Displaying items by tag: British Isles

There are an estimated 11,700+ people trapped in forms of modern slavery in the UK. These are just the people who have been noticed: many would say that the figure is vastly greater. Slavery is largely unreported because of the difficulty and expense of regulating small businesses using casual staff. On 11 June a free-to-use smartphone app, commissioned by the Church of England, will help shed light on the true extent of forced labour across the UK by ‘noticing the unnoticed’ among people and businesses in the parish, starting with car washes. The app will ask users to complete a short questionnaire on local car washes to ensure that the business is legitimate and meets employment regulations. If the car wash appears to indicate signs of forced-labour exploitation, the user will be prompted to report the business to the Modern Slavery Helpline (08000 121 700).

Women of colour are overlooked in public services and policymaking, according to a new report from an all-party parliamentary group on sex equality. Black and ethnic minority women are overlooked by mental health and employment support services, which fail to meet their needs due to a lack of data on their experiences and the exclusion of black women from policymaking. MPs are calling for a way of designing services (especially mental health and employment support) to ensure they are more responsive to the needs and experiences of diverse groups. The report also says that disability, age, race, faith, ethnicity, sexuality, gender and location all influence the pay gaps that women face. Dr Carole Easton said that young women struggle with low pay, job insecurity and debt, particularly young women of colour and the disabled who face bigger pay gaps and more often report workplace discrimination.

A report has found that over 1.5 million people were destitute in the UK at some point in 2017, including 365,000 children. The chief executive of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation said that many rely on social security when hit with unexpected job loss, relationship breakdown, or ill-health. Yet local authorities and utility companies are forcing people into a corner when they are penniless and have nowhere to turn. Social security should hold people steady against powerful currents of rising costs, insecure housing and jobs, and low pay. Instead people are becoming destitute with no clear way out. To be destitute doesn’t mean getting by on very little, it’s losing the ability to keep a roof over your head, eat often enough, or afford warm clothes when it’s cold. You can’t keep yourself clean or put the lights on. This shouldn’t happen to anybody, let alone over 1.5 million people.

Al Quds day (Jerusalem Day in Arabic) was initiated by Iran in 1979 to support Palestinians and oppose Israel’s existence and rights to Jerusalem. Rallies are held globally: England’s march will take place on Sunday 10 June in central London. At last year's march Hezbollah flags were flown, exploiting a hole in UK law, which allows support for Hezbollah's political wing whilst banning its military wing. Hezbollah itself makes no distinction. On 30 May police said they could not stop people flying Hezbollah flags (adorned with machine-guns) on the London march, even though Hezbollah is a recognised anti-Semitic organisation. Those leading the march last year declared publicly, ‘The state of Israel must go’, ‘Everyone knows that Israel and IS are the same’, and ‘Zionist supporters of the Tory Party are responsible for the murder of the people in Grenfell’. See

Theresa May and David Davis have agreed the wording of a proposed plan for trading with the EU after Brexit. Future key dates: 12 June - MPs to vote on the EU Withdrawal Bill: it suffered 15 defeats in the House of Lords, and must now be debated again in the House of Commons. 28 June - the EU summit may include discussion on the Northern Ireland border. 18 October - EU summit to agree an outline of future relations between the UK and EU. 31 October - negotiations must be complete by this date to give the 27 EU countries time to sign off the deal. MPs in the UK Parliament will also get to vote on the final deal. 13 December - the final EU summit of 2018, the fall-back option if nothing is agreed by 31 October.

For newly-qualified teacher Maya, sexual harassment started in her first week at a prestigious London state secondary school with a culture of misogyny thinly veiled as banter. Senior colleagues made inappropriate comments about her body, and she and her female colleagues experienced a barrage of abuse from male students. Many times over, female staff who reported problems saw no action taken. Maya’s close friend had her phone stolen by children, who rang her father saying, ‘We’re going to rape your daughter outside school.’ She wasn’t supported by the school at all. A year later Maya left the school, and soon afterwards she left teaching altogether. A recent study of over 1,200 female teachers by a teachers’ union revealed that one in five has been sexually harassed at school by a colleague, manager, parent or pupil. Nearly a third of these were subjected to unwanted touching, two-thirds to inappropriate comments, and over half to inappropriate sexual remarks.

Mainland Europe is a mission field on our doorstep. Jean Darnall and Smith Wigglesworth both prophesied God’s Spirit would flow from the UK to mainland Europe. Some from the UK and other European nations have relocated to France as ‘missionaries’. The evangelical church in France has seen remarkable growth equivalent to one new church every ten days. There are now 650,000 evangelical Christians in France. At the same time, the Roman Catholic church has declined, but there is a thriving RC charismatic movement. Social despair, mistrust of political leaders, and high unemployment, combined with a cultural willingness to discuss and debate have created conditions favourable to evangelical church growth. Now a Paris-based ministry with a vision for France and Europe called Jesus2Europe invites UK intercessors to join in prayer for France between 1 and 7 June. You can sign up for a prayer slot at

A survey of 2,195 GPs in England found that 39% were likely to leave by 2022, and 61% of those over the age of 50 planned to quit within five years. Pressures in general practice have reached an all-time high. Workload has escalated by at least 16% over the last seven years, but the share of the NHS budget general practice receives is less than it was a decade ago. GP numbers are falling, and many GPs are burnt-out. GPs have increasing workloads, too little time to do justice to the job, and a pile of paperwork to meet external bodies’ requirements and increasing patient demands. A representative from hospital trusts said that the figures reflect a gap between what the NHS is asked to deliver and the resources available, following almost a decade of austerity. There are not enough staff, ambulances, community and mental health capacity or hospital beds to cope. Also see the next article.

Many are saying the ‘hostile environment’ policy is damaging the NHS. The current visa rules place a cap on how many non-EU workers can come to the UK, and this ceiling has been hit for six months in a row, preventing more overseas doctors from coming. Many believe the visa rules aren’t working in the best interests of NHS patients, and think that ministers ought to do more to ensure hospitals get adequate numbers of staff. Labour’s shadow health secretary said that we are turning away trained doctors who want to come and work in the UK while the NHS has a workforce crisis with 100,000 posts unfilled. Vacancy rates for nurses and doctors are rising every year. Health trust bosses raised concerns over the visa scheme recently when it emerged that 100 Indian doctors had been denied visas to work in the UK. See also the previous article.

Last week a Birmingham mother was jailed for forcing her daughter to marry a relative almost twice her age. This week a Leeds couple were found guilty of luring their 19-year-old daughter to Bangladesh in 2016, in an attempt to force her to marry her first cousin and have a baby with him. She was rescued after she texted her location to her boyfriend, who then told West Yorkshire Police.