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In the News

  • Guardian: One in four UK families have less than £95 in savings, report finds
    February 20th, 2017

    The gap between rich and poor in the UK is growing, as savings and home ownership decline among the poorest families but rise among the richest, a report by insurer Aviva shows.

    In a sign of growing financial strain, low-income families had just £95 of savings and investments, excluding pensions, this winter, compared with £136 in the same period last year. That figure jumps to £62,885 among high-income families, up from £50,208 a year earlier.

    It means the savings gap between the richest and poorest has grown by 25% over the past year, from £50,072 to £62,790.

    Read more. 

  • Metro: Children of alcoholics are calling helplines to hear bedtime stories
    February 19th, 2017

    Children as young as five are ringing a helpline to hear bedtime stories because their alcoholic parents are too intoxicated.

    Some of the youngsters call the counsellors at the National Association for Children of Alcoholics (Nacoa) so regularly their favourite story books are kept by the phones.

    According to a parliamentary group there are 2.5 million children of alcoholics in the UK.

    Read more. 

  • Telegraph: Second Islamist 'Trojan Horse' scandal feared after Oldham headteacher reports death threats
    February 19th, 2017

    Fears of a second wave of Islamist plots to take over schools have been raised after a teachers' union revealed it was dealing with a "variety of apparent Trojan Horse issues".

    A head teacher in Oldham has reportedly said she has started working at home having been subjected to a campaign of "death threats" and verbal abuse by people determined to introduce an Islamic agenda.

    In an email to Oldham council, seen by the Sunday Times, Trish O'Donnell said she had "very strong reasons to believe...a 'Trojan Horse' agenda is being played out" at Clarksfield Primary School. 

    Read more. 

  • Gavin Ashenden: The Radical Call To Go The Wrong Way’. Archbishop Welby's charge to General Synod.
    February 19th, 2017

    At the end of the recent General Synod when an alliance of orthodox Christians and pr0-gay progressives defeated the Bishops’ report on Marriage and sexuality, the Archbishop of Canterbury issued a rallying cry to a perturbed and divided Synod and whatever part of the wider Church was listening in.

    It had three elements:

    1. "We need a radical new Christian inclusion in the Church."
    2. "It must be based on good, healthy, flourishing relationships, and in a proper 21st century understanding of being human and of being sexual."
    3. "The way forward needs to be about love, joy and celebration of our humanity; of our creation in the image of God, of our belonging to Christ – all of us, without exception, without exclusion."

    The problem these words present, is that they involve a distortion of Christianity. They preference a non-Christian ideology that gives us a sub-Christian or even perhaps an anti-Christian version of the faith.

    Read more.

  • Conservative Woman: The Kathy Gyngell Interview: The dying need a chance to talk, says Dr Elaine Sugden
    February 19th, 2017

    (Last Wednesday Wilberforce Publications and Christian Concern published their latest book - Talking about Dying which can be purchased here. Kathy asked cancer doctor Elaine Sugden, one of its four authors, what prompted her to contribute to it.)

    Read more. 

  • Independent: The Government must take urgent action against illegal schools to protect thousands of children
    February 19th, 2017

    Diversity in schools is a good thing. Indeed, one of the weaknesses of education in the UK is that schools are too similar. Secondary schools in particular tend to be uniformly large, with a uniformity of teaching style, when many pupils would benefit from being in smaller groups and from a wider range of teaching methods. 

    Schools should also offer variety in their culture and value systems, the intangible quality of a school known as its ethos. Most people recognise a strong ethos when they come across it, but struggle to define it. Which may be why governments have so often in the past looked to religious institutions as a way of taking a school ethos off the shelf.

    Read more.  

  • News Com AU: Muslim schoolboys allowed to refuse women's handshakes
    February 19th, 2017

    A SYDNEY school has adopted a policy allowing Muslim schoolboys to refuse to shake hands with women.

    At a recent awards ceremony at Hurstville Boys Campus of Georges River College, female presenters were told by one of the two principals that some students would not shake their hands because of their Muslim faith, The Australian reported.

    The boys were instead permitted to place a hand across their chest to show they would not be taking the hand of the women, many of them well-known figures from the local community.

    Read more. 

  • Guardian: One converted to Islam, the other went to far-right rallies: a modern tale of two brothers
    February 19th, 2017

    In their youth, brothers Shaun and Lee did what they describe as the usual things: "getting wrecked" – drink, drugs, clubbing, gambling. "The party was always at our house, put it that way. And I was the host," said Shaun.

    But Shaun has since become Abdul, a convert to Islam whose life is governed by his devotion to Allah and the strict demands of his faith. Meanwhile, Lee travelled around the country to anti-Muslim rallies organised by the English Defence League. The brothers have taken starkly different directions. But Abdul told the Observer: "I know Lee loves me and I love him."

    Read more. 

  • Guardian: political correctness ushered in the populist wave by Trevor Phillips
    February 19th, 2017

    former president of the National Union of Students and chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, Trevor Phillips was once a leading member of what might be called the metropolitan liberal elite. He had the ear of everyone who mattered in the Labour party, and on matters of race and equality he was the go-to guy.

    Read more. 

  • Times (£): St Paul's lets sixth‑form girls be boys
    February 19th, 2017

    A leading girls' school has drawn up a "gender identity protocol" that allows pupils to be called by boys' names and to wear boys' clothes if they request it.

    The move by St Paul's Girls' School in west London, whose alumnae include such famous names as the actress Rachel Weisz and the MP Harriet Harman, is a response to the trend for young people to question their gender identity and in some cases to change it, according to the high mistress Clarissa Farr.

    Requests are considered from the age of 16 and there are understood to be up to 10 girls in the sixth form who have gone through a formal process to be known within the school either as boys or as gender-neutral.

    Read more.