The Church of England faces being wiped out as a significant national force without an "urgent" campaign to recruit more believers, a report warns. In the last 40 years the number of adult churchgoers has fallen by half while the number of children regularly worshipping in public declined by 80 per cent, the study says.
The Bishop of Southwell and Nottingham, the Rt Rev Paul Butler, will present findings to the Church's national assembly, the General Synod, in York on Saturday. Synod members will be urged to vote for a new national drive to recruit more members.
The Archbishop of Canterbury, Dr Rowan Williams, has acknowledged that the Church must devote more energy to increasing the number of regular worshippers over the next five years.
"Church of England report calls for affirmative action on race"
"The Church of England is to give the go-ahead for the appointment of openly homosexual bishops."
"One sometimes feels that the best thing that His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI could do for the United Kingdom would be to perform the rite of exorcism over it. "
In the heat of the presidential campaign, videos surfaced of Obama’s pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, angrily denouncing whites, the U.S. government and America itself. Obama had once bragged of his closeness to Wright. Now the black nationalist preacher’s rhetoric was threatening to torpedo Obama’s campaign.And they didn't like it - so did something about it.
The crisis reached a howling pitch in mid-April, 2008, at an ABC News debate moderated by Charlie Gibson and George Stephanopoulos. Gibson asked Obama why it had taken him so long – nearly a year since Wright’s remarks became public – to dissociate himself from them. Stephanopoulos asked, “Do you think Reverend Wright loves America as much as you do?”
Watching this all at home were members of Journolist, a listserv comprised of several hundred liberal journalists, as well as like-minded professors and activists.
According to records obtained by The Daily Caller, at several points during the 2008 presidential campaign a group of liberal journalists took radical steps to protect their favored candidate. Employees of news organizations including Time, Politico, the Huffington Post, the Baltimore Sun, the Guardian, Salon and the New Republic participated in outpourings of anger over how Obama had been treated in the media, and in some cases plotted to fix the damage.Calling a political opponent a racist ? Hmm, worth a try. Not been done before.
In one instance, Spencer Ackerman of the Washington Independent urged his colleagues to deflect attention from Obama’s relationship with Wright by changing the subject. Pick one of Obama’s conservative critics, Ackerman wrote, “Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — call them racists.”
Michael Tomasky, a writer for the Guardian [my emphasis] also tried to rally his fellow members of Journolist: “Listen folks–in my opinion, we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy in whatever venues we have. This isn’t about defending Obama. This is about how the [mainstream media] kills any chance of discourse that actually serves the people.”
How true that is.
"Men without religion
Just can't keep in a righteous man position"
Peter Clarke was not treated by doctors after going into cardiac arrest as a nurse had spotted the form in his files and, even though it was blank and had not been filled in, told other ward staff he should not be revived.
The blunder emerged at an inquest into the incident at Derby Hospitals NHS Trust, where bosses revealed staff had been ‘routinely’ placing the forms alongside medical records before they had been correctly signed and witnessed by senior doctors.
The errors go against the usual Trust policy on using the forms and mean the documents were inserted into files without the consent of patients.
It has affected an unknown number of patients and it is not known how long the practice was going on.
Dr Robert Hunter, Derby and South Derbyshire Coroner, recorded a verdict of natural causes. He said that on the balance of probabilities the failure to carry out resuscitation did not cause or affect Mr Clarke’s death.
But he added: "The circumstances have highlighted faults within the system. If anything has come out of this, it's improved the policy for future patients."
Miss Fowlie said that several changes in procedure had been made to prevent a repeat occurrence.
Blank Do Not Resuscitate forms were no longer being routinely filed into patients’ medical records by clerical staff, and greater checks and balances had been implemented when it came to deciding whether to resuscitate a patient.
If you want a picture of the future, imagine a cigarette being stubbed out in Simon Jenkins' face - forever.
"Because she's an eeeeevil feminazi, OMG"
"All liberals R Nazis!!*$!"
"This whiny attempt to curry favour with the chain-smoking wingnut libertarian contingent of Guardian readers just makes me want to stub out a fag in your face, Simon."
"It's the legacy of Thatcher and the Tories, their crusade against the primary industry has produced children who have grown up with parents who have never had a job"
"Society was brutalised through industrialization and the aftermath and the denial of "society" by Thatcher, and the complete social-moral disintigration she caused"
I think in the media-fuelled moral panic about 'stranger danger', people have ignored the fact that the greatest damage done to children tends to be within their own homes at the hands of their own families.
"I feel that people who seem to want to inflict punishment on small children are themselves in need of treatment."
"The lynch-mob attitude of some of the comments and the call for throw- away-the- key justice reflects just what a brutal society Britain is"
"Who knew that the true sociopaths dwell in this thread"
Laban :
The natural horror felt at (insert appalling crime here) should not blind us to the fact that (crime is actually falling/it is all Thatcher's fault/such crimes have always been with us).
If we surrender to (the tabloid agenda/the Daily Mail hysteria/knee-jerk populism/the politics of the soundbite) and take the easy option of (jailing more of our young people/bringing back the birch/bringing back hanging/walling off the cities then bombing them/demonising our young people) we run the very real risk of (actually achieving something/alienating a generation/an invasion of killer bees).
There is only one answer. An enormous increase in the funding of (Sure Start schemes/outreach workers/emotional intelligence mentors/youth projects/anti-racist 5-a-day smoking cessation co-ordinators).
Indie :
"No cause for moral panic"
"Who is my neighbour ?"
"The outcast, the rapist, the criminal, the thug"
"And what about your ...er.. neighbours ?"
"Those straights ?"
I had been a foster carer for just over a year when James came to us, and had worked for the council's mental health service for 10 years before that. But I wanted to help the teenagers who had been in the care system for a long time and had suffered serious trauma.
I did every training course on offer. Central Bedfordshire council was brilliant: I studied attachment theory, behaviour management, the problems caused by drug and alcohol abuse, and how to work with sexually abused children. I even did a BTec in advanced fostering.
I was realistic enough to recognise that he was a danger to himself and to everyone he came into contact with, and so I was nervous about the young children who lived around us, but because I knew what a hurt, vulnerable side James possessed I wanted to believe that, deep down, he was a good lad.
We soldiered on. I refused to reject James like everyone else in his life had done, but 10 months after he had come to live with us my neighbour of more than 20 years sold her house and moved away. She told me she couldn't live near him a day longer.
Then, last July, James was accused of raping an 11-year-old local girl and forcing her to perform a sexual act on him.
The nurse stood irresolute, looking now at the kneeling figure by the bed (the scandalous exhibition!) and now (poor children!) at the twins who had stopped their hunting of the zipper and were staring from the other end of the ward, staring with all their eyes and nostrils at the shocking scene that was being enacted round Bed 20. Should she speak to him? try to bring him back to a sense of decency? remind him of where he was? of what fatal mischief he might do to these poor innocents? Undoing all their wholesome death-conditioning with this disgusting outcry–as though death were something terrible, as though any one mattered as much as all that! It might give them the most disastrous ideas about the subject, might upset them into reacting in the entirely wrong, the utterly anti-social way.
a) the population is ageing, because the baby-boom generation now moving into retirement didn't have enough children, preferring to outsource the production of the next generation to immigrants
b) older people need more medical care to keep them upright
c) medical care is very expensive
d) our wonderful Government has run out of money - they seem to have been having a few financial difficulties of late
e) taxes will have to rise, both because of Government incompetence and because the base of net tax payers will have more elderly people (net tax recipients) to support
f) if history is a guide, these tax increases are likely to be resented
g) the resentful taxpayers will be all colours and cultures. The elderly recipients of the tax-funded medical care will be hideously white native Brits.
h) and the Guardian, BBC and the rest of our liberal masters have decided that now seems like a good time to add euthanasia to the available NHS options.
i) Naturally it will only be used on demand in ultra-special cases - just like abortions were going to be really, really unusual and rare when the law was changed back in 1967.
j) Hmm. This is one of those rare occasions when conspiracy theory and Occam's Razor both point in the same direction. Follow the money. Motive - saving all that cash. Opportunity - via new legislation.
"Griffin - I will not grace you with the honorific 'Mister', which applies to members of the human race - YOU, and your cabal of ***** are the ones who are not British. You have no concept of what the word means, no sense of responsibility to this country. Your deluded, vile, racist leaflets harken back to the awful days of the Reich's 'Nuremberg Laws'.
You and your ilk are the ones who don't deserve the right to exist in this country. One day, I fervently wish you get your own Nuremberg moment. I'll even pull the lever myself."
It has become apparent to commentators like Liam Halligan that the Great Deflation Scare of 2009 is, in his words :
"... largely a myth – an alibi for wildly expansionary fiscal and monetary policy concocted by Western governments and their media lackeys.After all, where is deflation? Data released last week put annual US core inflation at no less than 4pc. So why is the Fed doing this, following the Bank of England's lead? Because the real solution – forcing banks to face the music, while rescheduling massive private and public debts – is too politically frightening for our so-called leaders to contemplate.
A decision has been made, but not announced: we'll inflate away our debts instead"
Media lackeys ? That's a bit strong. Anyone in mind, Liam ? Robert Peston's been waving the spectre of deflation for some time - as has the entire BBC news output.
I invite readers to study the evolution of Tuesday's lead BBC news story, from "Deflation risk as prices to fall" all the way through to "Surprise hike in consumer prices". Bloggers like CityUnslicker and Alice Cook were far more on the ball than the mainstream media.
It turns out that the only component of inflation to fall is mortgage costs - completely under the control of HMG/BoE. Everything else is going up. The only deflation is caused by the Government - and then they've used the spectre, aided by their "media lackeys", to start up the printing presses. Peston's December comment that "The US Federal Reserve and the Bank of England regard the great threat right now as deflation" remarkably ignores the parallel appreciation of the dollar and depreciation of the pound. In David Bowie's immortal words "This is not America".
To be fair, the inflation's caused by HMG too. The weakness of the UK economy, the government's massive and increasing deficit as tax receipts collapse, the fact that they spent in the good times and have nowt left for the bad, not to mention the announcement that the presses would roll - these have devalued the pound by some 28% since last summer. It's this that is driving inflation, given that we import a lot more than we export.
We're actually 1.2% above the BoEs official (albeit fiddled) inflation target of CPI at 2% - so they should be raising interest rates. I wonder why we're not ? And RPI stood at 0% in 1960 - did we start up the presses then ?
(a shorter version of this was posted yesterday at Biased BBC)
Thirty years ago I read Anthony Burgess’ novel The Wanting Seed, about an overpopulated globe where homosexuality was privileged in an attempt to reduce the birthrate. Governments only fell into two categories, Pelagian and Augustinian, and swung between the two forms.
Augustinian governments believe in Original Sin, that man is naturally given to vices which need to be checked. Tend to be hierarchical and militaristic.
Pelagian governments believe in Man’s perfectibility and innate goodness. As this fails to produce the perfect society, so do initially liberal Pelagians tend to turn towards coercion, more laws and greater police powers. Remind you of anything ?
‘’Pelagius is fond of police,
Augustine loves an army’’
It is not without reason that Llan Ddewi Brefi has been called a place of old renown. In the fifth century, one of the most remarkable ecclesiastical convocations which the world has ever seen was held in this secluded spot. It was for the purpose of refuting certain doctrines, which had for some time past caused much agitation in the Church, and which originated with one Morgan, a native of North Wales, who left his country at an early age and repaired to Italy, where having adopted the appellation of Pelagius, which is a Latin translation of his own name Morgan, which signifies "by the seashore," he soon became noted as a theological writer. It is not necessary to enter into any detailed exposition of his opinions; it will, however, be as well to state that one of the points which he was chiefly anxious to inculcate was that it is possible for a man to lead a life entirely free from sin by obeying the dictates of his own reason without any assistance from the grace of God - a dogma certainly to the last degree delusive and dangerous. When the convocation met there were a great many sermons preached by various learned and eloquent divines, but nothing was produced which was pronounced by the general voice a satisfactory answer to the doctrines of the heresiarch. At length it was resolved to send for Dewi, a celebrated teacher of theology at Mynyw in Pembrokeshire, who from motives of humility had not appeared in the assembly. Messengers therefore were despatched to Dewi, who, after repeated entreaties, was induced to repair to the place of meeting, where after three days' labour in a cell he produced a treatise in writing in which the tenets of Morgan were so triumphantly overthrown that the convocation unanimously adopted it and sent it into the world with a testimony of approbation as an antidote to the heresy, and so great was its efficacy that from that moment the doctrines of Morgan fell gradually into disrepute.
The Pelagian heresy, that man is basically good and perfectible, is what Rousseau taught and what hippies and Guardianistas believe. (Rousseau was indeed so good and perfectible that he dumped his five children in an orphanage as soon as they were weaned.)
"Sir John called himself an atheist for Christ," the vicar said. "He always came to midnight Mass on Christmas Eve. But he emphatically did not believe in life after death. My hope," she added, "is that he has had a wonderful surprise."
What, you mean she isn't sure ?
That's exactly right. And we in Britain are, in the main, parasites living upon the accumulated spiritual capital of nearly 1700 years of Christianity, just as the Britons of the fourth century were warmed by the declining glow of Rome's glory - until the barbarian war-bands came.
"Philosophically speaking, an atheistic American is a contradiction in terms. Now don't misunderstand me. This age has thrown up a new type of man - we call him 'secular'; he does not believe in God; not because he is a wicked man but because he is dialectically honest (? LT) . He would rather walk with the unbelievers than sit hypocritically with people of the faith. These men, and many I have known, are fine in character; and in their obligations as citizens and good neigbours, quite excellent.
But they really are 'spiritual parasites'. And I mean no term of abuse in this. I'm simply classifying them. A parasite is an organism that lives upon the life force of another organism without contributing to the life of the other. These excellent ethical seculars are living upon the accumulated spiritual capital of Judeao-Christian civilisation, and at the same time (they) deny the God who revealed the divine principles upon which the ethics of this country grow."
Roy Jenkins made Britain a far less civilised country
By Neil Clark
Last Updated: 12:01am GMT 09/01/2003
In his Guardian obituary of Lord Jenkins, David Marquand listed four "achievements" of his hero on which, to him, "the verdict of history seems plain". As Home Secretary, "Jenkins did more than any other person to make Britain a more civilised country to live in". As leader of the Labour Europeans, he played an "indispensable part" in taking Britain into what is now the European Union; and, as president of the European Commission, he played an "equally indispensable part' in paving the way for the single currency. Finally, by forming the SDP, and "breaking the mould" of British politics, Jenkins created New Labour.
As an Old Labour Euro-sceptic, I believe the last three "achievements" that Marquand lists were ones we could have well done without. But what of Marquand's first claim: that Jenkins made Britain a more civilised country to live in?
As an up-and-coming Labour backbencher, Jenkins had written, in the late 1950s, a tract entitled Is Britain Civilised?, in which he attacked Britain's "archaic" laws on censorship, homosexuality, divorce and abortion, as well as arguing for the abolition of capital punishment and changes to the country's "Victorian" criminal justice system.
At that time, Jenkins's "progressive" views on social reform were still in the minority in the Labour Party, dominated as it was by its socially conservative, working-class ethos. But by 1964, when Labour eventually regained power, much had changed. A group of middle-class, mainly Oxbridge-educated "intellectuals" had risen to prominence in the party and, for these "modernisers", led by Jenkins and his Oxford friend Tony Crosland, the main aim was the social, rather than the economic, transformation of Britain.
Although their views had little support among the British public at large, this group was able to push through its liberalising agenda when Jenkins became Home Secretary in 1965. Already, earlier that year, the death penalty had been suspended. Now it was full steam ahead to give support to private members' Bills to decriminalise abortion and homosexuality, relax censorship and make divorce easier.
Jenkins's impact at the Home Office did not end there. He also embarked on the most radical programme of penal reform since the Second World War. His Criminal Justice Act of 1967 said very little about the victims of crime, but plenty about the perpetrators. The Act introduced the parole system of early release of offenders serving sentences of three years or more, established the Parole Board and introduced the system of suspended sentences.
In two years, Jenkins had succeeded in transforming the criminal justice system from one whose raison d'etre had been to deter wrong-doing to one designed to be as "civilised" as possible to the criminal.
Jenkins was of course convinced that the "permissive society" was the "civilised society". In this, he - alas - got it all terribly wrong. What underpins civilised society is not permissiveness, but self-restraint, a phrase detested by libertines of both Left and Right. What Jenkins failed to see was how the freedoms he espoused would lead to the degeneration of British society and the selfish, me-first libertinism of today.
Jenkins was never a socialist, but in my view he was not much of a liberal either. Classical liberalism always understood that liberal freedom is dependent on moral self-restraint. Without it, freedom becomes licence - which itself is a threat to freedom, as it acknowledges no obligation to others. Before the Jenkins-sponsored social reforms made their impact, Britain was a country famous for the self-restraint of its people. "Letting it all out", extreme displays of emotion, and shouting and swearing in the street were all considered unacceptable. For Jenkins, the taboos that existed in 1950s Britain were intolerable. But the net result was a society remarkable for its civility.
More than 30 years on, the damaging impact of Jenkins's reforms on the society we live in is all too clear to see. One marriage in three now ends in divorce. Almost 40 per cent of children are now born out of wedlock, the highest figure in Europe. Since the 1967 Abortion Act, more than six million unborn children have been aborted.
The legalisation of homosexuality has not been the end of the chapter, but merely the beginning, with an aggressive "gay rights" lobby demanding more and more concessions. The policy of early release of prisoners has had a catastrophic effect on the safety of the general public: 14 per cent of violent criminals freed early are convicted of fresh violence within two years of their release.
As The Sunday Telegraph's Alasdair Palmer states: "Scores of men, women and children have been assaulted, raped and murdered as a result of the policy of releasing dangerous criminals before their sentences are completed" - a policy initiated and endorsed by Jenkins.
In addition to this tally, we must add the hundreds of innocent lives lost as a result of the abolition of capital punishment, which Jenkins zealously campaigned for and whose reintroduction he so resolutely opposed as Home Secretary in 1974.
Dividing his time between the palaces of Westminster, the delightful Oxfordshire village of East Hendred and the high table of the Oxford colleges, Jenkins did not, of course, see too much of the social debris that his "civilising" reforms had caused. Had he seen at first hand what the "permissive society" amounts to in practice on a "sink" council estate, he might have modified his views.
It is, though, unfair to blame one man for all of Britain's modern ills. Others, too, must take their share of responsibility for the nation we have become, not least the economic freedom junkies of the 1980s. Nevertheless, the Britain of 2003 is very much the Britain that Jenkins always wanted. The self-restraint and taboos of the 1950s have all gone. The "archaic" laws against which Jenkins railed have been abolished.
On the day of Jenkins's death, I looked at the other stories listed on the Teletext index. They were: "Man accused of bodies-in-bin probe", "Gun killers will be caught, pledge police", "Man faces charges over abbey axe attack", "Man charged with taxi driver murder" and "Freedom for hostage in 11-day siege".
If David Marquand believes the Britain of 2003 to be a "civilised country", it would be interesting to hear his definition of an uncivilised one.
Humphrys has called for assisted suicide to be made legal. I'm sure there are people who'd pay good money to watch the death in real time - with perhaps a lottery involved, the lucky winner to remotely operate the barbiturate driver from their PC or mobile.
It’s thought that up to 1500 people watched 19-year-old Abraham K Biggs, of Broward County, Florida, take an overdose on website Justin.tv, earlier this week.Numerous online sources have reported that his broadcast – the copy of which has since been removed from the web – showed Biggs swallow a mixture of pills before becoming unconscious.
Anxious viewers called local police after Biggs’ body lay lifeless on a bed for several hours. The broadcast also showed police and paramedics bursting into the troubled teen’s room.
The new codes of practice for owners of dogs, cats and horses, just released for consultation, are part of the Animal Welfare Act 2006 to prevent cruelty. The guidance says that breaching the three codes will not in itself be a crime, but it could prove to be the deciding factor in whether an individual is found guilty in court of a pet welfare offence – which carries a maximum jail sentence of six months or a fine of up to £20,000. Opposition policiticans criticised the "over the top" rules that "take people for fools".
However, Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, said the new laws afford animals "greater protection than ever before". Launching the eight-week consultation, Mr Benn said: "These three new codes of practice will outline the responsibilities of owners under the Act and give practical advice on how to fulfil them. This means no one will be able to claim ignorance as an excuse for mistreating any animal."
The guidelines cover the environment for animals, diet, the company they enjoy, ensuring they exhibit normal behaviour patterns, as well as health and welfare issues.
The code of practice for dogs advises against taking a dog for a walk during the hottest part of the day or feeding it less than an hour before vigorous exercise in order to avoid "bloating". Owners should groom dogs with long hair at least once a day and all dogs should have teeth cleaned with dog chews or canine toothpaste as part of routine care.
Training dogs should be done through "positive reinforcement" rather than punishment that can lead to behavioural problems in the future. Owners can spot signs of stress such as barking excessively, urinating indoors or yawning when not tired.
Is there any part of our lives these people don't want to regulate ? I'll be 'barking excessively' if I read many more stories like the above.
Plans to end the dominance of the Anglican faith at the daily opening of Parliament and have multi-faith prayers modelled on BBC Radio 4's Thought for the Day are to be considered by the House of Lords' procedure committee.
The change could lead to a rotational approach to daily prayers, where different faiths are represented on a particular day, in theway the Today programme gives a voice to different religions throughout the week.
Lord Brabazon of Tara, the chairman of the committee, is to look at a number of ideas being drafted by the Sikh peer Lord Rana and other peers. Under current arrangements, all sittings in both Houses begin with prayers which follow the Christian faith, a tradition which began in the middle of the 16th century.
Bonita Meyersfeld, an adviser to Lord Rana, said the crossbench peer had gathered support for a number of proposals, one of which was a system based on Thought for the Day. The idea is supported by the Liberal Democrat peer Lord Roberts of Llandudno, a Methodist minister. Attendance at morning prayers is voluntary but members of the public are excluded.
