that the ‘Free Syrian Army’ are just as interested in fighting the Syrian Army as Islamic State. Russian aircraft have been supporting Syrian army forces with air strikes against these very same forces. As Mr Lister said: ‘They remain focused on fighting the Assad regime, however, as it represents a more immediate priority for most, in terms of self-protection, the defence of civilian populations and of course, pursuing the revolution’s ultimate objective.’ Without British commanders on the ground prodding these men towards the Islamic State pockets, there is absolutely no guarantee they will follow up a British air strike against Islamic State on their manor, even if our air chiefs could gain an agreement with their Russian counterparts to avoid bumping into each other over this stretch of land. And British ‘boots on the ground’ have been rightly ruled out.

Working with groups such as the ‘Free Syrian Army’ has been a nightmare for the US. Equipment supplied to them by the US has ended up in the hands of the Al-Qaeda offshoot Jabhat Al-Nusra. The FSA either gave or sold the armaments to them. In addition, as Ewen MacAskill wrote in the Guardian article cited above, ‘the US spent $600m (about £400m) training rebels to go back over the border into Syria. In the end, only 58 went back. Asked in September at a Congressional committee how many of them were still fighting, General Lloyd Austin said: “We are talking four or five.”’

Islamic State also holds ground to the east of Damascus and in the north-east of the rest of Syria. None of the ‘70,000’ are anywhere near these areas. Around Raqqa, where French warplanes have been active, there is no moderate opposition at all.

Mr MacAskill reported that retired British brigadier Ben Barry, who he described as ‘a specialist in land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies’, estimated ‘a joint US-UK-French coalition would require 20,000 troops to retake Raqqa. He described the prospect as “challenging”, given that IS had been preparing its defences for the last year.’ In the absence of those troops, it can only fall to the Syrian army to retake Raqqa. Mr Cameron would have to speak to Mr Assad.

The 70,000 are nowhere near Raqqa which is also far from the extreme north of Syria where the Kurds are based. And on that subject, the Kurdish forces are allied to the Kurdish Peoples’ Party, the PKK, which the UK has proscribed as a ‘terrorist organisation’ to appease Turkey. The PKK pose no threat to Britain and it is high time that proscription was removed.

This is a time when Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition should be actively opposing and challenging the government. But according to Gary Gibbon in a revealing article on the Channel 4 website, the Leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition is not even opposing and challenging those in his own Shadow Cabinet who support Mr Cameron.

Labour MP Paul Flynn said on the BBC yesterday that Prime Ministers can get carried away with their importance. They can become possessed by a spirit of hubris while dreaming of their ‘place in history’. It happened to Tony Blair. Now it is happening to David Cameron. If this nation is not to waste millions on pointless air strikes, we need the Opposition to oppose him.

But more importantly than that, we need prayer. There was a massive outpouring of prayer before the Commons vote not to bomb President Assad’s forces in August 2013. The reasons for MPs to vote ‘No’ are different this time, but the need for prayer is still there.

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Death Cafe

By

Stephen

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23 November 2015

6

This is the transcript of the video above – check against delivery.

What are these ‘death cafe’s’ all about, are they good or bad? And what do we make of the Church of England’s ‘grave talk’ project?

One paper said that over five hundred death cafe events have taken place to date across the UK and further afield, including the US, Australia and New Zealand.

The objective of a death cafe, so its people say, is ‘to increase awareness of death with a view to helping people make the most of their (finite) lives.’

According to the death cafe website, ‘At a Death Cafe people, often strangers, gather to eat cake, drink tea and discuss death.’

Cakes with black icing and skulls form a big part of Death Cafe, apparently.

Yes, Cake seems to play a big part, especially cakes with black icing and skulls on them served on plates with skull motifs.

In Manchester, funeral director Hugh O’Brien hosted a death cafe event in Heaton Moor. He said there was “a British reticence about death”. “Everyone seems to be afraid of it,” he went on.

With a finite, in this case a truly finite – market to work in, I’m surprised funeral directors aren’t falling over each other to host these obvious marketing opportunities.

Anyway, the death cafe originator, one Jonathan Underwood from Hackney, is right now, in November 2015, selling shares for a permanent Death Cafe in London.

He thinks his project is the best thing he can do to make a better planet.

Mr Underwood has said there should be no fear about discussing death, and this is his reason: “you don’t get pregnant by talking about sex,” he says, “so why would talking about death make you die?”

I’m sorry old boy, but that is a non-sequitor. You can quite easily feel sexy by talking about sex, and talking about getting pregnant, especially talking positively about it, CAN help a couple have the child they so earnestly want.

In the same way, talking about death, especially talking enthusiatically about it, can hasten it. That’s a basic spiritual principle.

The Church of England’s ‘Grave Talk’ is different, because, as its website says, the Christian faith ‘holds the hope that death is not the end’.

A parish can put on a ‘grave talk’ evening to help people planning or going to a funeral, to have a conversation about death and dying, or to help with grief and loss of a loved one.

For me, that’s a good work, with an emphasis quite different from death cafe.

Let’s face it, we’ve just had an MP trying – and failing, thank God – to bring in an Assisted Dying Bill in this country, there are people going to some ghastly overseas clinic to commit suicide, and a growing suicide cult among young people led to seventy-nine deaths in Bridgend in Wales over just a five-year period.

Teenagers are taking their lives because of bullying, and suicide is the most common cause of death for men under thirty-five in Britain.

Death Cafe protagonists will deny their project has anything to do with promoting suicide. But even if it is just a sales pitch for undertakers, popularising the idea of death, glamorising it with skulls and black icing, won’t exactly help vulnerable teenagers.

Our lives are more than the matter of our death, or anyone else’s. Being obsessed about death, at any level, is simply not healthy for individuals, or society.

In the Bible, Jacob says he is about to be gathered to his fathers. He blesses his children and gives directions for his place of burial. And that’s it.

You see, the overwhelming principle in the Bible is that of life. God told the people of Israel:

Deut 30:19 I call heaven and earth to record this day against you, that I have set before you life and death, blessing and cursing: therefore choose life, that both thou and thy seed may live.

People need life cafes, not death cafes, to be honest. And, thank God, we have quite a few of those. They are often held in a building with a spire on the top, or just in a hall, on a Sunday morning, and quite often they have a cross outside. There’s probably one near you. It’s called a church. Chances are, you’ll find someone inside who knows the author of life, one Jesus Christ. And if you get to know him too, death won’t hold any fear for you at all.

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Islamic Human Rights Commission

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By

Stephen

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17 November 2015

14

A report published today claims Muslims in the UK live in ‘an environment of hate’ – and the government is to blame.

The so-called ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ in a press release about today’s launch of its report ‘Environment of Hate: The New Normal for Muslims in the UK’ describes the UK “as an ever developing ‘Stasi state’ rife with hatred for the ‘suspect’ Muslim community. The authors examine the construction of an environment where Muslims are feared and loathed.”

This claim by the absurdly named ‘Commission’ – it’s just a pressure group – that the UK is like East Germany in its treatment of Muslims and Islam is preposterous. Our broadcast media and institutions from politicians to the police fall over themselves to present Islam as a peaceful religion and its adherents as loyal, law- abiding citizens.

The Islamic Human Rights Commission have been developing what they call the ‘Domination Hate Model of Intercultural Relations’. This says “hate crimes do not occur in a vacuum. Perpetrators are themselves victim citizens who have been mobilised by structural forces; namely the government and the media.”

The only problem is, that is rubbish.

Apart from the profligate and pointless ‘Prevent’ programme and the Terrorism Act, which actually concerns many of us, the government have done nothing inimical to Muslims. Establishment politicians are constant in their praise of Islam, stressing how the terrorists have misinterpreted it. The broadcast media, with the possible exception of Channel 4 Dispatches and the occasional Panorama programme, is overwhelmingly supportive of Islam and Muslims.

It is only some sections of the press which are antipathetic. Even then, if Muslim teachers did not beat children learning the Quran, if local authorities did not celebrate Eid rather than Christmas, if school boards did not try to turn their schools into Islamic enclaves, if Muslims did not write graffiti in Jewish cemeteries, there would be nothing to report.

Negative images of Muslims and Islam come not from our government and the British broadcast media at all. The problem for Muslims is all the honest material about Islam all over the internet, mainly on YouTube and Facebook.
Videos made by Islamic State themselves of their agents beheading captives, of tearing down crosses outside churches, other videos of Muslims rioting in Croatia, spouting hatred against Jews on Al-Quds Day in London (ironically organised by IHRC on behalf of Stop the War), attacking soldiers returning from Afghanistan in East London, bombing and shooting people in Nairobi and Garissa, constant killing in Baghdad, the bombs in Istanbul and Beirut and now the atrocities in Paris, it just goes on and on.

There is no getting away from the fact that the overwhelming majority of terrorists in the world are Muslim. There is no hiding that gangs of Muslim young men were convicted of the rape of young, insecure non-Muslim girls in town after town in the UK. There is no escaping the reality that all the recent cases of electoral fraud here have involved Muslims. There is no gain-saying that in case after case of restaurant and take-away food hygiene, it is Muslim establishments that are being fined. The Muslim community in this land needs to clean up its own act. Literally, in some aspects.

Finally, in the wake of the carnage in Paris, the ‘Islamic Human Rights Commission’ blames not Muslim terrorists but ‘unethical western foreign policy in the Middle East’. I have been at the forefront of objecting to British incursions in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria and to our Government’s support of the catastrophic ‘Arab Spring’. But when Muslims blame ‘the West’ for the actions of other Muslims, is it any wonder that the rest of us react with loathing for Islam and all it stands for?

Here is a word about the Islamic Human Rights Commission:

Isa 59:3 For your hands are defiled with blood, and your fingers with iniquity; your lips have spoken lies, your tongue hath muttered perverseness. 4 None calleth for justice, nor any pleadeth for truth: they trust in vanity, and speak lies; they conceive mischief, and bring forth iniquity.

And here is one for them:

Mark 1:15 The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of God is at hand: repent ye, and believe the gospel.

Cornwall Council in discrimination case

By

Stephen

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16 November 2015

13

A local council has won a secret trial after being sued for discrimination by a father under the Human Rights Act.

The father, whom we cannot name, is opposed to same-sex marriage and abortion and is suing Cornwall Council after its social services department intervened to prevent contact between him and his son, now five.

He alleges that they discriminated against him on the grounds of his beliefs after a social worker interrogated him about his opposition to abortion and gay-marriage.

COURT HEARING OUTCOME

A court hearing held on 23rd October decided that the case should be held at its substantive hearing in December in secret rather than in open court. Cornwall Council wanted the hearing to be in secret. The father, known to this ministry, wanted it to be heard in the open, so that the media, including Christian Voice, could report on it.

The father says the social worker voiced ‘concerns’ to do with his faith that were ‘insurmountable’ and told him that because of his unacceptable ‘beliefs’, openly posted on a blog, it was the social worker’s ‘duty’ to ensure that he never saw his son again. He has not seen his son for two and a half years.

The father, who is separated from the child’s mother, initially referred his son to social services because of concerns that the mother was not keeping to a written agreement about contact.

PUBLIC SUPPORT

At previous hearings the father defeated two applications to strike out his claim, which began in March 2014, and two applications for summary judgment against him.

The father told Christian Voice: ‘Whether you agree with the social worker’s decision or not, it is surely wrong that such an important issue as this should be decided in a secret trial. The issue to be decided is whether social workers should be allowed to deprive a child of one of his parents because that parent holds strong moral Christian beliefs which differ from those of the Government.’

There was a good degree of support from the public, particularly from the claimant’s church.

JUDGE CONSIDERED REPRESENTATIONS

The circuit judge hearing the application was His Honour Judge Cotter QC. HHJ Cotter heard, considered, then dismissed representations from the media.

READ: Exod 23:6; Lev 19:15; Deut 1:17; 1Kings 3:28; 1Chron 18:14; Job 37:23; Psalm 82:3, 89:14; Prov 31:4-5; Isa 59:4,14; Ezek 45:9; John 7:24; Acts 23:35; Romans 13:4; Rev 20:4.

PRAY: that justice may be done and may be seen to be done in this case. Pray also for wisdom for the father and for Christian Voice in the matter of an appeal.

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Evangelist in Court

By

Stephen

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16 November 2015

7

Northampton Magistrates Court where Bill edwards is on trial on 19th and 20th November 2015 — Northampton Magistrates Court where evangelist Bill Edwards is on trial twice this month: on 19th and 20th November 2015

STOP PRESS 20/11/2015:

CASE ON THURSDAY 19th DROPPED!

CASE ON FRIDAY 20th DROPPED IN RETURN FOR BIND-OVER ORDER!

PRAISE THE LORD!

BUT WHY WERE THESE CASES EVER BROUGHT?

Article continues:

Another Christian evangelist is in court on alleged public order offences.

Bill Edwards, well-known to this ministry for his tireless efforts for the Gospel, is to face magistrates in Northampton twice this month, on 19th November and then again the following day, 20th November. The cases will both be heard at 10.00am at Northampton Magistrates Court, Campbell Square, Northampton, NN1 3EB. Both charges have been laid under the Public Order Act 1986.

PRAYER IMPORTANT

Mr Edwards has told Christian Voice he values prayer more than actual physical presence. He said: ‘Obviously I will be glad of support by Christians at either of the court cases but it is a very long way for folk like you to come and prayer for the Lord’s help is, of course, more important.’

Despite that, members local to Northampton will surely want to support him, and those who can reach the court will wish to demonstrate how serious their prayers are by being there in person.

LOCAL MP COMPLAINED

The first charge relates to a peaceful protest Bill Edwards carried out outside the house of local MP Andrea Leadsom (Conservative) in the village of Slapton on 18th July.

Mr Edwards said: ‘I did not expect to be arrested and planned after an hour to move to another village for door to door evangelism. I did try to inform Northamptonshire Police beforehand about the protest but was unable to get through in time before I left home. I told Mrs. Leadsom why I was there and spoke to her husband and children and their friends.’ He is charged under Sections 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act.

ARRESTED AT SCHOOL

The following day the evangelist is charged under Sections 5 and 6 of the Act. Mr Edwards told us: ‘The second arrest and charge occurred after I carried a banner against homosexuals outside a primary school in Brackley on July 21st. There was a great deal of anger and physical opposition from certain people and again I was surprised with the outcome. Both of my banners employed words of Scripture.’

A personal note:

Evangelists like Bill Edwards are rare. They often do things others of us wouldn’t. I should probably content myself with writing to my MP or asking to lobby him at the House of Commons. I am not sure, even if he refused to meet me, that I should protest outside his home. If I did, of course, I should expect him to have a thicker and more avuncular skin than the average person and should be extremely surprised if he were to call the police.

As for the school, I know how liberal many parents are these days and have myself been shouted at when trying to encourage parents to protect their children from homosexual propaganda. In that situation, one really would expect the school’s head teacher to call the police, but would expect the police to defuse the situation on their arrival rather than start arresting people.

On the other hand, for some years now the police have been arresting evangelists for so-called ‘homophobic’ language, to the extent that even the National Secular Society became embarrassed by the negative publicity around assaults on our freedom of speech and joined the Christian Institute to call for a change in the law.

But despite that high-profile joint campaign by the National Secular Society and the Christian Institute to draw the teeth of the Public Order Act by removing the word ‘insulting’ from the list of behaviours it made illegal, nothing has actually changed. The police appear to carrying on with ‘business as usual’.

That is why, although Bill Edwards’ approach might differ from my own (although I too was arrested under the same Act of Parliament for witnessing outside Cardiff ‘Mardi Gras’ in 2006), I am honoured to stand with him and to show the magistrates that at least one of his brothers in Christ supports him enough to turn up on the day.

READ: Deut 31:6; Psalm 103:6; Jer 1:17, 5:14; Luke 12:11-12; Acts 4:18-20; Rom 10:8; 3John 1:17.

PRAY: Thank the Lord for evangelists who are prepared to risk arrest for preaching the Gospel. Pray that Bill Edwards finds favour with the magistrates. Pray for his solicitor, Michael Phillips, to be a good and effective advocate. Pray for much support from local Christians. Pray for Bill Edwards, as he says, ‘that the Lord will be glorified whatever the outcomes … and that I may witness a good confession against the homofascism and antichrist attitude of the authorities of our country.’

SUPPPORT: Come to Northampton Magistrates Court, Campbell Square, Northampton, NN1 3EB at 10.00am on Thursday 19th and Friday 20th November.

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What is the Gender Pay Gap?

By

Stephen

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4 November 2015

11

David Cameron working out the gender pay gap.

The UK Government is going to force firms to reveal the bonuses they pay to men and to women.

Apparently, in the UK, a woman on average earns around 80p for every £1 earned by a man. The Government will also make it a legal requirement for every company with more than 250 employees to publish the difference between the average pay of their male and female employees.

Earlier this year, business hit a target for the percentage of women on company boards. That was set at twenty-five percent by government adviser Lord Davies. Be in no doubt he will want that to go to fifty percent.

Our Prime Minister, Mr Cameron, has said: “You can’t have true opportunity without equality. There is no place for a pay gap in today’s society and we are delivering on our promises to address it.”

Maria Miller MP, who chairs the Commons Women and Equalities Committee chimed in, launching an inquiry by her committee into government strategy on reducing the difference between what women and men are paid.

Mrs Miller said unequal pay was predominantly a problem that affected women over forty and that measures already announced by the government did not account for this group.

I saw a video recently in which one Mike Buchanan was pointing to research indicating that having loads of women on company boards impacted negatively on their profitability.

GOD CREATED THE MAN TO WORK AND THE WOMAN TO HELP HIM

But I think my disquiet is more with the principle that gender pay equality is either achievable or desirable.

You see, in the beginning, God created the man, gave him some work, and then created the woman to be a helper for him. The pattern of a man as the head of the household, providing outside the home and women caring within it is still one which chimes with people and to which they aspire.

Even in what we regard as the most primitive societies, women stay near the camp, keeping their home smart, gathering stuff, looking after the children, while the men go out and hunt. The women usually cook what the men bring back.

Most women, in all the surveys I have seen, would rather be at home looking after their children than out at work. But sadly we have too many single-parent families today, and most of those are headed by a mother, and in two-parent households, governments have organised things so that today so many families need two incomes to survive.

GENDER PAY GAP IS A MYTH

I also want to suggest that this ‘gender pay gap’ might actually be a myth. After all, it’s illegal to pay a man more than a woman for doing an equivalent job.

So how do the Government come up with their 80% figure? Well, they just take a average of what every man earns and compare it with the average of what every woman earns, then round it up to the nearest 10%.

But men do more dirty and dangerous jobs, that pay more – and kill many of them. Many women – probably too many for the government’s liking – actually want to bring up their own children. Taking time out of a career inevitably impacts on earning ability.

And when you read about the real differences between men and women, you find that men are more driven and focused on achievements, while women are more concerned with relationships.

Lastly, if more men than women prioritise work, as the figures seem to show, won’t that, coupled with natural testosterone-fueled ambition, impact on relative earnings?

NEGATIVE PAY-GAPS

According to the Office for National Statistics, the gender pay gap is actually 9.4% for full-time employees. It only rises to 19.1% (not 20%) when part-time employees are included. And for part-time employees, they say, ‘the higher rate of pay for women than men results in a ‘negative’ gender pay gap’. The Government are not campaigning to address that problem, or seeking to raise the pay of young men to equal that of young women.

According to the Guardian newspaper, there is a negative gender pay gap among the young. ‘The pay gap is low or slightly reversed among 18 to 39-year-olds, but the gap for hourly earnings grows from the age of 40 onwards, reaching its highest point for women in their 50s’, said the paper. This is precisely the point where women are taking time out of their career for family reasons and men are nearing the peak of theirs.

The Government protest that after decades of equal pay acts, Britain still has the sixth-highest pay gap between men and women in the EU. But even this claim is highly simplistic.

The European Commission say: ‘A high pay gap is usually characteristic of a labour market which is highly segregated, meaning that women are more concentrated in a restricted number of sectors and/or professions (e.g. Czech Republic, Estonia and Finland), or in which a significant proportion of women work part-time (e.g. Germany and Austria)’. Both of those, to a certain extent, would apply to the United Kingdom.

The BBC’s Mark Easton asked ‘which jobs have more women than men‘, and he linked to a 2012 report from the House of Commons Library. (Click on the PDF to see the full report).

Another pay gap is never talked about. It is the gap between what people earn in the private sector and in the public sector. According to ONS: ‘Private sector earnings have remained consistently at around 85% of public sector earnings since 2009.’

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Jeremy and the Privy Council

By

Stephen

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8 October 2015

11

Every leader of the opposition becomes a Privy Councillor and Jeremy Corbyn will be no exception, even if he is a life-long republican and joining involves kneeling before the Queen.

The Privy Council’s role is to advise the Queen in carrying out her duties, such as the exercise of prerogative powers and other functions assigned to them by Acts of Parliament, we understand.

But the Council is also privy to highly-classified security information and matters that frankly us ordinary folk never get to know about.

It’s quite an exclusive club.

Today it was reported that Mr Corbyn had another appointment which meant he could not attend today’s meeting. It’s been big news, but no-one should interpret his absence as a snub. Out of six hundred members, fewer than a dozen normally attend, although, as leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, Mr Corbyn should be there in future.

Each person asked to be a privy councilllor takes this oath (or an affirmation version of it, is they object to Almighty God. The candidate is asked, in the presence of Her Majesty the Queen:

You do swear by Almighty God to be a true and faithful Servant unto the Queen’s Majesty, as one of Her Majesty’s Privy Council. You will not know or understand of any manner of thing to be attempted, done, or spoken against Her Majesty’s Person, Honour, Crown, or Dignity Royal, but you will lett and withstand the same to the uttermost of your Power, and either cause it to be revealed to Her Majesty Herself, or to such of Her Privy Council as shall advertise Her Majesty of the same. You will, in all things to be moved, treated, and debated in Council, faithfully and truly declare your Mind and Opinion, according to your Heart and Conscience; and will keep secret all Matters committed and revealed unto you, or that shall be treated of secretly in Council. And if any of the said Treaties or Counsels shall touch any of the Counsellors, you will not reveal it unto him, but will keep the same until such time as, by the Consent of Her Majesty, or of the Council, Publication shall be made thereof. You will to your uttermost bear Faith and Allegiance unto the Queen’s Majesty; and will assist and defend all Jurisdictions, Pre-eminences, and Authorities, granted to Her Majesty, and annexed to the Crown by Acts of Parliament, or otherwise, against all Foreign Princes, Persons, Prelates, States, or Potentates. And generally in all things you will do as a faithful and true Servant ought to do to Her Majesty. So help you God.

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Syria – Sense and Compassion

By

Stephen

-

6 October 2015

1

The Russian air strikes in Syria have set fur flying in Westminster. But despite the strutting ministers, some people are speaking with sense and compassion, among them former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey and Crispin Blunt, a little-known MP who chairs one of the most influential select committees in the House of Commons.

Firstly, on Sunday 4th of October 2015, former Archbishop of Canterbury Dr George Carey was reported saying that the United Kingdom has a responsibility to Syrian Christians.

Lord Carey said: “Time is running out for Christians in the region. Successive UK governments have failed to do enough to support minority communities in the Middle East and now sadly, many Christians have concluded they have no future in a region where they have lived for nearly two thousand years.”

He did not condemn Russia’s air strikes, but our Defence Secretary did. Michael Fallon MP said Mr Putin was targeting the ‘Free Syrian Army’ and claimed: “He’s shoring up Assad and perpetuating the suffering.”

But also over the weekend, the Chairman of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee said that Britain and the US were getting “in the way” of solving the Syrian civil war by calling for Assad to step down.

Mr Crispin Blunt MP said it was not “helpful” for David Cameron to compare Assad’s regime with the actions of ISIS terrorists. And he said the West was “in no position to complain” about Russian airstrikes in Syria.

We reported last month that Mr Blunt’s committee heard from experts on Syria, among them learned professors and journalists who agreed that Mr Fallon’s ‘Free Syrian Army’ is a busted flush and that the the Syrian Opposition is now totally dominated by Islamic State and Al Qaeda offshoots like the Al Nusra Front.

Much as one might dislike Bashar Al-Assad, said one expert, if he goes Syria implodes. There is no other guarantor of stability. It’s Assad or the Deluge, said another.

So when Mr Fallon complains that the Russians are shoring up Assad, I respond on the video, ‘You mean, they are preventing Syria from becoming a failed state like Libya is after our intervention? How inconsiderate of them.’

Our Government, including the previous gung-ho foreign secretary William, now Lord, Hague, bear much of the responsibility for the mass displacement of people by encouraging, supplying, training, even arming, Syrian rebel groups. It is we who have perpetuated the suffering, not Assad.

The sadness is, we can’t trust either our government or that of the US to tell us the truth.

The word of God tells us to support Christian brothers and sisters and to pray for our leaders. So I’m praying to hear from Mr Cameron that he is prepared to prioritise asylum to Syrian Christians, and that he will work humbly with Syria and its allies to defeat Islamic State and bring stability to Syria – and Iraq – so that the Christians, and the other minorities, can return to areas they and their ancestors have lived in, as Dr Carey reminded us, for two thousand years.

Please take a look at the video above and see if it is the prophetic voice I am praying it will be:

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‘Putin’ makes Elton John’s Day

By

Stephen

-

19 September 2015

2

Elton John promoting sodomy. — Elton John promoting sodomy through his ‘Aids Foundation’.

Sir Elton John was on the receiving end of a prank this week after expressing a desire last Sunday to lobby Russia’s President Vladimir Putin over Russia’s antipathy to advancing the cause of sodomy.

The singer had already been promoting gay rights in Ukraine, where he was on tour.

Two days later, Sir Elton had switched from saying the president’s stance was ‘ridiculous’, ‘isolating and prejudiced’ to praising him for ‘reaching out’ by apparently phoning the ageing pop star out of the blue.

The only problem was, the president’s press secretary Dmitry Peskov told reporters that reports of a conversation were “not true”.

“I don’t know who spoke to Elton John but President Putin did not speak to him,” he said. “… most importantly we didn’t receive any proposals to meet.”

He added: “If the president does get such a signal from Elton John, the president has always been open to discuss any… human rights problems, any issues. He is always ready to clarify the real situation.”

The ‘real situation’ is that Russia has passed a law outlawing homosexual propaganda to protect its young people.

‘Wonderful moment’ in Elton’s life

'Vovan' (right) and 'Lexus' — ‘Vovan’ (right) and ‘Lexus’

The next day, one Vladimir Krasnov, known as “Vovan”, admitted that he made the call with his sidekick Alexei Stolyarov, known as “Lexus”.

Vovan told the BBC and Russian newspaper Komsomolskaya Pravda, “Alexei has excellent English so he played Dmitry Peskov and translated our conversation. And I was Vladimir Putin.”

“It turned out that Elton John was really expecting that call, so he really believed he was talking to the people we said we were,” he said, adding that the singer had been in a London recording studio at the time of the call.

The recording and a transcript were gleefully added to the Russia Today website.

Sir Elton told the pranksters that he was ‘extremely honored’ to be called. ‘It is a great privilege to be able to speak to one of the most influential people in the world. It’s amazing,’ he continued.

The singer concluded the call by saying to Lexus, “Please thank him for his time and tell him he’s made my day. It’s a very wonderful moment in my life.”

“He really believed he was talking to the people we said we were,” said Vladimir Krasnov, known as “Vovan”.

Propaganda point

By Thursday, the musician was putting a brave face on his discomfort, saying he still wanted to speak to President Putin and then deciding to make a propaganda point out of it.

On his Instagram account, John posted a picture of a man with a bloodied face, whom we were to assume had acquired the injury from someone opposed to sodomy. John said: “Pranks are funny. Homophobia, however, is never funny.”

What is even less funny is authority figures like teachers telling children there is nothing wrong with being homosexual and encouraging them to turn a transient phase which they would otherwise grow out of into an ‘orientation’ which they will never shake off.

It also isn’t funny when entertainers use their considerable following to promote a pro-sodomy agenda.

We can but pray that Vladimir Putin will continue to keep Russian young people safe from the machinations of campaigning homosexuals like Elton John.

Assad essential to UK security

By

Stephen

-

18 September 2015

14

Andrew Parker, head of MI5, the UK Security Service.

The head of Britain’s Security Service has said that the ‘situation in Syria’ affects the threat of terrorism in the UK.

Speaking on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on 17th September 2015, MI5 Director General Andrew Parker said terrorism is ‘a threat which is continuing to grow largely because of the situation in Syria and how that affects our security.’

Last week, the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee heard compelling evidence that without President Assad, Syria would become a ‘failed state’ like Iraq and Libya.

It follows that President Assad is essential not just to defeat Islamic State, but his presence and a victory for the Syrian armed forces is necessary to minimise the threat to domestic UK security.

DRIVEN FROM CONFLICT ZONES

‘The shape of the threat we face today has changed in some ways because it is driven from conflict zones and the way people react to that,’ continued Mr Parker.

UK border police at Heathrow. But what of the militants who have slipped in unknown to them, or those entering illegally?

‘Because of the internet and the way terrorists use social media, including from Syria and the way we all live our lives using the smart phones in our pockets – the terrorists do the same.’

In answer to a question about the likelihood of extremists among ‘the migrants and refugees who are coming into Europe at the moment’, Mr Parker said guardedly he was ‘aware’ of that threat, but said he was concentrating at the moment on returning UK-based Islamic State fighters, who are probably already on MI5’s radar:

‘Of course it’s MI5’s job with others to monitor where the terrorists may be and how they are operating and how they are moving … we take an interest in those who have been to Syria and are coming back. So as far as the flow of migrants and refugees go of course it’s something we are aware of, it isn’t as we speak today the main focus of where the threat is coming from’.

ASSAD OR THE DELUGE

Either way, the unrest in Syria, which was encouraged by the United Kingdom, specifically by then-Foreign Secretary, the recently-ennobled William Hague, is putting at risk the safety of the people of the United Kingdom.

Foreign Affairs Select Committee member Mark Hendrick MP asked witnesses about what he described as ‘the so-called Arab Spring, that seems to have gone totally out of direction in a way that nobody would have predicted.’ Professor Eugene Rogan, Director of the Middle East Centre in Oxford, gave this response:

Professor Rogan: ‘I say this with a shared distaste for Bashar al-Assad and his methods of government, but I do believe he is an essential man. The policies based around the idea that Bashar al-Assad must go are ill-advised. They are unrealistic because those who advocate them do not have a champion they would put forward in his place and because recent history has shown us that when the state collapses you get a failed state.

Julien Barnes-Dacey appearing before the Foreign Affairs Select Committee.

‘State-building in the context of a failed state has given us Afghanistan and Somalia, and great difficulties in Iraq—and Libya and Yemen right now. Seeing Syria go the route of another failed state seems to me to be the greatest threat to our interests, as an American, and to yours as Britons, because when the state is gone in Syria the Islamic State will take its place, and it will then be a reality as an Islamic state—we will not quibble over Daesh, and so on. It will be the caliphate that they declare it to be. I think that it is now Bashar al-Assad or the deluge.’

Julien Barnes-Dacey, Senior Policy Fellow, Middle East and North Africa programme, European Council on Foreign Relations, agreed: ‘He is a guarantor. I think that is analytically correct. With Assad going, there are no guarantees of what comes next. … If (the question) remains pivoted on the person of Assad, it will continue to fail.’

OPPOSITION IN SYRIA ‘DOMINATED BY IS AND AL-QAEDA

Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent, The Independent

The Foreign Affairs Select Committee also heard from Patrick Cockburn, Middle East correspondent of The Independent, and freelance reporter James Harkin.

The transcript is here and is very well worth reading to understand the realities in Syria.

In an exchange which contradicted all the UK Government would have us believe, Mr Cockburn told a stunned Michael Gapes MP that there are no longer ‘numerous fighting groups’ in Syria, as Mr Gapes believed:

‘The armed opposition in Syria is dominated by Islamic State, which now holds more than half the country, and al-Qaeda type movements such as the official representative of al-Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra, or Ahrar al-Sham and the others are now dominant in the armed opposition, and there are not too many others. The Free Syrian Army and others that people used to talk about are very weak these days,’ said Mr Cockburn.

Al Jazeera reports that the United State’s plan to train thousands of ‘moderate’ Syrians to fight Islamic State is in shambles, with only sixty having been trained and only four or five of them left.

Freelance journalist and Syria expert James Harkin.

Nadhim Zahawi MP asked James Harkin: ‘Very briefly, what secular or moderate groups have any major role now in the fighting or in the political arena (in Syria)?’

This was Mr Harkin’s response: ‘As I see it, the secular or moderate groups that we support are still ensconced in hotels in Istanbul, having nice lunches three or four years later. These people are largely meaningless to any political settlement, and that really should not be the question we are asking. We should be asking what Syrian people want, rather than who can be our friends’.

CONSEQUENCES OF SYRIAN REGIME COLLAPSE

The Committee chairman, Crispin Blunt MP, asked, ‘if the regime did collapse, what would be the consequences?’

Patrick Cockburn responded: ‘Well, we’ve got 4 million refugees already. I think you would probably have about the same number coming out, or trying to get out if they could. Most of the minorities would cut and run. So too would people associated with the army or with the Government, and a lot of the Sunni. You would have mass panic. Can you imagine what it would be like if Daesh entered Damascus or started taking other cities? I think you would have mass population movements. I think it would be very bad.’

James Harkin added: ‘As Patrick says, whether you are an Alawite or a Christian or a Shi’a, the people I speak to there do not particularly hold great store by analytic detail about hundreds and hundreds of different factions, they just see that these people are out to kill them, because they are heretics.’

UK GOVERNMENT AT ODDS

Astonishingly, even as the committee was hearing this evidence, David Cameron was preparing to tell the House of Commons at Prime Minister’s questions that ‘Assad must go’. Does the UK government have no access to anyone who knows anything about Syria?

Former British Ambassador to Syria, Peter Ford.

Even back in April, the UK’s former ambassador to Syria Peter Ford denounced Mr Cameron’s attitude as ‘arrogant’ and ‘reckless’ in the Guardian saying that, ‘If David Cameron had had his way, we could have been embroiled by now, more than we already are, in yet another Middle East war. As it is, his Syria policy has still backfired, contributing to the rise of jihadism in our own back yard. If (he) had had his way, the jihadis could be in control of Damascus by now. Where is the accountability?’

The fact is, the more the UK and the US have undermined President Assad, the worse the situation in Syria has become, and the more refugees have been generated, not just from the Christian, Shi’a, Alawite, Druze and Kurdish minorities that the President has protected from the Syrian Sunni Muslim majority down the years, but also from newly radicalised but now displaced Syrian Sunnis, who threaten UK security.

More encouraging than Mr Cameron’s bluster was the contradictory evidence his new Foreign Secretary gave to the Select Committee as Mr Cameron was speaking. Rt Hon Philip Hammond signalled that the UK had actually retreated from its position of demanding that President Assad should relinquish power as a pre-requisite for UK assistance, according to this report in the Times of Israel.

The Foreign Secretary told the Committee that the solution of the crisis in Syria should be political rather than military, adding that London had sent a message to Russia and Iran, two countries backing the Assad regime, that it would be willing to consider a plan that sees Assad stay in power temporarily.

UK MUST WORK WITH SYRIA

The policy shift came as Ex-SAS and writer Chris Ryan has said that the UK must work with Syria, Russia and Iran if there is to be any hope of defeating Islamic State.

The novelist, who fought in the first Gulf War, said in the Daily Express:

“The best idea would be to hit them both sides with Europe and the United States one side and Russia on the other. The longer we wait, the stronger ISIS will get.”

Russia and Iran are President Assad’s strongest Allies. The Russians and Chinese have repeatedly blocked UN resolutions critical of the Syrian regime and have consistently opposed ‘regime change’.

It may be difficult to see how matters could be worse in Syria, and yet, as the Professor Rogan said, it President Assad were to be toppled, Syria would descend into the mayhem of Libya and the situation, especially for the Christians who remain there would be even worse and the refugee crisis unimaginable. Patrick Cockburn said ‘You would have mass panic … it would be very bad.’

We must give thanks to Almighty God for the stance taken by Russia and China and for the support Syria has received from Iran. Not least, we must thank God for the vote in the House of Commons in August 2013 in which MPs refused to allow the UK Government to bomb President Assad’s forces.

BRICKS NOT BOMBS

As to whether the UK should now enter into a bombing campaign against Islamic State in Syria, there was agreement among the witnesses that bombing alone would do little against Islamic State.

Mr Cockburn observed: ‘Where the Americans are supporting the Syrian Kurds and their militia, who are well disciplined and well organised, with air strikes, that is where Daesh (Islamic State) have suffered defeats. At Kobane, they lost about 2,000 men in a four-and-a-half-month siege. At another place, called Hasaka, also in the north-east, they also suffered a defeat, but there was a combination of efficient ground troops and American air strikes.’

He went on: ‘a lot of air missions by the Americans do not find a target. But above all, what you need is people on the ground who are calling in air strikes and who can see ISIS. If you don’t have that, it doesn’t really work very effectively. For the air strikes to work, you need people on the ground, giving the co-ordinates of exactly where Daesh is, and then they can hit those targets immediately.’

But Professor Rogan had a different and important take, telling Yasmin Qureshi MP:

‘Ms Qureshi, if I could put one plea forward, it would be to prioritise the sending of bricks rather than bombs to Syria, because I do not see how further air strikes or military action is going to do anything except further destroy the urban fabric of Syria. I tried to find some figures before coming to this meeting, and the most recent I could find suggest that 1.4 million Syrian homes have been destroyed. It is not West London prices—say it is £50,000 a unit—but that is £60 billion to rebuild the houses Syrians need to go home.

Professor Raymond Hinnebusch, Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics and Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies, University of St Andrews. — Prof. Raymond Hinnebusch.

‘You were asking previously what Syrians want. They don’t want to be in Europe. They don’t want to be in England, Germany or Hungary. They want to be home. The sooner we adopt policies that prioritise the needs of Syrians and provide not a safe haven but a safe habitat for them, with schools, hospitals and homes, the better, but that takes bricks, not bombs.’

NO NEGOTIATION

There will have to be a rebuilding effort when this conflict is over, but while Professor Raymond Hinnebusch, Professor of International Relations and Middle East Politics and Director of the Centre for Syrian Studies at the University of St Andrews agreed with Professor Rogan’s plea for a political settlement, it is difficult to see how that might happen.

Patrick Cockburn said: ‘… unfortunately the armed opposition is controlled at this stage by people who do not really want to talk, but want to win’.

There can be little prospect of negotiation with Al-Nusra and none at all with Islamic State, so even though bombing their positions might run the risk of radicalising even more Sunnis against those they will see as infidel invaders, there is no choice but to embark on smart bombing backed up by ground forces if Islamic State is to be defeated. Then, and only then, can those genuinely sympathetic to Syria and its people begin to discuss a long-term settlement in that country.

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Refugees, Migrants, Activists, Terrorists

Islam & Immigration

By

Stephen

-

16 September 2015

27

MunichRefugees — Refugees - migrants - arriving at Munich station,

Joseph and Mary take Jesus down to Egypt to seek refuge from Herod's persecution. — Joseph and Mary take Jesus down to Egypt to seek refuge from Herod’s persecution. (as depicted in 1650 by Bartolome Esteban Murillo, 1618-1682)

With more and more people crossing the Mediterranean Sea and Turkey into the southern and eastern borders of Europe, what would be a Christian response from the United Kingdom to what can be described as an exodus of Biblical proportions, as one might say, from the Middle East?

Much depends on whether such people are viewed as refugees, as economic migrants, as Muslim activists or – heaven forbid – as terrorists.

The Holy Family famously went down to Egypt to escape Herod’s persecution. They were refugees. They sought refuge. Almost two thousand years earlier, Jacob and his family were welcomed into Egypt at a time of famine. They were refugees from hardship and also economic migrants who actually improved Egypt with their animal husbandry skills. A ‘mixed multitude’ came out of Egypt with Israel under Moses. They were migrants. They sought a better economic life.

The Israelites, of course, were fleeing Egyptian persecution, but they would go on to conquer Canaan within fifty years by force of arms, which is perhaps a less comforting precedent.

Even then, we struggle to find in the Bible those who appear to seek refuge or trading positions only to work to destabilise the host nation from within.

That may be because, from ancient Egypt, through Israel to Rome, those who tried to introduce foreign belief systems, let alone those who mounted uprisings against established governments, were not made welcome, to put it mildly.

SYRIAN REFUGEES

So we should support the Prime Minister’s decision to take genuine refugees from the camps on the Syrian border. That must mean he should extend the hand of welcome to Syrian and Iraqi Christian families, who, incidentally, most accurately fit his own description of those who are most vulnerable.

We also recognise that having encouraged the uprising in Syria which has to date led to loss of life for 200,000 and the destruction of the homes and livelihoods of millions, the United Kingdom bears a great deal of responsibility for the current crisis. So we have a moral duty to help those forced from their homes.

Only Russia, China and Iran, by supporting the Syrian government, flawed as it undoubtedly is, have prevented even worse bloodshed and displacement and we thank God for their stand in the United Nations and in the region.

As our government is now finding out, there is such as thing as ‘unintended consequences’.

ECONOMIC MIGRANTS

The language used to described the travellers is important and our media are well aware of this. Call them Refugees and there will be sympathy. Call them migrants and there is suspicion. Call them activists – or even ‘Muslims’ – and the hostility starts.

Many of us in Christian circles will be sympathetic to the plight of refugees on the grounds of hospitality. Those who are pointing to the benefits of migrants are having a struggle in a nation like Britain which is seemingly already swamped by mainly Muslim immigrants, many entering illegally, over the last twenty years. Floods of economic migrants from the EU’s newer members has not helped that perception.

Nevertheless, it has been pointed out that ancient Rome encouraged economic migrants to settle there precisely because their economic activity and imported innovation skills increased the general prosperity of the empire.

Germany has announced a welcome to migrants for a similar reason. Their population is ageing because Germans have in recent years had one of the lowest indigenous birth rates in the world, well below replacement level. The question of who will fund the pensions of those about to retire now and for the next twenty years appears to have been answered.

But across the eastern and northern fringes of the European Union area, and without even mentioning possible Islamic State sleeper terrorists, long-established Christian nations are voicing concerns.

MUSLIM INFLUX

Hungary's new chain-link fence will need to be stronger than their temporary razor-wire effort. — Hungary’s new chain-link fence is stronger than their temporary razor-wire effort which had little effect on their border with Serbia.

The Hungarians are just finishing a fence topped with razor wire on their southern border with Serbia to keep out the flow of migrants.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban warned in September that the growing Muslim influx is threatening Europe’s “Christian roots”. Defending Hungary’s response to the migrant crisis, Mr Orban said his country did not want to admit large numbers of Muslims.

Slovakia will accept 200 asylum seekers under EU resettlement plans but insists all of them should be are Christians who have been persecuted in Syria.

Slovakia’s interior ministry said it will turn away Muslims because they will struggle to fit in if they have nowhere to worship.

Spokesman Ivan Metik said: “We could take 800 Muslims but we don’t have any mosques in Slovakia so how can Muslims be integrated if they are not going to like it here?”

That is not an argument the United Kingdom could make.

WHOSE RULES?

In Finland, Prime Minister Juha Sipila said he was willing to give up one of his houses to migrants, but his coalition partners are the anti-immigration Finns Party, who came second in April’s election.

Mr Sipila wrote on Twitter that he wanted “to develop Finland as an open, linguistically and culturally international country”.

Finns Party chief Timo Soini, who is Foreign Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, wrote on his blog last week that Christian and Yazidi minorities could be given priority as refugees. But he came under heavy criticism from the media and changed course in an interview on Monday.

But Some of his party colleagues are made of sterner stuff. Jussi Halla-aho, a Finns Party MEP, said some members of society were not integrating well enough, adding there was a risk “the society begins to play by the rules of the Muslim minority rather than expecting the minority to play by the rules of the society”.

In July, Olli Immonen, one of the party’s MPs, wrote of what he called “this nightmare called multiculturalism” on his Facebook page, adding: “We will fight until the end for our homeland and one true Finnish nation.”

Finance Minister Alexander Stubb responded in a tweet: “Multiculturalism is an asset. That’s all I have to say.”

But is it an asset? In a survey in August, before the new talks on migrant quotas, most Finns, of whom 78% belong to the Lutheran Church, said in a survey they would rather live next to an alcohol rehabilitation centre than a mosque.

MUSLIM ACTIVISTS

Many of our leaders make the mistake of seeing Islam as a religion. It is, in fact, a political system.

In July 2015, the Daily Mirror commissioned a survey from pollsters ICM to find out how much support Islamic State actually enjoyed among British Muslims. The results shocked even the Mirror.

The East London Mosque - the Daily Mirror claimed 50% of British Muslims support Islamic State. — The East London Mosque – the Daily Mirror claimed 50% of British Muslims support Islamic State.

Three percent of respondents in Britain were very favourable towards the Muslim terrorist group (which ICM called ISIS) and 6% were somewhat favourable. Female and male respondents had similar attitudes.

The pollsters did not ask people their religious affiliations, but when you consider that around 5% of the population is actually Muslim, rising to 10% of the under-25’s, and assuming that non-Muslims will not be at all supportive of Islamic State, the Mirror’s claim that ‘around half of Britain’s three million Muslims could be ISIS sympathisers’ may be an understatement.

Logically, the more Muslims come here, the more of our population will be Muslim activists, sympathetic to Islamic State or whichever hard-line aggressive Muslim terrorist group takes its place. The same will be true in Germany, France, Italy or wherever Muslims end up.

TERRORISTS

Which leads to the last and least welcome category of those travelling across the Med and the Turkish peninsular, Muslim sleeper terrorists.

How many of the young men trying to enter Britain through Calais, or trudging through Europe, are genuine rfugees, and how many IS sleepers? No-one knows, but IS claim 'thousands'. — How many of the young men trying to enter Britain through Calais, or trudging through Europe, are genuine refugees, and how many are Islamic State sleepers? No-one knows, but IS claim ‘thousands’ across Europe as a whole.

Islamic State militants are claiming to have smuggled ‘thousands’ of activists into Europe disguised as refugees from the Syrian conflict. It is certain that many will already have crossed illegally into the United Kingdom. A country like Germany, announcing a welcome to hundreds of thousands, will end up harbouring thousands of sleeping terrorists.

They will do nothing to frighten the horses and inadvertently stem the flow of migrants in the immediate future. But there will come a day when the people of Hungary and Slovakia may be grateful for the stand their leaders took. Even in those places, acts of terrorism could take place, but it is easier for domestic security forces to keep an eye on thousands of Muslims than millions.

Even without actual IS terrorists, ordinary rank-and-file Muslims are inspired and emboldened by the idea of an Islamic caliphate and supportive of attempts to establish one. It makes them feel good about being Muslim and bolsters ambitions that one day, maybe one day soon, their host country could embrace Islam.

JUST TAKE THE CHRISTIANS

Britain has done right to go to the refugee camps rather than encourage the people smugglers.

But our conclusion must be that Britain should take only Syrian and Iraqi Christian refugee families.

In such an event, we can have no doubt that British churches and individual Christians will go out of our way to house them and help them become established and prosperous in our land.

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Assisted Dying – how your MP voted

By

Stephen

-

12 September 2015

5

Rob Marris MP. Introduced the Assisted Dying Bill — Rob Marris MP Introduced the Assisted Dying Bill

The unholy cause of euthanasia was dealt a blow yesterday as MPs voted three to one against the Assisted Dying Bill in the House of Commons. Here is the Hansard record of the debate.

The text of the Bill is here on the Parliament website. It is – or was – a Private Member’s Bill, introduced by Rob Marris MP (Labour – Wolverhampton South West).

Much has been written and circulated about this clear attempt to introduce euthanasia into the United Kingdom, or at any rate to England and Wales. The arguments were well rehearsed in the debate.

The leaders of all the major faith groups in Britain, except the Hindus, opposed it, according to the Guardian, as did disability organisations and the British Medical Association.

Archbishop of Canterbury Rt Rev Justin Welby took the lead as Jewish, Muslim and Sikh leaders opposed the Assisted Dying Bill.

For me, any measure which has to use weasel words to achieve its objective is suspect.

Here is clause 4 (1), headed ‘Assistance in dying’:

(1) The attending doctor of a person who has made a valid declaration under section 3 may prescribe medicines for that person to enable that person to end their own life.

‘Medicines’? Here is a dictionary definition of ‘medicine’:

‘A drug or other preparation for the treatment or prevention of disease.’

Something which kills is not a medicine, it is a poison. Why not be honest enough to use that word? Dishonesty always means something underhand is going on.

Fiona Bruce MP observed that something given to kill someone is not a medicine but a poison.

Fiona Bruce MP, who spoke at 10:44am in the debate, picked up on exactly that point, the only MP to do so, although many excellent and passionate speeches were made opposing the measure.

The issue of euthanasia, or assisted dying, will not come back in this parliament, and may not resurface for more than a decade. It is eighteen years since it was last debated in the House of Commons.

We give God all the thanks and the glory. If you wrote to your MP, or prayed into this matter, then thank the Lord that you were part of his victory.

Here is the record of the vote (note that ‘Tellers’ support the lobby they were counting in.

The House having divided: Ayes 118, Noes 330.

Division No. 69 2.7 pm

AYES

Tellers for the Ayes:

Heidi Alexander and Nusrat Ghani

NOES

Tellers for the Noes:

Joan Ryan and Mr Charles Walker

Question accordingly negatived.

Submission to NICE on ‘dying’

By

Stephen

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9 September 2015

0

Fiona Bruce MP saved her own father from death on the Liverpool Care Pathway.

We have sent our submission to NICE on their ‘Care of the dying adult: draft guideline consultation’ which closed today (9th September 2015).

We were highly critical of the Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), and remain critical of any ‘pathway’ to death.

We are disappointed that on page 150 of the NICE draft guideline, it says: “Death is unlikely to be hastened by not having clinically assisted hydration”.

This is palpably untrue. If someone is unable to drink, not giving hydration will kill them.

We are also astonished that there is no mention of nutrition that we can see in the draft guideline.

We wish to remind NICE of the independent review on the LCP carried out by Baroness Neuberger and her highly critical report in 2012. It was particularly critical of the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration. Lady Neuberger said “the default course of action should be that patients be supported with hydration and nutrition unless there is a strong reason not to do so”.

That must be reflected in the NICE guidance if the public are to have any confidence in it.

In too many reported cases, elderly patients were sedated, starved and dehydrated to death under the LCP. Relatives reported being told in a matter-of-fact way that their relative was dying when they weren’t at all. You will be aware, or should be, of the personal testimony of Fiona Bruce MP about how her own father was treated. She was told he was dying, she moved him to a nursing home, and he recovered.

So we are also concerned that there is still a ‘pathway’ element to the NICE draft guidance. The whole idea of a ‘pathway’ leads one to question its destination.

The object of the exercise must not be to ‘free up beds’. Hospitals should be obliged under any NICE guidelines to give nutrition and hydration adequate for patients’ physiological needs at all times and regardless of prognosis.

There appears to be no structure in the draft guidance for a clinical decision on whether or not a patient is actually dying. Such a decision should be led by evidence, if there is no evidence, then the patient should be cared for as if recovery were expected.

We also believe the guidance should specify that a consultant doctor, not a nurse, should make every decision, in consultation with relatives, about treatment for vulnerable or elderly patients.

So finally, we question the very title of the draft guidance: ‘Care of the Dying Adult’. Is this a ‘dying adult’ or simply a ‘very ill adult’? Unless there is clear clinical evidence that someone is actually dying, such an expression should never be used. It risks making the outcome follow a hospital manager’s desire and is quite out of place in modern care.

We repeat that the public must have confidence in the medical profession. The LCP did much to destroy such trust. NICE has an opportunity to put matters right. It is an opportunity which we hope and pray is seized with enthusiasm.

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The Day the Sun Stood Still

Justice, Policing & Crime

By

Stephen

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9 September 2015

0

Two hours apart? Why is the shadow the same? Alleged timed pictures from a retail park car park in Lincoln — Two hours apart? Why is the shadow the same? Falsely-timed timed pictures from a shopping centre car park run by UKPC in Lincoln.

An astonishing story has appeared on the BBC website about parking officials forging the time on photographs in car parks from Lincoln to Newcastle-under-Lyme.

Many supermarket and shopping centre car parks are run by private firms and allow shoppers to park for, say, two hours.

Employees at at least two car parks operated by UK Parking Control (UKPC) have altered the time which is apparently stamped by the recording machine on the photograph of the car to suggest that the car has been parked for more than two hours.

The firm then sent a penalty charge notice to the drivers with a demand for payment and a threat of court action.

In the first case on the BBC website, the shadow of the car barely moved in the alleged two hours. Not since the time of Joshua has anyone experienced the day the sun stood still.

Look at the car behind and to the left. The owner left his boot open for over two hours? — Look at the car behind and to the left. The owner left his boot open for two hours? No, either the first time or the second time was changed by the UKPC employee in Newcastle-under-Lyme.

In another case, a neighbouring car has its boot open, and, astonishingly, the same boot of the same car is still up allegedly two hours later.

This is false witness and fraud, and is forbidden by the Lord God Almighty. As the Lord Jesus told the rich young man:

Mark 10:19 Thou knowest the commandments, Do not commit adultery, Do not kill, Do not steal, Do not bear false witness, Defraud not, Honour thy father and mother.

Because a measurement is involved, the scam also involves doing down a neighbour and using false weights and measures, which the Lord specifically legislated against::

Lev 19:35 Ye shall do no unrighteousness in judgment, in meteyard, in weight, or in measure.

Deut 25:15 But thou shalt have a perfect and just weight, a perfect and just measure shalt thou have: that thy days may be lengthened in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.

Zech 8:17 And let none of you imagine evil in your hearts against his neighbour; and love no false oath: for all these are things that I hate, saith the LORD.

An investigation is now under way. The story will cast all time recordings in parking cases into doubt, so the parking people may well have ruined their own lucrative business.

It may be helpful for readers to remember that a penalty notice from a private firm, however official it looks, cannot be enforced. They have to take you, the motorist, to the county court and prove a loss for that amount, which is difficult for them.

If you have genuinely overstayed your paid parking time, just send the difference by cheque. Otherwise, don’t even reply. It’s largely a mailing exercise anyway, to see how many fall for it. Going to court costs them money and involves risk, so they usually won’t bother.

And give thanks to God that this has come to light, thanks to the stupidity of the parking operators.

Matt 10:26 Fear them not therefore: for there is nothing covered, that shall not be revealed; and hid, that shall not be known.

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Labour: who’s best – and worst – for Israel?

By

Stephen

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27 August 2015

9

A fortnight ago, in a video, we looked at the House of Commons voting record of the four contenders for the UK Labour Party leadership. We saw that Andy Burnham and Jeremy Corbyn had small things going for them.

But what are the candidates’ positions on Israel? In particular, and as he now seems certain to be elected, what is Jeremy Corbyn’s stance?

And what should be a Christian response?

In this new video, we ask – and answer – those questions. You can comment about it there or here.

Psalm 122:6 Pray for the peace of Jerusalem: they shall prosper that love thee. (KJV)

Who’s best for Labour?

UK Christian Constitution

By

Stephen

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5 August 2015

42

Christian Voice has put together a video considering the voting records of the contenders for the Labour Party leadership.

We hope this will help Christians in the Labour Party as they pray for the outcome and vote for the candidates.

Jeremy Corbyn has been in the House of Commons the longest, since 1983. Yvette Cooper entered the House in 1997, Andy Burnham in 2001 and Liz Kendall was only elected in 2010.

Several important votes have taken place over the past fifteen or twenty years. These have enabled us to gather a picture of the position taken on a number of key policy areas by Mr Burnham, Miss Cooper and Mr Corbyn. It has also been possible to gain a view of Miss Kendall’s stance on some of the issues which matter even from her short time in the house.

Sadly, the view we have formed of Miss Kendall is that her albeit short voting record leaves a lot to be desired. Miss Cooper’s voting over a much longer period also has few redeeming features.

The two men fare better. In the video we show how Mr Burnham has been on the side of the angels from time to time. Mr Corbyn also surprised us on some very important issues.

We have only looked at their voting records. Mr Corbyn’s membership of the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign may put some people off, and Mr Burnham’s support for all-women shortlists for parliamentary candidate selections could be seen as contentious.

The Bible has some advice for us concerning leaders. Firstly, in Exodus 18:21 we read they should be ‘able men, such as fear God, men of truth, hating covetousness’. Psalm 146 tells us not to put our trust in princes. We also know from from Jeremiah 18:7-10 and Psalm 9:17 that the Almighty rules in the affairs of men and that he will bring down a kingdom which rebels against him.

So our prayer is that God will so sway the hearts of Labour Party members as to elect the candidate who will, wittingly or unwittingly, most advance his kingdom here on earth and bring our nation back into obedience to him under the sovereignty of the King of kings, Jesus Christ himself.

Amen.

Doctor slams NICE end-of-life guidelines

Abortion & Euthanasia

By

Stephen

-

3 August 2015

7

A leading doctor has slammed new guidelines prepared to replace the much-criticised Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP).

Writing in the Daily Telegraph, Dr Patrick Pullcino, Professor of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Kent, says the draft guidelines prepared by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) are even worse than the LCP.

Christian Voice reported on the NICE guidelines last Wednesday (29th July 2015). Our report, based on a BBC article, was positive about the development. It seems we were wrong.

There can be no doubt the BBC article was based on a press release from NICE, who appear to have put a positive spin on their work, claiming that they were calling:

‘for basic daily checks to make make sure patients are well hydrated and nourished’. We observed this was ‘a radical departure from the LCP’. NICE went on to say that families would be encouraged to be more closely involved in care if appropriate and safe, and an example was given of ‘helping to give loved ones sips of water’. Further, there was a demand from NICE for clear communication and the involvement of patients and relatives in decisions.

However, Professor Pullicino describes the section on hydration (which begins at page 137 in the NICE document) as ‘a disaster of misinformation, distortion and ambiguity with at least one major error. It says that “death is unlikely to be hastened by not having clinically assisted hydration”. This is completely untrue. Not giving hydration is certain to kill someone if they can’t take hydration by mouth’.

(The erroneous statement about hydration is in section 8.6 on page 150.)

In one respect, the professor says the NICE draft guidelines are even worse that the LCP. ‘There is no mention of nutrition in the Nice document’, he says.

Baroness Neuberger led an independent review and wrote a highly critical report on the LCP in 2012. It was particularly harsh on the withdrawal of nutrition and hydration. Says Professor Pullicino, ‘Neuberger left no doubt that LCP practice on hydration and nutrition was inhumane in some cases. Neuberger said that “the default course of action should be that patients be supported with hydration and nutrition unless there is a strong reason not to do so”.’

An expression which occurs frequently in the draft guidelines is ‘the dying person’. But can we always be certain a person is actually dying? Professor Pullicino says:

‘Diagnosis of who was imminently dying was the core problem of the LCP and is no better in the Nice document. It includes a cookbook list of features that may suggest someone is dying but is totally inadequate to make a diagnosis and is not evidence-based. So we are back at the LCP in terms of the risk of putting patients who are not dying onto inappropriate and potentially lethal treatment.’

The Professor says he was ‘one of the first doctors to raise concerns about the Liverpool Care Pathway pushing elderly NHS patients to premature death’.

The whole idea of a ‘pathway’ leads one to question its destination. And if doctors are just guessing, or are under pressure to free up beds, the alarm bells should be ringing.

Professor Pullicino says: ‘This is so crucial that no new attempts to set up this sort of pathway should be made until we have research showing it is possible to accurately diagnose impending death. Until then, as Neuberger said, good quality compassionate care should be given without any pathway.’

Indeed, ‘One of the most dangerous aspects of the LCP was “anticipatory prescribing” where the physician wrote up sedatives and narcotic medication ahead of time. Nurses were empowered to use preset LCP criteria (eg pain, agitation) as a justification for increasing the dose. The result was a rapid increase of medication and a quick death for many LCP patients.’

He echoes the Neuberger Report by calling for ‘a senior responsible clinician accountable for all decisions in end-of-life care.’ The responsibility, he says, should not be delegated to a nurse. ‘Consultants must be restored to full care of, and responsibility for, their patients,’ he writes

Despite denials to the contrary, ‘Dehydration was a central mechanism of the deaths on the LCP. Despite the removal of the LCP, I still frequently witness severely dehydrated elderly patients on hospital wards. Unless it becomes standard, and monitored by the Care Quality Commission, that hospitals are obliged to give nutrition and hydration adequate for patients’ physiological needs at all times and regardless of prognosis, end-of-life care is going to remain lethal.

‘Evidence-based medicine is the gold standard for 21st-century health care. The LCP abandoned this and was disastrous not only for the patients but for all medicine. All physicians in general hospitals should use only evidence-based treatments and pathways, and Nice should ensure all pathways meet this standard. Its current proposal certainly does not.’

The NICE consultation process is described on its website. It is important that as many of those concerned about the treatment of particularly elderly patients respond. The consultation period ends on 9th September 2015.

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Liverpool Care Pathway put to sleep

By

Stephen

-

29 July 2015

5

A controversial method of hastening death for terminally-ill patients has been scrapped, reports the BBC.

The Liverpool Care Pathway (LCP), developed by Royal Liverpool University Hospital and the Marie Curie cancer charity, involved the withdrawal of medication, food and fluids. Patients were sedated, starved and dehydrated to death.

In October 2012 figures released under the Freedom of Information Act showed that some two thirds of NHS trusts had received incentive payments for meeting “targets” for using the LCP, and that such payments totalled £12 million or more.

But now, England’s health watchdog, the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE), has put forward new draft guidance to improve the care of adults in their last few days of life.

The NICE proposals make no mention of lists or tick boxes, much criticised in the LCP approach.

But crucially, there are calls now for basic daily checks to make make sure patients are well hydrated and nourished, a radical departure from the LCP. Families should be encouraged to be more closely involved in care if appropriate and safe – for example helping to give loved ones sips of water – and there is a demand from NICE for clear communication and the involvement of patients and relatives in decisions.

Two years ago, a review chaired by crossbench peer Julia Baroness Neuberger called for the LCP to be scrapped. The review applied only to England.

Many hospitals in England apparently ditched the LCP but it has taken two years for NICE to come up with an alternative.

The Scottish Government announced in December 2013 that the LCP would be phased out.

In Northern Ireland the Liverpool Care Pathway remained, as at July 2014, according to the General Medical Council, one of ‘several tools to help deliver palliative and end of life care’, although a review of the use of the LCP was said by the Macmillan cancer charity to be taking place.

In Wales, an ‘Integrated Care Pathway (ICP) for the last days of life‘ was implemented in 2000, overhauled in 2010 and amended in 2012 ‘primarily to clarify issues around sedation, hydration and prescribing’.

An All-Wales Palliative Care Conference is to take place at Gregynog in Powys on 8th & 9th October 2015. The current ICP for Wales is downloadable HERE. It still retains the ‘check-box’ approach and the ‘pathway’ name, but hydration is a goal in it and there is no apparent specific mention of the withdrawal of food.

NB: Please click here for an important subsequent development to this article.

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What does ‘taken into care’ mean?

By

Stephen

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13 July 2015

12

Danielle was moved 26 times in five years and raped three time while 'in care'. — Danielle was moved 26 times in five years and raped three times while ‘in care’.

Birmingham Social Services oversaw some of the worst cases of child abuse, including that of seven-year-old Khyra Ishaq, who starved to death at her home in Handsworth in 2008, and Keanu Williams, who was found collapsed in his mother’s partner’s flat in 2011.

These high-profile cases, following after that of baby Peter Connelly, who was murdered by his mother, her boyfriend and his brother in 2007 in London’s Haringey, which was already under pressure following the death of Victoria Climbié ten years earlier, caused social workers to put caution before common sense.

Children have been taken from their parents on the slightest whiff of abuse, which for today’s social workers involves any sign of corporal punishment. But what happens then? The BBC website is carrying a video of an interview with a girl called Danielle. She was taken into care in 1998 at the age of 11 after marks from a belt were seen on her back. If that were punishment, it sounds excessive, but what subsequently happened to Danielle makes it seem like the ultimate in compassion.

Danielle, who is now twenty-seven, says she was moved six times in six weeks and had twenty-nine moves by the time she left the care system aged just sixteen. She was raped three times whilst ‘in care’, in addition to an attempted rape when she was only eleven and in a children’s home. She ran away when she was thirteen but was brought back.

The outcomes of children in care make shocking reading. According to a Government study in 2013, ‘67.8% have special educational needs’. ‘Around half of all looked after children aged 5 to 16 were considered to be ‘borderline’ or ‘cause for concern’ in relation to their emotional and behavioural health’, the study said.

Their educational gaps ‘are still large, especially for key stage 4, where 15.3% of looked after children achieved 5 or more A* to C GCSEs or equivalent including English and mathematics compared with 58.0% of non-looked-after children’.

Even according to the NSPCC, which has an interest in providing care facilities, the mental health difficulties of children in care are four times higher than their peers.

The Government report did not mention the staggeringly high incidences of sexual abuse faced by children in care, but the Independent newspaper reported:

‘One in every hundred children living in care is abused every year in Britain, according to the most comprehensive study conducted into the issue.

The research by York University and the NSPCC is the first of its kind to uncover and analyse local authority records on abuse in foster and residential care.

‘Academics tracked abuse allegations – and their outcomes – between 2009 and 2012. They found that on average there are between 450 and 550 cases of proven abuse every year in foster care and between 250 and 300 cases of confirmed abuse a year in residential care.

I’n residential care the rate of substantiated abuse claims is significantly higher than for foster families, with an average of between two and three proven cases per 100 children.’

Would the children have done better and been treated better left with their parents under some kind of supervision with assistance in parenting? It is hard to imagine their outcomes would have been much worse.

There is little sign of social workers, whose jobs are under no risk if they take children from their parents, becoming more family-friendly. But with being in care leading to such horrifying abuse as Danielle suffered and the poor outcomes reported by the Government, surely a rethink is overdue.

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