Displaying items by tag: UK

Governing includes difficult choices, confronting seemingly conflicting demands - and making a decision. So, should the government say yes to a new coal mine in Cumbria that will provide a domestic source of coking coal for the steel industry? Currently 40% of our coking coal comes from Russia. Now  the government faces a deadline to decide. The office of the Planning Inspectorate has sent its completed report to Housing, Communities and Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove with a 7th July deadline for him to issue his decision. If it goes ahead, it would be the first deep coal mine to open in the UK for over 30 years. There are many opponents to Whitehaven and they have previously protested outside the Home Office in London as well as at the site in Whitehaven.

Some asylum seekers from across the channel will be given a one-way ticket to Rwanda, under new government plans. Rwanda would take responsibility for them, put them through an asylum process and if successful they will have long-term accommodation in Rwanda with entitlement to full protection under Rwandan law. Plus equal access to employment, and enrolment in healthcare and social care services. Plans also include asylum seekers resettled in the UK will be spread more evenly across local authorities. Operational control of the Channel handed to the Royal Navy. Investing £50m for new equipment and specialist personnel for Channel operations. A new reception centre for migrants and a maximum sentence of life imprisonment for smuggling. However at the UN last year  the UK government expressed concern over Rwanda’s continued restrictions to civil and political rights and media freedom. 

UK’s Foreign Secretary said, ‘The age of engagement with Russia is over. We need a new approach to security in Europe based on resilience, defence and deterrence. There is no time for false comfort. Russia is not retreating but regrouping and repositioning to push harder in the east and south of Ukraine.’ She called for a return to Cold War-era diplomacy, declaring that an agreement in which NATO and Moscow ‘do not consider each other as adversaries’ is dead. Liz Truss made the remarks at a dinner with counterparts in Brussels, hours after NATO secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg said the war in Ukraine could be ‘a long haul’ with Vladimir Putin still intent on taking control of the whole of Ukraine. It is anticipated that Ms Truss will put pressure on her NATO counterparts to continue supplying Ukraine’s forces with weapons, alongside fortifying sanctions on Moscow.

Tory MP David Warburton was suspended from the parliamentary party pending an investigation into three allegations of sexual harassment. A few days earlier it was revealed that Labour staffers, Laura Murray and Georgie Robertson, were asked to sign confidentiality agreements when they complained of sexual harassment about a senior official. They refused to sign the legal agreements and chose to resign without payouts. Documents show the women had reported the party official for ‘inappropriate’ and ‘possessive’ behaviour. The claims about Mr Warburton are being examined by Parliament's Independent Complaints and Grievance Scheme (ICGS). Also, the Sunday Times reported allegations of Mr Warburton taking cocaine, and failing to declare a £100,000 loan in 2017, since repaid, from a Russian businessman. 

'I will never betray you', Peter declared at the Last Supper. And indeed he stayed close to Jesus all through his arrest and trial, albeit in the shadows. Yet, before the cock crowed he had denied Jesus three times. Knowing this secret he had to watch and wait three agonising days with the other disciples, sharing their anxiety and sorrow. No wonder he ran to the garden on the third day when Mary brought the news that the tomb was empty; the beginning of hope restored. Back on the shores of Galilee where he had first met Jesus, he is embraced, forgiven and recommissioned. Pray for any feeling disqualified or who have lost their way with Jesus, or are facing the sifting Satan demands of us all. May they know His love and be aware of His presence. 

Figures show that very little has changed when it comes to addressing the gender pay gap in Great Britain. Women in the UK were paid just 90p for every £1 earned by a man, according to the latest figures released through the government’s gender pay gap reporting mechanism. Among those high-profile companies reporting particularly large gender gaps was EasyJet. According to data filed by the company’s larger arm, Easyjet Airline Company, women’s median wage stood at just 36p for every £1 that men earned last year. Other companies reporting that median male earnings were at least double that of female employees include HSBC Bank along with several academy trusts. A spokesperson for EasyJet said its ‘gender pay submission does not represent a complete picture because the data in April 2021 included pilots, while the majority of our predominantly female UK cabin crew community remained on furlough’.

Boris Johnson has said he does not think ‘biological males should be competing in women’s sports and the ‘sensible’ view was that transgender athletes - such as Lia Thomas, a swimmer who won America’s top trophy in university sports - should not be allowed to compete alongside cisgendered women and that children should not be allowed to decide their own gender without parental assistance. His most comprehensive comments yet on transgender issues came days after the Government decided not to ban trans conversion therapy, as the Conservative Party promised at the last election. Conversion therapy attempts to change or suppress someone’s sexuality or gender identity. Mr Johnson also said he thought it was important to have women-only spaces in hospitals, prisons and changing rooms but admitted there were ‘complexities and sensitivities’ around transgender issues that ‘still need to be worked out’. It is already outlawed in several other countries.

Senior managers have written to executives at Lancashire Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust saying lives have been put at risk and patients left to die without dignity because of long waits. The letter, reported by Health Service Journal, says, ‘For the past few months we have on a regular basis had more than 50 patients waiting for a bed and that wait being in excess of 60 hours. This means that at most times there is limited or no space to accommodate newly acutely ill patients, causing ambulance handover delays of over four hours and delay in treatment.’ They reported an increase in clinical incidents, pressure sores, detrimental outcomes, and occasions where patients ‘die without the dignity of privacy’. ‘We have witnessed senior experienced staff crying with frustration and anger,’ in increasingly precarious situations.

David Smith, a former employee of the British embassy in Berlin, was arrested for having allegedly offered names of British officials to Russian spies. He was extradited to the UK on 4th April after losing a battle to stay in Germany and appeared at Westminster Magistrates’ Court the following day. The state court of Brandenburg said that it had accepted an extradition request by the Government for Mr Smith, who has been in German custody on suspicion of spying for Russia. Mr Smith was arrested at his home in Potsdam, 21 miles west of Berlin, last summer after a joint investigation by German and British security services found that he had been selling information to Russia since at least Nov 2020.

The National Health Service has been providing free health care to all UK citizens based on their need for medical care rather than their ability to pay for it since its inception in 1948. This mandate does not extend to social care such as home care and residential care, which is means-tested. There is no overall limit on social care costs so thousands of frail and elderly people have had to sell their homes to pay for residential care.  See Only those with savings, homes and assets worth less than £23,250 currently receive free council help with residential care. On 8th September Boris Johnson revealed plans to fund England’s social care and help the NHS recover after the pandemic. Employees, employers and self-employed will pay 1.25p more in the pound for National Insurance from April 2022. It will raise £12bn annually for the NHS and a proportion will be moved into social care over the next three years. Care cost contributions are to be capped at £86,000 from October 2023. If someone has less than £20,000 their care will be free and from £20,000 - £100,000 costs will be subsidised on a sliding scale.