Displaying items by tag: United Kingdom

Health workers protested in July against a 1% pay rise which the Government insisted was all it could afford. 1% was rejected by unions representing the 1.2m NHS English personnel. Conservative MPs are worried that it made the government look ungrateful for frontline workers’ herculean efforts during the pandemic. Opinion polls suggested the public agreed, and health leaders warned that it would only increase the NHS’s debilitating problems in recruiting and retaining staff. The prime minister has now offered 3%. But unions called the offer an insult and are prepared to force an increase. The British Medical Association, the Royal College of Nursing, GMB and Unite are seriously considering taking action (work to rule or strike) by medics, including nurses and junior doctors, and are canvassing their members’ views on the offer.

Five Albanians who smuggled migrants through the Channel Tunnel were arrested and held in London; two more arrests were in Surrey and Oxfordshire. Migrants are concealed behind furniture in vehicles hired specially for illegal smuggling, using a network of connections across Europe. Migrants paid as much as £25,000, believing they will go on to work in the illegal economy once in Britain. Commander Richard Harrison said the gang had risked the safety of the migrants and threatened the security of the UK border. Pray for these arrests to lead to further dismantling of criminal tunnel networking. Recently 430 migrants crossed the English Channel in one day. The Home Office has said it was taking substantial steps to tackle the unacceptable problem of illegal migration. A bill is currently being considered by MPs which would mean that migrants entering without permission could face up to four years in prison.

Team GB will be represented by its largest-ever delegation for an Olympic Games on foreign soil, with 376 athletes and 22 reserves competing across 26 sports in Tokyo’s 2020 Games. Also, for the first time, Team GB will have more women than men. Since 16 July six athletes and two staff members from the athletics team have become self-isolating after having close contact with an individual, not from Team GB, who tested positive after arriving in Tokyo. Pray that they will be able to resume training again soon. Taylor Campbell, who will compete in the hammer throw, said cases like this would be unavoidable. GB team members flying to Tokyo had seats mixed with the public instead of sitting together at the back of the flight.

Largely thanks to campaigning Christians, one of the most wicked proposed changes in the law ever to have been conceived in this country has failed to win approval. An amendment to the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill, intended to legalise abortion for any reason up to birth, has been withdrawn after being selected by the Speaker for debate and a vote. Jesus has the victory over death and destruction, and is right beside those who promote justice, righteousness, life, health and peace to a very sick society.

‘This lady was in deep despair when I first met her. She came to a local church foodbank seeking help to feed her four children. Thanks to God, volunteers, donations of daily needs, and gentle support, Tahreen gratefully received practical help. She also heard the gospel, and by God’s grace, she found new life in Christ!’ For further details, click the ‘More’ button.

Financial data released by the Church of England shows that each bishop costs almost £120,000 a year, in addition to receiving £46,000 per year as a stipend. ‘As a member of General Synod for over a decade I have questioned the cost of bishops’ lavish lifestyles and opulence at the top while parishes up and down the country struggle to meet their bills, and even close their door,’ said Sam Margrave, a lay member of General Synod and a former local councilor, in a written statement submitted before last weekend’s synod meeting. The CofE spends, on average, £70,800 on the ongoing maintenance of each bishop’s house; 26 bishops live in houses that have more than six bedrooms.

England and Italy players took the knee at the Euro final. Priti Patel publicly opposed this at the beginning of the Euros, saying that she did not support ‘people participating in that type of gesture politics’. Asked if she would criticise fans who booed England players taking the knee she said, ‘That's a choice for them, quite frankly’. After they missed penalties in the final, Marcus Rashford, Bukayo Saka and Jadon Sancho were targeted by racist abuse. In response Ms Patel tweeted that she was disgusted. Tyrone Mings said, ‘You don't get to stoke the fire at the beginning of the tournament by labelling our anti-racism message as 'gesture politics' and then pretend to be disgusted when the very thing happens which we're campaigning against.’

The CofE has abandoned a proposal to appoint 42 ‘racial justice officers’ across the country, one of the recommendations from its report on tackling racism in the institution. In April 47 proposals were made to address institutional racism and improve diversity in an attempt to end a ‘rut of inaction’ spanning several decades, with the Archbishop of Canterbury conceding that people of colour had been ‘bullied, overlooked, undermined and excluded’ within the Church. With the taskforce warning a failure to act against racism would convince people the Church was ‘not serious about racial sin’, one suggestion was for paid, full-time racial justice officers to be employed in every diocese for a five-year term. However, the idea was scrapped. The Archbishop of York said, ‘The Archbishops' Council has concluded that it cannot support this recommendation in this formulation at this time, given the need to reduce costs in diocesan and national administration.’

Police reported ‘significant increases’ in stalking in England and Wales during the pandemic; over 80,000 incidents were recorded last year. However arrests struggled to keep up - growing at half the rate of the rise in offences. Chris has been stalked for six years by a man she met briefly in a team meeting at a previous job. He has inundated her with messages ever since, and contacted colleagues about her over 2,000 times despite them both leaving the company. She made around fifty separate calls to the police during the pandemic. One visit the man made to the offices of her current employer was even captured on CCTV while current colleagues have recorded obscene calls he has made asking to speak to her. Despite her passing this evidence to the police and reporting at least fifty incidents, the man has never been charged. She is one of many feeling let down by the police.

Society has been shaken over the past year, revealing that we need wise leaders in the church and in the public arena more than ever before. The Evangelical Alliance is inviting Christians working in the arts, media, academia, business, education, civil society, politics, healthcare and all other sectors to enrol in their Public Leaders Course. A public leader is a Christian who is intentional about bringing their faith to their leadership wherever God has placed them. The ‘public’ element means they are open about their Christianity and their leadership role is not internal to the church. The ‘leadership’ refers to where they have influence: workplace, local community, online, a social group. We can pray for filmmakers, writers, entrepreneurs, educators, health workers, civil servants, lawyers and all in the secular workplace to hear God’s call on their lives to live out their faith and draw others into God’s kingdom.