Irish MEP Gay Mitchell has said that the EU is perceived as “a cold place for Christians” by a growing number of people. Speaking in the European Parliament this week, Mr Mitchell, who represents the Dublin constituency, said that he had experienced a lack of respect from some who disagreed with him as regards religion....
An investigation into child protection services in Birmingham has found that they are “not fit for purpose”. Councillors on Birmingham City Council carried out the investigation after eight children known to social services died in the space of only four years as a result of suspected neglect and abuse. Among them was Khyra Ishaq, a...
A key Conservative frontbench spokesperson has said that the Conservative Party remains committed to giving married couples tax breaks if they are elected in next year’s election. And shadow universities, skills and families secretary David Willetts has also suggested that they would scrap the UK’s tax individualisation system, thereby allowing stay-at-home mothers to transfer tax...
An unmarried father has been given the right to be consulted by the Adoption Board over the adoption of his eight-year-old daughter after the High Court upheld his appeal to have the original adoption order quashed. The original order had been made without the natural father’s knowledge in favour of his former partner’s husband. The...
The Archbishop of Melbourne. Denis Hart, has welcomed the decision of the Victoria state Government to recognise the need to protect religious freedom in its proposed Equal Opportunity Act. In a column in the Age, a leading Melbourne daily, Archbishop Hart said that religious freedom was “a fundamental human right” which could not be “ignored...
Protestant church representatives have stepped up their campaign against recent budget cutbacks accusing the Government of discriminating against them through the October cutbacks which target their schools specifically. The decision removed ancilliary grants from Protestant schools, which leading spokespersons said would force fee-paying schools to significantly increase their fees. The Government’s move meant that State...
A new marriage index, produced by a group of non-partisan US social scientists has showed that the health of American marriage has slid alarmingly since 1970. The Marriage Index, produced by the Institute for American Values, demonstrates that, across of a range of five indicators, the state of marriage in the US has declined dramatically....
New laws in the UK are set to give children conceived by egg or sperm donation the chance to find their biological siblings once they turn 18. A new voluntary register will allow brothers and sisters conceived using a gamete from the same donor will be able to trace each other if they both consent....
Teenage mothers in UK who apply for State assistance should be placed in a supervised network of homes instead of being given a council home, Prime Minister Gordon Brown has proposed. In the keynote speech of this week’s Labour conference, Mr Brown said that it was “time to address a problem that for too long...
The parents of two children in Scotland taken into care by social workers for being overweight were yesterday said to be devastated after a bid to have them returned home failed. The youngest of the couple’s six children, aged three and four years old, were controversially removed after concerns that they were beginning to become...
