The UK government has been urged to create a national strategy to combat loneliness. It follows a report from a commission set up by the Labour MP Jo Cox (pictured) who was murdered last year. The study said loneliness is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and affects nine million people in the UK.
It added that loneliness affects people of all ages and backgrounds, from the school child who struggles to make friends, to the new parent coping alone and the older person who has outlived friends and immediate family.
Slavery warning
The lead bishop on migration policy, Patrick Lynch, has added his voice to concerns that the Home Office is not getting to grips with modern slavery. The National Audit Office has said the drive to reduce modern slavery is set to fail because the Home Office has not developed “effective insights”.
The spending watchdog said that its analysis of the National Referral Mechanism, a system established in 2009 to identify victims of human trafficking or modern slavery, found “multiple errors and duplicate entries” that had made it difficult for the authorities to understand the scale of the problem.
Speaking to The Tablet, Bishop Lynch said: “I would also be of the opinion that the Home Office does not appreciate the full scale of human slavery that exists especially in some sectors of the economy, for example, cleaning, construction, domestic workers, agriculture, food processing, car washes and nail bars; also within certain communities that are very vulnerable – from countries in South America, the Indian sub-continent, Vietnam, West Africa and Eastern Europe – where there is little or no monitoring of the agencies hired to recruit workers from these countries to work in the United Kingdom.”
The Home Affairs select committee has been taking evidence on whether to introduce buffer zones around abortion clinics to keep protesters at a distance. The Home Secretary, Amber Rudd, has ordered a review, saying women have been subjected to harassment and intimidation.
The committee heard from a representative of Marie Stopes UK, John Hansen-Brevetti, who cited complaints from women about “one-on-one” interaction outside clinics, intimidation and invasion of privacy: “These three things are achieved simply by being outside the clinic. All it takes is someone standing outside with a Rosary or calling you ‘mum’ – none of which is covered under existing laws.”
The committee chair, Yvette Cooper MP, repeatedly asked Clare McCullough of the Good Counsel Network and Antonia Scully of the Society for the Protection of the Unborn Child (SPUC), if they would regard tactics such as standing in front of clinic entrances, or following people, as unacceptable.
Ms McCullough denied that harassment was taking place and said that she hoped the committee would ask for evidence of this behaviour, describing the accusations as a slur. Ms Scully said she did not accept that people praying and handing out leaflets amounted to acts of harassment and intimidation.
A committee member, Will Quince MP, accused the anti-abortion campaigners of doing a disservice to both medical professionals and individual women.
Welby urges Brexit ‘ceasefire’
The Archbishop of Canterbury has urged MPs to hold a “ceasefire” in the increasingly bitter debate over Brexit. Recalling the Christmas truce in 1914 in the First World War, Justin Welby told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: “It would be very good to have a ceasefire from insult and the use of pejorative terms about people at this time.” Archbishop Welby warned that if the pejorative language continued, it would be difficult to make a success of leaving the European Union.
“As a country, we have a future ahead of us, we made a decision about Brexit, that is clear, both sides are saying that. How we do that is a question for robust political argument but there is a difference between disagreeing and personalised attacks, because if we are going to make a success of Brexit – and that is possible to do, we should make a success of it, it offers opportunities as well as challenges – then we need a leadership that is united in their attitude to the future even if divided in policy. Therefore we need reconciliation and unity.”
Cold-weather shelters
The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, has announced that emergency shelters will now open every day there are sub-zero temperatures. Under previous rules, shelters only opened when three consecutive days of freezing temperatures were forecast.
Mr Khan also announced a new alliance of 18 homeless charities, with a centralised funding system for donations, and funds going equally to all the charities. The number of rough sleepers in London has doubled since 2010 to more than 8,000.
The UK government has been urged to create a national strategy to combat loneliness. It follows a report from a commission set up by the MP Jo Cox (pictured) who was murdered last year. The study said loneliness is as harmful to health as smoking 15 cigarettes a day and affects nine million people in the UK.
It added that loneliness affects people of all ages and backgrounds, from the school child who struggles to make friends, to the new parent coping alone and the older person who has outlived friends and immediate family.
Two former Anglicans who both worked as military chaplains have been ordained into the priesthood in Scotland under the Personal Ordinariate of Our Lady of Walsingham.
The Revd Simon Beveridge, a former Royal Navy and Commando Royal Marines chaplain as well as an amateur jockey, will be involved with forming an Ordinariate presence in Galloway.
The Revd Cameron Macdonald, who was an Army chaplain, will assist Fr Len Black, the senior Ordinariate priest in Scotland.
Fr Black described the ordinations as coming at an “exciting time” for the Ordinariate, which coincides with a 20-year high in the number of priestly ordinations in Scotland.
The Ordinariate was established in 2009 by Pope Benedict to enable Anglicans to join the Catholic Church while preserving some of their spiritual traditions.
The Archbishop of York, John Sentamu, will present an hour- long programme on Christmas Day on BBC Radio York, Leeds and Sheffield.
The archbishop will tell the story of Christmas through some of his musical festive favourites.
Included on his playlist are “In the Bleak midwinter”, performed by the Brighouse and Rastrick Brass Band, the calypso carol “See him lying in a bed of straw” – a tune that the archbishop regularly drums with school choirs – and “Hark the Herald Angels Sing”, sung by the choir of York Minster.
Loading ...
