British Isles
Civil service changes
03 Jan 2020
Government officials could face exams in a bid to end an environment where civil servants change jobs regularly and ‘almost no one is ever fired’, in an organisation of which some say ‘failure is normal’. Number…
British pastor and children drown
03 Jan 2020
Olubunmi Diya is mourning after her daughter Comfort (9), son Praise-Emmanuel (16), and husband Pastor Gabriel (52) drowned in a hotel swimming pool on Christmas Eve. Olubunmi said she believed something was wrong that must have…
BBC ‘a secular church’
03 Jan 2020
Conservative peer Charles Moore, as a guest editor on Radio 4's Today programme, said the BBC has a liberal bias: ‘What I am objecting to is preaching.’ He said the BBC is a secular church which…
Youngsters with knives at school
03 Jan 2020
Between April 2017 and December 2019, Kent police investigated 109 children for possessing, or threatening with, an offensive weapon or blade at school. Two children, aged seven and nine, were not prosecuted for knife-related offences because…
Personal debt crisis
03 Jan 2020
Britain's personal debt mountain is growing. Households borrowed an extra £20bn on credit cards and have £45bn more personal debt than they did a decade ago – an increase of 25%. In 2019, total unsecured debt…
Church discourages bias against women
03 Jan 2020
CofE staff are being given ‘unconscious bias training’ in a bid to see an equal gender split across its leadership by 2030. The Bishop of London, Sarah Mullally, said, 'I certainly think that having women as…