Mark 16:15 And he said unto them, Go ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every creature.
2Timothy 4:2 Preach the word; be instant in season, out of season; reprove, rebuke, exhort with all longsuffering and doctrine.
UK
All posts tagged UK
A member of the Conservative Party ‘Rishi Sunak is considering plans to charge motorists for every mile they drive on Britain’s roads to fill a £40billion tax hole left by a push to electric cars, according to reports.
The Chancellor is reportedly ‘very interested’ in the idea of a national road pricing scheme – which would steer motorists into a new ‘pay-as-you-drive’ type system.
Road pricing in England is limited to schemes such as the M6 Toll in the Midlands, the Dartford crossing on the M25, London’s Congestion Zone and a handful of small tunnels and bridges.
But a national scheme is now being considered amid fears a switch to electric vehicles will leave a massive tax shortfall from the loss of key revenue raisers such as Fuel Duty and Vehicle Excise Duty, according to the Times. […]
It comes amid reports Boris Johnson wants to accelerate his green plans – including bringing forward a ban on the sale of petrol and diesel cars to 2030.’https://www.thegwpf.com/uk-plans-to-charge-motorists-for-every-mile-they-drive-to-fill-40billion-tax-hole-left-by-the-switch-to-electric-cars/
WINSTON CHURCHILL
I am waiting for Australia to have another wave of China Virus when we depart summer and enter winter in June, 2021. If it does occur it will be interesting what ‘silly’ illogical rules our politicians will seek to have enforced. In the UK ‘On Thursday 5 November, England entered a second national lockdown.
Churches have been deemed unsafe and have been banned from meeting for worship with threat of criminal sanction. Church is considered unsafe and a danger to communities.
But as lockdown began, Health Secretary Matt Hancock clarified to the House of Commons that one ‘reasonable’ reason for leaving home is travelling abroad to commit suicide.‘https://christianconcern.com/comment/church-too-dangerous-but-travelling-abroad-to-commit-suicide-is-reasonable/
A Christian or conservative opinion is not wanted in many circles and there is often a price to pay.
‘Mary Douglas had served as a Conservative councillor in Salisbury for nearly 15 years before being removed from her portfolio role for skills and social mobility in November 2019 as a result of the stance she took against the use of public money to fund a Pride event.
Supported by the Christian Legal Centre, Mary challenged the council’s decision to bring code of conduct proceedings against her on the allegation that she acted in a manner which ‘contravened the public sector equality duty’. Following the hearing, the council concluded that Mary did have the right under Article 10 of the European Convention on Human Rights to express her opposition.
Mary commented: “I am relieved and thankful for this outcome. If the council had found against me, it would have set a precedent that I and other public officials are not allowed to disagree with groups of people, events or political messages with which we disagree. Such a verdict would effectively end conversation, debate and the ability to express a belief and opinion.
“To disagree is not to disrespect. In fact, to take the trouble to express disagreement with someone is a mark of respect. Across UK society, we must be able to disagree with each other while also holding each other in the highest esteem. To be able to say what we think and believe is vital for democracy, community cohesion and good decision making.”‘https://christianconcern.com/cccases/mary-douglas/
For a more thorough reading on this case go to https://christianconcern.com/news/council-admits-christian-councillor-was-free-to-oppose-pride-grant/
Facebook is bad enough but now if you live in the UK your tweets are being investigated and kept by the police. Don’t believe that. Well, ‘UK barrister Sarah Phillimore wants to make sure that the legal system clears her name after her social media posts have been painted as hate speech.
What’s worse, an anonymous user made sure that the UK police now have her officially recorded for “transphobic and religiously aggravated ‘non-crime hate incident’.” And she only learned about it from this user.
In a campaign she started on CrowdJustice, the leading fundraiser for legal action – Phillimore explains the context of the serious smear against her, that she says is unfounded. While she has been a critic of encouraging children to “transition” to another gender while they are very young, Phillimore says none of her tweets were impolite or hateful in any way.
She does not deny her criticism of the transgender ideology, and while her way of expressing herself often involves humor and satire, she strongly denies any hatred being shown toward any group or religion. But the police secretly had 12 pages of her tweets that they decided to treat as such – even if the overzealous Twitter itself did not see fit to ban or suspend her account for any similar reason.
Phillimore explained that she first heard about her “record for life with the police” in June 2020 from an anonymous Twitter user, only to then confirm that she had been labeled in this way thanks to the “Hate Crimes Operational Guidance” – where “hate” includes think like disliking or being unfriendly towards something/somebody.
Right now, the police are denying Phillimore the right to know who has access to this “record” – and they will not remove it. It contains all her personally identifiable information – full name, date of birth, home address, etc.’https://reclaimthenet.org/uk-police-are-secretly-adding-people-to-hate-lists-based-on-their-tweets/
Western leaders are either so stupid or so leftist they cannot think logically. In this climate scam argument there is no sane discussion. Facts show that renewables cannot now or in the near future provide the energy Western nations need. Nevertheless, ‘Boris Johnson reckons wind power’s the future for Britain. If so, it’s a future that will soon resemble England’s bitter Dark Ages.
The UK has already had its taste of mass blackouts thanks to sudden and unpredictable collapses in wind power output. Now, as Brits head into winter, it’s a case of much more of the same.
A bout of calm weather has Britain’s grid managers begging for reliable power from, you guessed it, those same fossil fuel-powered sources that Boris claims he’ll soon replace entirely by corralling the British Isles with thousands more of these things.’https://stopthesethings.com/2020/11/09/into-the-black-calm-weather-leaves-britains-power-grid-at-risk-of-total-collapse/
Without doubt it was the totalitarian Communist Party that is responsible for this pandemic of Coronavirus around the world! The China Communist Party knew what the West just might do to conquer this virus and that the freedom and liberties we once knew and loved would be eroded. That is exactly what the ‘Former Supreme Court Justice, Jonathan Sumption, QC, warned this week that we are in danger of becoming a police state. He was interviewed by BBC Radio 4 World at One on Monday, and it is worth reflecting on some of his comments.
This is how freedoms are lost
Lord Sumption explained that the lesson of history is that freedoms are lost in exchange for protection from a threat.
“The real problem is that when human societies lose their freedom, it’s not usually because tyrants have taken it away. It’s usually because people willingly surrender their freedom in return for protection against some external threat. And the threat is usually a real threat but usually exaggerated. That’s what I fear we are seeing now. The pressure on politicians has come from the public. They want action. They don’t pause to ask whether the action will work. They don’t ask themselves whether the cost will be worth paying. They want action anyway. And anyone who has studied history will recognise here the classic symptoms of collective hysteria. Hysteria is infectious. We are working ourselves up into a lather in which we exaggerate the threat and stop asking ourselves whether the cure may be worse than the disease.”
Lord Sumption does not deny that the threat from Covid-19 is serious, but questions whether the measures are appropriate:
“So yes this is serious and yes it’s understandable that people cry out to the government. But the real question is: is this serious enough to warrant putting most of our population into house imprisonment, wrecking our economy for an indefinite period, destroying businesses that honest and hardworking people have taken years to build up, saddling future generations with debt, depression, stress, heart attacks, suicides and unbelievable distress inflicted on millions of people who are not especially vulnerable and will suffer only mild symptoms or none at all, like the Health Secretary and the Prime Minister.”
‘This is what a police state is like’
Police in Derbyshire were criticised for releasing drone footage of people out walking in the Peak District. Lord Sumption was scathing about this, describing it as “disgraceful”, and pointing out that going for a walk in the countryside is not illegal – it is just something that government ministers have said they prefer that people not do. When the police start enforcing guidance, we are in the realms of a police state:
“This is what a police state is like. It’s a state in which the government can issue orders or express preferences with no legal authority and the police will enforce ministers’ wishes.”
Derbyshire police subsequently admitted that Lord Sumption was right and they did not have authority to stop people from walking in the Peak District.
Phone tracking
The government has been given legal permission to use mobile phone data to track whether people are complying with coronavirus regulations. The government can then watch where you go and how often to travel to see whether you are in compliance. This extreme invasion of privacy is deemed worthwhile because of the health risks at the present time.
Informants
Several police forces have set up websites encouraging people to inform on their neighbours if they see them breaching the coronavirus regulations. This means that we now face the prospect of law-abiding citizens worrying whether a neighbour might report them for leaving the house more than once a day! In fact, the BBC has reported that a police force has had a surge in calls from people reporting their neighbours for “going out for a second run”.
No parliamentary scrutiny
What is more, with parliament now disbanded, the government is now acting with no scrutiny or accountability. After explicitly telling parliament that there would be no changes to abortion rules, the government then went ahead and made changes shortly after parliament was closed. Changes that would most likely not have been possible if parliament was sitting. The government is therefore now not acting democratically. Is there really no possible way with modern technology for parliament to meet and scrutinise these things?
Unimaginable a few weeks ago
Just a few weeks ago, such restrictions on freedom in the UK were unimaginable. I would never have believed that within a few weeks we would have people reporting their neighbours for leaving the house more than once in a day. If someone had told me this would happen, I would have dismissed them as an irrational crackpot. Yet here we are!
I understand the fears. I understand how dangerous this virus is. I know that the nation needs to take action to try to stop its spread. But stopping people from going for a run more than once a day? Just how many lives will that save?
It is incredible how quickly this has happened. Freedoms not fought for are freedoms forfeited. Our freedoms are being forfeited before our eyes in real time. Freedoms are hard to obtain, and easy to lose. I hope and pray that we will recover them and recover them soon. I pray that the Lord would have mercy on us. Our nation is spiritually sick and needs the healing that only God can provide.’ https://christianconcern.com/comment/are-we-becoming-a-police-state/
Why doesn’t this surprise me? From the UK we read that;
‘Doctors will have power to section people indefinitely
The Coronavirus Bill (which is being passed into law this week at breakneck speed) will, among other things, (1) authorise a forcible detention of people on mental health grounds (‘sectioning’) on the opinion of any one doctor (rather than two, as previously required) and (2) abolish the six-month time limit on ‘sectioning’. Any one doctor will have the power to lock you up in a lunatic asylum indefinitely – all in the interests of your own and others’ safety.
It is well-known, and self-evident, that forcible psychiatric detention is an area which is open to abuse in the absence of effective safeguards. In the Soviet Union, it was used simply as a tool to suppress political dissent. This may be an extreme example, but where is the guarantee that one rogue doctor or another will not, once in a while, abuse his newly found unlimited power? For very good reasons, we have had safeguards against that in our law. Now they are being urgently abolished – supposedly as an obstacle to our survival of the epidemic. How exactly are they such an obstacle?
It should be stressed that this has nothing to do with increasing doctors’ capacity to deal with coronavirus patients. A psychiatrist is not much help in treating a respiratory disease. In fact, he would be as useful as a gynaecologist. Just like gynaecologists can safely continue to supervise (and hopefully, sometimes refuse to authorise) abortions, there is no reason why psychiatrists cannot carry on doing their usual job – which includes, most importantly, protecting people from arbitrary detention on unsound psychiatric grounds. Those duties are expendable luxuries, but are vital safeguards of liberty.
Powers to issue warrants for surveillance
Another frightening power-grab in the Coronavirus Bill is the expansion of the power to appoint temporary judicial commissioners, with the powers to issue warrants for surveillance, under the Investigatory Powers Act 2016. The threat to civil liberty is obvious; and this has nothing to do with coronavirus.
Given those examples, one inevitably looks more sceptically at the idea that the government knows best about its other measures which ostensibly have something to do with coronavirus. Things like prolonging local councillors’ term in office for a whole year without a democratic mandate; police power to detain anyone for up to 48 hours on suspicion of a threat to public health; Ministers’ authority to ban mass gatherings; or court trials by skype. Are all those things really necessary? Or have some civil servants simply been waiting (heaven knows for how long) for a convenient moment to introduce them without provoking mass protests on the streets?
For example, skype trials in court sound sensible at the time of an epidemic, but the very first reported trial is a rather frightening one. That is a Court of Protection trial last week to decide the fate of an anonymous man in his ‘70s, whose GP wants to switch off his life support to let him die ‘in dignity’, and whose family objects. Remember all the debates and protests over the cases of Charlie Gard and Alfie Evans in this country, and Vincent Lambert in France? Under the new regime, decisions on life and death cases of this kind are being made on a skype call. No proper trial, no ‘army’ of protesters, no real media coverage. It was only reported as a technological curiosity – the first major trial taking place by skype.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance
These and other measures are meant to be introduced only on a temporary basis. There is a subset clause in the Bill, whereby these new laws will automatically lose force after two years unless Parliament votes to extend them beyond that period. Amendments are being debated to shorten that period. However, this does not answer the concern that some of the most drastic innovations in the Act are clearly not necessary to contain coronavirus at all. If in those two years, someone is wrongly ‘sectioned’ in a lunatic asylum, it is small comfort to them that this practice will cease in 2022. Further, as a general rule of constitutional history, temporary limitations on liberty tend to become permanent whenever they are convenient for the state. We still live today with all sorts of draconian laws introduced as a matter of emergency after 11 September 2001. Come 2022, the Coronavirus Bill powers may also be extended on whatever pretext. Indeed, section 90 of the Bill even permits the extension of those powers without a vote in Parliament.
The price of liberty is eternal vigilance. Many dictatorships originate in people’s panicked enthusiasm for drastic measures to deal with a genuine crisis. Putin’s regime in Russia, for example, took hold because people trusted their democratically elected president to do whatever it takes to defeat the threat of terrorism. Eventually, when Putin responded to another terrorist attack by replacing regional elections with appointed governors, that trust was largely lost – but it was too late. It is no surprise that when we see fairly similar moves attempted in this country, our trust in the government hangs in the balance.
At least in terms of public trust, the next few days will be crucial for the government’s efforts to control the epidemic. If the government is serious about it, its legislation must be cleansed of all disingenuous attempts to take advantage. And if they are not serious about it, nobody else will be.’ https://christianconcern.com/comment/coronavirus-exploited-by-enemies-of-democracy/?utm_source=Christian+Concern&utm_campaign=a5725850b3-WN-20200228_COPY_01&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_9e164371ca-a5725850b3-127681039
1 Corinthians 6:9 Know ye not that the unrighteous shall not inherit the kingdom of God? Be not deceived: neither fornicators, nor idolaters, nor adulterers, nor effeminate, nor abusers of themselves with mankind
The above Scripture would be offensive, I suppose, to those who were involved in those acts. However, should one be silenced from quoting that Scripture in public because they someone may be offended from what God’s Word says?
whatyareckon 