Displaying items by tag: United Kingdom

Livia Tossici-Bolt was praying quietly with a friend in a public space when she was warned by prayer-patrol officers that ‘their prayer could cause intimidation, harassment or distress’; they were asked to move away. Livia filed a complaint against Bournemouth Council for breaching her freedom to pray on a public street. The officers said they prayed close to the edge of a new buffer zone around an abortion clinic, where a protection order bans praying, protesting, vigils, and handing out leaflets. Ms Bolt said, ‘Everyone has the freedom to pray quietly in a public place. I would never dream of doing something that causes intimidation and harassment. We complied with the new rules instituted by the council and didn’t pray within the censorship zone. They tried to intimidate us out of exercising our freedom of thought and of expression in the form of prayer - which has been a foundational part of our society for generations.’

Over two million British people have long Covid, yet almost three years into the pandemic there is still a struggle for them to be seen by specialist clinics, hampered by a lack of resources and research. Long Covid has symptoms that continue for over 12 weeks and are not explained by alternative diagnosis. Over a third of people with long Covid acquired it during the first Omicron wave. They suffer weakness, tiredness, difficulty concentrating, shortness of breath, muscle aches, pain, fatigue, brain fog, muscle twitching, sleep problems, and more. The British Medical Association has asked the Government to increase funding for long Covid clinics to deal with the ever-increasing patient numbers. NHS England's 2022 strategy, set out in July, failed to announce any new funding.

Pressure on GPs is ‘dangerously close to a death spiral’ as doctors leave, says Dr Paul Evans. BMA's safe working guidance states GPs should have up to 25 patient encounters a day. But on Mondays a doctor could have 40, 50, sometimes even 60 direct patient contacts. The problem worsens as the pressure leads to more GPs leaving the profession. The NHS has recruited 4,000+ trainee GPs in 2022, hitting government targets. However, while training places have increased, quite a significant number who finish training leave the system because it is so hard to work in. Rishi Sunak said the NHS was a priority and ‘billions of pounds extra’ would be invested, adding, ‘I'm confident, because we are putting in the extra resources, we will be able to find a way to improve the services’.

The latest census by the Office for National Statistics shows that 46.2% of people in England and Wales describe themselves as Christian, the lowest ever recorded. Those with no religion increased to 37.2%, up from 25%. Of those who answered under the ‘any other religion’ option, the largest group were pagan, with a tenfold rise identifying themselves as Shaman. Muslim rose from 4.9% to 6.5%. The most recent faith survey shows that the major Christian denominations, Catholic and Presbyterian, saw membership fall. Orthodox, Pentecostal Evangelical, and Charismatic saw an increase in membership. The biggest decline in church membership is in Scotland.

There is no lack of UK church buildings, but less than 2% of the population are evangelical Christians, despite a strong Christian history. M4UK’s vision is to engage with the people who are unreached in 2022 and beyond, by revitalising and growing churches and planting new churches that declare and demonstrate the life-changing power of Jesus Christ. Its Team Process is two years of training that helps the church planter and their team succeed in their first years. At the end of the training process, the church-planting team is fully prepared to launch a healthy reproducing church that glorifies God and impacts society. It is Christ himself who builds his church, and the authority of the Bible is essential for the content and message of the M4 process.

Some worshippers left the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge in tears after guest speaker Joshua Heath explained how Jesus could have been transgender. Joshua, whose PhD was supervised by former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams, showed the congregation three Renaissance and medieval paintings of Jesus and the 14th-century Prayer Book of Bonne of Luxembourg to defend his point. The dean of Trinity College said such a view was ‘legitimate’, but US evangelist Franklin Graham said the comments were ‘repulsive and shameful’. ‘To insinuate that Jesus Christ, the Holy Son of God, is transgender or to sexualise in any way his sacrificial death on the Cross for the sins of mankind is utter heresy.'

Christian climate activists have been protesting at Church House, Westminster, to highlight the Church of England's strategy of continuing to invest in fossil fuels. They also left handprints of fake blood and oil on the walls of offices of BAE Systems, Britain's arms manufacturer, to protest against their policy of supplying weaponry to conflicts; this increases the vulnerability of people living on the front lines of climate change. These actions follow the conclusion of COP27, which is being widely criticised for the presence of representatives from oil and gas companies. The activists believe the Church should show moral leadership in rejecting profits from investments in companies that continue to fuel climate suffering. Also, behind government decisions to double down on fossil fuel development (sign off new oil exploration licences and allow big energy companies to rake in record profits) lies a network of companies and organisations which are profiting from this destructive path.

Police are texting 70,000 people, warning them that they may have been victims of a banking scam in the UK's biggest anti-fraud operation. The Met have charged a Londoner with running an international service of fake phone calls to victims, who have lost thousands of pounds. Detectives only have victims' phone numbers and are asking people to act if they receive their messages. Police commissioner Sir Mark Rowley said the proactive counter-fraud investigations involved ‘industrialised fraud’. There could be 200,000 UK victims of fraudsters pretending to be a bank and warning of suspicious activity on their accounts. A London address is the centre of fraud on a global scale. Police have the numbers of victims but not their names and addresses. Genuine messages from police were sent on 24 or 25 November, directing victims to register at the Police Action Fraud website. Texts on any other day should be regarded as fraudulent.

A femicide census of men’s fatal violence against women during 2019 and 2020 found that, overall, men are killing one woman every three days in the UK. Between 8% and 12% of these killings were by strangers; all other femicide was by men who were current or former partners. These killings by a person known to the woman revealed appalling police failings. The organisation Counting Dead Women reported that the number of women killed by a male in 2021 is higher than the numbers in 2019 and 2020. They say this may increase when they receive responses to their FOI requests to the police. It remains unknown what is behind the increase, but the organisation will be paying close attention to intimate partner femicides and the role of separation. Despite acres of news coverage, politicians' statements, and tweaks to the laws, the femicide figures remain unchanged.

Bishop Paul Mason, the lead bishop for safeguarding in the Catholic Church in England and Wales, has defended the seal of the confessional even when a priest may hear disclosures of abuse. He said this after the biannual plenary meeting of bishops where a report by the Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA) recommended that failure to report a disclosure of child sexual abuse should be a criminal offence, including disclosures made in the confessional. Bishop Mason said that it’s an extremely sensitive and difficult area, and IICSA noted that they didn’t come across priests who have described having had a paedophile in the Confessional. Bishop Paul said if we do have contact with these people, we have an opportunity to turn their lives around and report themselves to the authorities.