A Birmingham MP said the estimate of 400 – 500 Britons fighting in Syria was ‘nonsense’, claiming that more than twice as many British Muslims have travelled to Syria to fight for extremists. Ghaffar Hussain, managing director of the Quilliam Foundation an anti-extremism think tank, said that ISIS have plenty of Western recruits willing to partake in brutal violence. They were radicalised in the West before going to Syria. The ISIS message is slick and sophisticated. They’re the richest terrorist group in history with 2000+ European recruits. A former British diplomat in Iraq said British recruits originally travel with humanitarian ideals, but become brutalised by the conflict. He said, ‘They go out to try to protect civilians in Syria and enter into an underworld of violence. Others were impressionable young men escaping poverty and dead end jobs in the UK saying to themselves, ‘I could be a hero, or I could be a super villain.’

In 1706 the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland called the nation to pray and fast ahead of the 1707 vote for or against Scotland remaining in the UK. Queen Anne and the governments in Edinburgh and London issued the statement, ‘That all may be done to the glory of God and the good of Christ’s Church’. Again the church across Scotland is actively involved in a referendum. The year of prayer ‘The Stand’, launched last November, enabled Christians and churches to seek God’s will together in this crucial year. The Evangelical Alliance produced a manifesto ‘What kind of nation?’ to widen the debate from political, economic, social, educational and cultural issues, to include Scottish values, universal values and biblical values. Christians from both sides of the campaign are engaging in the hustings. Pray that debates would consider wider issues than just economic factors. Pray the Church across Scotland would be heard as they speak into the national conversation. See also 

Minimum pricing and tough new rules for drink-driving were amongst a host of recommendations unveiled by a group of MPs and peers this week, in response to a ‘national pandemic’ of alcohol abuse. The All Party Parliamentary Committee on Alcohol Misuse revealed its manifesto for 2015, which demonstrates the cost of alcohol-related incidents, and calls for new measures to minimise alcohol-related harm. Incidents ranging from drink-related crime to hospital admissions are thought to cost the UK economy as much as £21 billion annually. In the foreword to the manifesto, Tracey Crouch, who chairs the group, said: ‘The facts and figures of the scale of alcohol misuse in the UK speak for themselves’. She believes that there ‘must be a more thorough and full package of measures which tackles the problem more effectively and reduces the cost to people’s health of alcohol-related crime and treatment’.

Pensioner families across the UK will suffer social security cuts worth £6.38 billion a year by the time the government’s welfare reforms have taken full effect, the Trades Union Congress (TUC) warned yesterday (18 August) ahead of a new report on the impact of social security cuts to be published later this week. In the run-up to the last general election, David Cameron pledged to protect pensioner benefits. However, the TUC-commissioned analysis of welfare cuts, undertaken by Howard Reed of Landman Economics, shows that this pledge has been broken as a result of changes announced by the government over the course of this parliament. The analysis looks at annual cash losses to a number of benefits. It shows that a quarter of all social security cuts implemented between 2010 and 2016/17 will fall on pensioner families.

All government policies will have to pass a ‘family test’, David Cameron has announced. He argued that parents and children were too often overlooked and could be left worse off by reforms. He said online music videos could be given age ratings and more money would be put towards relationship counselling services. Labour said he did not understand families' needs, as more households were now dependent on food banks. From October, every new domestic policy ‘will be examined for its impact on the family’, the prime minister said. Mr Cameron told BBC Breakfast that no politician wanted to be ‘accused of being judgemental’ over people's personal relationships, but added that government would ‘help people who come together to stay together’. In his speech he said: ‘I want every government department to be held to account for the impact of their policies on the family.’

The debates surrounding the future of the UK and Scotland are increasing and heating up. At last weekend’s festival of politics academics explored the theme of 'What next for Scotland?' The latest Oxford Review of Economic Policy featured the work of Professor David Bell and his University of Stirling research team who focused on the economic dimension of the independence debate, 'Taxing and Independent Scotland.’  Also last week The Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy published its proposals on rebuilding Scottish democracy, regardless of the outcome of the referendum. Although there is considerable public interest in the referendum campaign, almost seventy per cent (69.5%) of voters do not believe that either the Yes or No campaigns can predict the consequences of independence. Many voters are relying on their own research and reaching their decision based on what they consider to be certain key risks. See:

A man has died. He was one of 35 adults and children found in a shipping container at Tilbury Docks. The former head of UK Border Force said those inside the container were victims of international organised criminals. They want to migrate to the UK or to Europe but they're being exploited by criminal gangs who are probably taking their entire life savings away on the promise of a passage to the West. We really need to get a message out to migrants that if they want to come to this country there are legal routes that they need to explore and they need to apply for visas and permits. The chairman of the Human Trafficking Foundation said people are desperate to improve their economic situation, leaving their own homes and countries, hoping to arrive somewhere that's more accommodating, more kinder and offering them a better quality of life. Usually, they're sadly wrong.

2,255 potential victims of human trafficking were encountered in 2012 in the U.K. Recent statistics from the Human Trafficking Foundation released on 22 April 2014 stated that ‘14,000 visas are issued each year to migrant domestic workers accompanying employers to the UK. There is little evidence as to what happens to the majority. Research since the 2012 visa changes warns that tying Migrant Domestic Workers (MDWs) to employers facilitates their abuse. Most recently the Report of the Joint Committee on the Draft Modern Slavery Bill recommended that the 2012 changes be reversed. Many victims come from countries in Southeast Asia and indebt themselves to an agent in order to secure a job in the Middle East. MDWs then accompany the employer to the UK, live Live in their employer’s house and depend on them for all information about the UK as well as their immigration status. They are vulnerable to abuses of forced labour and servitude.

Growing numbers of young people are admitting to self-harming behaviour, according to a leading charity in the field. Rachel Welch, director of Selfharm.co.uk, a project dedicated to supporting young people impacted by self-harm, said: ‘It's fair to say we are seeing a trend of increased self-harm. More and more young people - from all walks of life - are coming forward and making disclosures. It may be that we are on the edge of a horrific epidemic, but it's important we look at things more objectively. The recent increase of media reporting means that we are getting better at talking and more familiar with finding terminology to describe what's happening.’ She was speaking as new NHS figures released to The Times showed self-harming among children as young as 10 has surged by 70 per cent in the past two years.

The number of Children worrying about their parents’ divorce or separation dramatically increased last year, according to ChildLine in Scotland. NSPCC Scotland, which runs the ChildLine service, reported that they gave almost 600 counselling sessions to children about the issue in 2012-13, – a rise of 171 per cent. A child affected said she felt ‘stuck in the middle’ and as if she had to ‘make everyone else happy all the time’. NSPCC Scotland said the figures revealed the ‘huge impact’ of difficult family relationships. ChildLine Service Manager, Susan Dobson, said there were many family issues raised by children: ‘Some of these children need somewhere to vent, but for many they’re facing a really difficult time at home and are desperate for reassurance and a safe space to share their fears.’