Displaying items by tag: Britain

Last Saturday Canon Joanna Penberthy was consecrated as Bishop of St Davids - the first female bishop in Wales. Her consecration marks the end of a journey that the Archbishop of Wales, Dr Barry Morgan, said had been ‘long and hard’ for the women of the Church - ‘first to be made deacon, then priest, and now bishop’. The Church in Wales had started debating women in the episcopate in 2005. After a setback in 2008, a bill was carried in 2013, and a Code of Practice made provision for those who remained opposed. Bishop Joanna’s election had been determined by her gifts and not her gender, Dr Morgan told the 500-strong congregation. He suggested that the liturgical confession might spur collective reflection on how the Church had impeded women’s ministry. His address praised the women for ‘daring to trust and daring to hope’, and for not allowing themselves to become cynical or bitter.

Theresa May will visit Dublin next week, but will not address the Dáil. This shows her ‘completely wrong list of priorities’, former deputy prime minister Nick Clegg has said. He tweeted on Wednesday, ‘So, PM rushes to be photographed with Trump and Erdogan but won’t find time to speak to Irish Dáil. Has No 10 completely lost the plot?’ In an interview, he also said, ‘The UK has serious obligations to our nearest and dearest neighbour’. He said a visit to the Dáil would have been not just a welcome courtesy but a historic event. ‘It would have helped ease rattled nerves over Brexit.’ A spokesman said that the Prime Minister’s schedule would not allow such a visit to happen. It has been suggested that Irish voters could delay or even possibly derail the Brexit negotiations, if a referendum was held: see

A street evangelist has been cleared after being charged with threatening and abusive behaviour for sharing his views on homosexuality. Gordon Larmour was handing out leaflets on the street in Irvine when a group of men engaged him in conversation about his faith. After he responded to a request to share his position on homosexuality, the men became angry and chased Larmour. When police officers arrived at the scene, the men told them that he had made homophobic remarks and he was arrested. The trial took place at Kilmarnock Sheriff Court earlier this week. Larmour - supported by the Christian Legal Centre (CLC) - was found not guilty, after a judge decided there was insufficient evidence against him. Andrea Williams, Chief Executive of CLC, said: ‘This is a wonderful result for Gordon and for Christian evangelists in the UK. Freedom of speech is being consistently undermined in the UK, but here is a win for common sense.’

In a confident and hard-hitting speech on Tuesday, Theresa May spoke of a ‘bold’ approach to the UK’s Brexit negotiations. She said that the UK will leave the European single market, retake control of immigration, strike its own trade deals, and refuse to be bound by rulings from the European Court of Justice. She also confirmed that MPs will put the final deal to a vote in both Houses of Parliament. In reaction to her speech, which one commentator described as ‘some of the most important words she will ever utter’, the value of the pound jumped sharply as traders were reassured that a firm strategy is now in place. However, others were much more critical, with a number of European leaders accusing the PM of attempting to ‘blackmail’ the EU. Also, Scottish first minister Nicola Sturgeon has said that a second Scottish referendum on independence is now ‘all but inevitable’; her government has repeatedly stressed its desire to stay in the EU single market. See

Miqdaad Versi, of the Muslim Council of Britain, spends his time reading every story in the media concerning Muslims and Islam - looking for inaccuracies. If he finds one, he will put in a complaint or a request for a correction with the news organisation, the press regulator Ipso, or both. Mr Versi has been doing this thoroughly since November, and before that on a more casual basis. He has so far complained more than fifty times, and the results are visible. He was personally behind eight corrections in December and another four so far this month. ‘Nobody else was doing this’, he says. ‘There have been so many inaccurate articles about Muslims overall, and they create this idea within many Muslim communities that the media is out to get them. Nobody is challenging these newspapers and saying, “That's not true”.' Some free speech campaigners are concerned that this kind of work is trying to ‘ring-fence Islam from criticism’. Mr Versi, however, insists his work is about ensuring the facts are right - not silencing critics. He says there are many examples where Muslims can be rightly criticised, and he is not complaining about those. ‘All I'm asking for is responsible reporting.’

Colossians 4:2-3: ‘ Devote yourselves to prayer, being watchful and thankful. And pray for us, too, that God may open a door for our message, so that we may proclaim the mystery of Christ, for which I am in chains.’ We discovered in the Talking Jesus research (www.talkingjesus.org) that one in five of the people we talk to about Jesus wants to know more. So join us as we each pray for five of our friends or family members who don’t know Jesus. You could set an alarm on your phone to remind you each day to pray for your five. Pray that you are given opportunities to share about Jesus with them and that they come to follow Jesus for themselves.

(Written by Dr Rachel Jordan-Wolf, Church of England)

Millennials are too self-interested to be easily recruited into the military, according to General Nick Carter, the head of the British Army. In a recent speech at an event, hosted by telecoms giant BT, he laid out some of the problems with recruiting for the reserves. A recent £3 million campaign to get more people to sign up to the part-time military was unsuccessful. Carter said: ‘We are now dealing with a different generation, Generation Y, born after 1985, and they have a slightly different expectation of life, which tends to be slightly self-interested, very committed. They are much more adaptable to the information age than my generation; they want to know what’s in it for them.’ Whatever their ideals, said Carter, the army is determined to see Generation Y serve its nation. Carter also used the opportunity to re-launch the Military Covenant - a hypothetical agreement between military personnel and the nation which means they forego certain rights like free speech while in uniform, but are properly looked after in return.

The workers’ union Unite has announced that atomic weapons workers will stage two 48-hour strikes from next Wednesday over what they claim are broken promises over pension cuts. Six hundred staff at the two Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) sites in Aldermaston and Burghfield, both in Berkshire, will strike for 48 hours from 18 January, and then for another 48-hour period from 30 January. AWE is owned by two US firms and a UK private security firm. The staff, all members of Unite, feel betrayed as the pensions, which they were assured would be ironclad when they were transferred to the private sector, will now be cut. AWE bosses have pledged to close the original scheme and replace it with a new contribution-based version from 31 January. Unite claims that the new scheme would be subject to the unforgiving ebb and flow of the stock exchange.

It has been alleged that Israeli authorities collaborated with student campaigners in an attempt to topple the president of the UK’s National Union of Students (NUS), Malia Bouattia. Al Jazeera reports that the Israeli embassy in Britain and the powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) have sponsored attempts to influence student politics, manipulate NUS elections, and even bring down the current president. NUS vice-president Richard Brooks is seen in undercover filming footage telling a reporter posing as a student that he is the one helping to organise Bouattia’s opponents; however, he has since denied that he has had any contact with the Israeli government. Bouattia, who represents more than four million students, ran on an openly pro-Palestinian platform, and has been criticised in the British media for calling herself anti-Zionist.

At least 500 churches, syn­agogues, and mosques across the UK have opened their doors to homeless people in the past year, a report by the charity Housing Justice says. Volunteers donated more than 490,000 hours to the 34 church and community night-shelter projects that contributed data to the report - an average of 14,850 hours per shelter. The report was produced to draw attention to the plight of homeless people in the UK and the work of night shelters. It says that these shelters stayed open for an average of 114 days during the year, with a total of 1,920 guests (84 per cent of them male). The findings were published as the Prime Minister announced extra funds for helping the homeless. Speaking last month, Mrs May said, ‘In the run-up to Christmas, images of soup kitchens and hostels remind us of the vital lifeline provided by charities and local services to those facing a night on the streets. But today I have witnessed a different kind of support, one which seeks to stop people ending up on the street altogether by providing assistance to address their most immediate needs, and - crucially - giving them the skills and oppor­tunities to help them build a more secure future for themselves.’