Gay couples may soon be able to tie the knot in church

Being a gay man myself and in a civil partnership, I welcome this move, I think the coalition government are connecting with people and moving forward to allow everyone to be treated the same.

However I am from a Catholic background and while some people within the Catholic religion accept me and my partner living together, they don’t see our civil partnership as a marriage and wouldn’t accept us marrying in church.

The change in law is only at primary stages and while I would like to see it make law I am worried that this will cause more problems for the gay community has a whole, but only time will tell.

Wayne

Below is a artcle from Observer Newspaper

Equalities MinsterEqualities minister considers change in law reversing ban on civil partnerships in places of worship.

The Coalition government is considering a change in the law to allow gay people to have marriage-style ceremonies in places of worship.

Liberal Democrat Equalities Minister Lynne Featherstone is expected to announce later this week that a ban on civil partnerships being conducted in religious venues is to be lifted.

The move, which could also allow hymns and readings from the Bible, is likely to be welcomed by gay rights groups but met with strong opposition from traditionalists within the Church of England, other mainstream religions and the Conservative party.

However minority religious groups such as Unitarians, Liberal Jews and Quakers, who already carry out ceremonies for gay people, will be sympathetic to the move.

“The government is currently considering what the next stage should be for civil partnerships, including how some religious organisations can allow same-sex couples the opportunity to register their relationship in a religious setting if they wish to do so,” a spokesman for the Equalities Office said last night.

“Ministers have met a range of people and organisations to hear their views on this issue. An announcement will be made in due course.”

It was not clear to what extent the change in law would allow civil partnership ceremonies to be brought into line with traditional weddings between heterosexual partners, or whether the term “marriage” would be officially used.

Civil partnerships, introduced in 2004, provide most of the same legal rights as marriage, but are often seen by gay people as lacking the spiritual depth conferred by a religious ceremony.

While many Anglican clergy already carry out blessings for gay couples, there is no authorised church ceremony and the issue has led to divisions in the Church of England.

Pope Benedict XVI has regularly condemned same-sex marriage and gay relationships, calling them “a destruction of God’s work”.

Quakers, who have been in favour of same-sex unions for almost two decades, agreed to perform marriage ceremonies for gay couples in 2009 and have previously urged the government to change the law to allow Quaker registering officers to handle same-sex partnerships in the same way as marriages.

Gay marriages are already legal in a handful of countries, including Canada, Iceland, the Netherlands, South Africa, Sweden, Spain, and some American states,

David Cameron, in 2009 interview, suggested that same-sex partnerships were no different from marriage but admitted that not all in his party held a similar view.

David Cameron’s ‘big society’ could be funded by savers

Observer
The Big Society
“Socially responsible” savers could be encouraged to put their money into “big society” ISAs under plans being announced to show how the money will be found to fund David Cameron’s vision of a volunteering renaissance.

The plans are to be unveiled as the prime minister makes a speech to try to relaunch his big society idea in the face of growing claims that volunteering will never thrive in an era of harsh public spending cuts.

The Cabinet Office is publishing plans to attract capital into the social investment market, including £400m from dormant bank accounts and – eventually – further sums from individuals and institutions like pension funds that might be prepared to invest routinely in social enterprise.

Social investments are already worth £200m a year but the Cabinet Office says this market is “embryonic and needs support”. Ministers want to expand it to the point where “socially responsible everyday savers” start investing their money in “social ISAs and pension funds”, although they also stress that this is a long-term aspiration.

The Cabinet Office paper, Growing the Social Investment Market: A vision and strategy, attempts to answer critics who say the cuts will kill volunteering by suggesting that social investment could eventually become as important a source of charity funding as traditional donations and the state. The government is also setting up a “big society bank” to fund social enterprises. It will start operating in April with up to £100m of the £400m from dormant accounts being made available this year. Banks are going to lend it another £200m on commercial terms.

The prime minister’s other big society relaunch initiatives have included the appointment of Charlotte Leslie, a Tory backbencher, and Shaun Bailey, a youth worker and former Tory candidate, as big society ambassadors. Further announcements are due relating to the £100m transition fund for charities affected by the loss of government contracts and plans to train 5,000 big society organisers.

At an event in London, Cameron will insist that he will never abandon the concept because it is at the core of his political philosophy. “The big society is my mission in politics,” he is expected to say. “And I am going to fight for it every day, because the big society is here to stay.”

In his speech Cameron will resurrect his claim – once described by the London mayor, Boris Johnson, as “piffle” – that society is “broken”. Lack of responsibility is to blame, he will say.

“I don’t think this has happened because we’ve somehow become bad people. I think at its core, it’s the consequence of years and years of big government. As the state got bigger and more powerful, it took away from people more and more things that they should and could be doing for themselves.”

In an article in the Independent on Sunday, Ed Miliband argued that the big society was bound to fail because there was an inherent contradiction between wanting to build up the voluntary sector and cut the size of the state. “No one can volunteer at a library or a Sure Start centre if it’s being closed down,” the Labour leader wrote.

He said the big society was invented as part of an attempt to decontaminate the Tory brand and that the party was now “recontaminated” because “in the past week voters have seen more clearly than ever this Conservative-led government in its true colours: a single-issue government making huge sacrifices of the things we value on the altar of deficit reduction”.

The former Tory cabinet minister David Mellor said the big society had gone down “like a lead balloon” at the election and that he could not understand why Cameron did not abandon the idea. But Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, claimed the concept had been a public relations success.

Red Nose Day 2011

Well it’s nearly that time of the year again for the 1st Major Charity event for BBC yes it’s

Red Nose Day  and it is back on Friday 18th March so it’s time to get ready to join in the fun! Wherever you are, whatever you do, make sure you do something funny for money and change countless lives for the better.

T-Shirts & Noses

It’s time to pick your Nose and pull on your T-shirts because Red Nose Day is back and it’s never looked so good.

The monster cool trio of Noses are available at Sainsbury’s and Oxfam shops and the Vivienne Westwood designed T-shirts are ready and waiting at a TK Maxx near you. Or bag them in our online store right now.

Desert Trek

A team of intrepid celebrities – including Dermot O’Leary, Lorraine Kelly and Scott Mills – is about to embark on a gruelling physical challenge that will test them to the limit. They’ll tackle some of the planet’s toughest terrain in the scorching sun as they cross a remote Kenyan desert – but can they take the heat?

iPhone

If you’ve got an iPhone, you’re in for a treat. Our brand new, totally free and completely brilliant Red Nose Day In Your Pocket iPhone app is now available to download.

From access to exclusive iTunes content, games and celeb features to all the latest Red Nose Day news and videos. It’s all there, all in your pocket. Hence the name.

Francis Maude denies that spending cuts are undermining the big society

Taken from Disability Lib and Third Sector

Last week Liverpool Council pulled out of the current Government’s Big Society experiment. The head of the council claimed they can not continue with the experiemnt when Central Government is cutting funds that voluntary organisations need to promote volunteerism and to get more people involved in their communities.

Yesterday, the 7th of February, Thirdsector online reported that the retiring executive director of Community Service Volunteers ( Dame Elisabeth Hoodless) says government lacks a strategic plan for the big society and that the spending cuts are undermining volunteering.

Today Thirdsector online has reported Government’s response and Francis Maude, the cabinet minister denied that the spending cuts are undermining the big society – writing in The Times newspaper Maude says: “Building the big society is not about pouring taxpayers’ money into the voluntary sector.

“What we are doing is supporting a new culture where everyone gets involved and society stops relying on the state to provide all the answers.

“I believe too much time is spent asking the taxpayer to prop up traditional organisations, rather than innovating and finding new ways to inspire people.”

So there it is folks, big society is about people doing stuff for people without money, jobs, benefits cut etc…..big society is about those working paying tax but Government not putting anything back….Government will provide the “environment” but you just get on it with. Is this realistic? Must Government always respond to criticism defensively?

May be I am looking at the current situation too simplistically but one thing I know, training volunteers is not free, encouraging people to creatively contribute to their communities needs money too and with the cuts already causing many organisations to close dowm no wonder someone commented on the Thirdsector online’s Government’s respond article that….”The Tories would deny that the sun rises in the morning”.

Cabinet Office minister responds to criticism by retiring CSV head Dame Elisabeth Hoodless
Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, has responded to claims made by Dame Elisabeth Hoodless, executive director of volunteering charity CSV, that the government’s big society agenda lacks a “strategic plan” and is being undermined by spending cuts.
In media interviews to mark her retirement this week, Hoodless said volunteering projects were being hit hard by government spending cuts and this was at odds with the big society agenda.

But writing in The Times newspaper today, Maude says: “Building the big society is not about pouring taxpayers’ money into the voluntary sector.
“What we are doing is supporting a new culture where everyone gets involved and society stops relying on the state to provide all the answers.

“I believe too much time is spent asking the taxpayer to prop up traditional organisations, rather than innovating and finding new ways to inspire people.”
An article in The Guardian today reports that communities secretary Eric Pickles opposed plans to force councils to show they were cutting their own costs as much as their contracts with charities.

The plans had been developed by David Cameron’s head of strategy, Steve Hilton, Cabinet Office ministers Oliver Letwin and Francis Maude and Lord Wei, the government’s adviser on the big society, the article says.
It says that Labour leader Ed Miliband has written to the leaders of several large charities, asking them to take part in the party’s policy review on civil society.

Len McCluskey, general secretary of trade union Unite, has also called for the Public Administration Select Committee to launch an investigation into the government’s funding of voluntary organisations in the light of the big society agenda.
“The select committee needs to investigate the crisis that is engulfing UK charities,” he said.
“If the Chancellor George Osborne does not address the crisis facing the sector in his Budget on 23 March, many charities will go to the wall and that will be the death knell of the big society.”

Top Charities Warning On Health Reform Risks

Taken from Sky News Website

Radical plans to reform the healthcare system must be amended to give patients a stronger say over their local services, a group of leading health charities have said.

The eight organisations, which represent millions of patients, called on the Government to make “crucial changes” to the Health and Social Care Bill, “to ensure the NHS will be answerable to everyone it serves”.

They described plans to make a network of GP commissioning consortia – which will be responsible for £80bn of the health service budget – accountable to the public as “weak”.

They demanded that democratically elected representatives are used to scrutinise decisions and budget management at a local level.

“The new local HealthWatch bodies described in the Bill will not have the powers or resources to ensure that patients have a say in their local health services.

“If they are to serve a meaningful purpose they must be significantly strengthened.” Under the reforms, GPs will take control of commissioning services for patients.

Strategic health authorities and primary care trusts (PCTs), which currently commission services, will be abolished.

So far, 141 GP consortia, serving more than half of the population of England, have now signed up as “pathfinders” to pilot the new arrangements ahead of their planned implementation in 2013.

More effective responses to anti-social behaviour – a consultation

Public and partners are invited to comment online on the propositions in this consultation, which intends to reform the toolkit to tackle anti-social behaviour.

About the consultation

This consultation asks for your opinions on government plans to streamline the toolkit used to tackle anti-social behaviour, so that the police and partners have faster, more flexible tools. These, plus more effective sanctions, will help professionals and, where necessary the courts, stop anti-social behaviour earlier, and better protect victims and communities.

The proposals include:

• repealing the ASBO and other court orders and replacing them with two new tools that bring together restrictions on future behaviour and support to address underlying problems
• ensuring there are powerful incentives on perpetrators to stop behaving anti-socially
• bringing together many of the existing tools for dealing with place-specific anti-social behaviour
• bringing together existing police dispersal powers for anti-social behaviour into a single police power
• making the informal and out-of-court tools for dealing with anti-social behaviour more rehabilitative and restorative
• introducing a Community Trigger that gives victims and communities the right to require agencies to deal with persistent anti-social behaviour. Read more here

Don’t Cut Care.

The story below is shocking for Parents who have disabled children and need help in more ways than we can imagine.
I have worked with Children with server disabilities and they are the most wonderful people you can come across and loving too, and it’s hard to care for them 24 7 so respite care is a welcomed option for many, but not for all as some don’t want help in fear that they may be seen that they can’t cope and some who may not want it for Pride reasons.

Either way respite care needs to be continued and NOT cut in anay way.

I know how hard it can be both for the child and the parent, I was born disabled 38 years ago, I was lucky I had parents who thought for there rights and give me love and care and spent have a there lives in Hospitals with me, I was in hospital til I was 2 years old, so my parents who to do shifts to come and feed me, and it got so hard they had to foster my 5 siblings out for a while has they couldn’t be home with them all the time as they where at the hospital, I am so grateful to my parents Ian and Maureen for the care they give me and got me through my disabilities and into mainline schools after the Education said I need specalist school and wanted me to attend “Sunny Field” in Morecambe now called Morecambe Rd School, my parents got me into Greaves Secondary School later to become Central Lancaster High.

I grew up “in a normal family life” and today yes I am still disabled have various illnesses and I am glad my parents did what they did, and now I work for and with Disabled people in Lancaster and Morecambe area to help them get what they are entiltled too.

So when I saw this and the facebook page I felt I needed to join and hopefully we can all make a difference, wether it’s by sharing there stories with others or by campaiging it will all make a difference so please please join there Facebook Page by clicking this link

Wayne

Now it’s care homes

Sponsored by Anger: Derek and Sue Hamer with their son Matthew and (inset) Debra Welch, chairman of the Friends of The Bungalow

Published by Lancashire Evening Post.

Desperate parents spoke out today after cuts to eight respite care centres for severely disabled children were confirmed.

County council chiefs need to slash £3m off the budget for children’s respite care over the next four years, meaning at least one will close in the next 12 months.

It leaves eight homes under threat, including Maplewood House in Bamber Bridge, near Preston, which campaigners fought to save in 2006.

The others at risk are The Bungalow in Fulwood, Preston; Long Copse, Chorley; Alexandra House, Lancaster; South Avenue, Morecambe; Grimshaw Lane, Ormskirk; Hargreaves House, Oswaldtwistle; and Reedley Cottages, Burnley.

More than 150 families from across Lancashire were called to a meeting at Maplewood House this week to be told the £180m cut to the County Hall budget will impact spending on respite centres.

Among them were Derek and Sue Hamer, full-time carers to their 16-year-old son Matthew.

The family, who live in Lyndhurst Avenue, Ashton, often spend night after night with little or no sleep.

They rely on Matthew’s weekly visit to The Bungalow.

Derek, 47, said: “The Bungalow is all we have. Without it, I don’t know how we will cope. Families like ours are already on the brink, only just managing to cope. The services these respite centres provide are certainly not a luxury, they are our lifeline.”

Matthew, who attends Sir Tom Finney High School in Moor Park, is one of around 50 disabled children who stay overnight at the four-bed centre. He stays once a week and for a full weekend once every six weeks.

Mum Sue said: “The staff at the centre have helped us get him to where he is today. It’s not just our lifeline, it is his too.”

County council chiefs say the centres are currently only running at 80% occupancy, and they believe this figure will fall further when new laws, capping the number of respite care nights that children can receive to 75 a year, come into effect in April.

However, Debra Welch, chairman of the Friends of The Bungalow, claims the “vast majority” of families in Lancashire would not be affected by the law change. Her son Jon Curtis, who is now 19, attended the centre for 11 years, staying once a fortnight.

She said: “We all understand the need for spending cuts, but to attack the most vulnerable in society isn’t right. The long-term effects will be disastrous. It will break apart families, and force more children into full-time care, which is far more costly and not what anyone, least of all these dedicated parents, want.”

Staff at The Bungalow and Maplewood House declined to comment until their future is decided. However, a former Maplewood employee, who asked not to be named, claimed staff had already been asked to apply for voluntary redundancy.

Angela Murphy, who spearheaded the Evening Post-backed campaign to save Maplewood, said: “We fought and thought we won four years ago, but we seem to keep getting pulled back into the same battles.”

County Coun Bill Winlow, leader of the Liberal Democrat group, said: “To target the most vulnerable in society is totally wrong, and we have to stand against it.”

County Coun Susie Charles, cabinet member for children and schools, defended the proposals. She said: “I understand how important our respite care services are to those who use them and, because of this, we are involving parents and carers well before we reach the stage of formal consultation on any proposals.

“Our eight respite care homes for children are currently running under capacity. In addition, new legislation means that the maximum number of respite care nights per year will reduce from 120 to 75 before a child is legally classed as being ‘looked after’, or in care. It is anticipated that this will further increase spare capacity.

“The county council must make savings of £179m over the next three years and, because of the scale of the budgetary pressures, all service areas are coming under scrutiny.”
.

Government takes first step towards Asbo abolition

New plans for tackling anti-social behaviour, including the abolition of Asbos, are due to be announced.

Anti-social Behaviour Orders would be replaced with a new “criminal behaviour order” – thought to involve a sliding scale of punishments.

The coalition also plans to compel police to probe incidences that are reported by at least five people – known as the “community trigger”.

Other plans would allow police to force culprits to make immediate amends.

The proposals are part of a government consultation on anti-social behaviour.

Labour has said that any of the coalition’s announcements on the issue would be damaged by their simultaneous cuts to policing numbers. Labour says more than 10,000 police officer posts will be gone by the end of next year, although ministers dispute those figures.

A key part of the plan is to overhaul Asbos, which were introduced in England and Wales under Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair, in 1999.

They were aimed at banning an individual from engaging in specific kinds of behaviour or going to certain places.

Breaching an Asbo could result in a criminal punishment of up to five years in prison, but the measure was criticised by some for being ineffective and seen as a badge of honour among offenders.

Under new criminal behaviour orders police will be able to apply for a court order to tackle low-level nuisance behaviour.

‘Unacceptable risk’
The Daily Mail reported that troublemakers would face the same asset seizure powers as major criminals under the new orders. They could have personal items, such as music systems, confiscated.

The paper also says police will be handed new powers to punish people on the spot, for example by ordering an offender to repair damage to property.

Meanwhile the proposal to compel police to investigate incidents that had been reported by at least five people would be called the “community trigger”.

Shadow Home Office minister Vernon Coaker said the main factor that had made a difference to anti-social behaviour over the last 10 years had been neighbourhood police teams on the streets and working with local communities.

“Whether using Asbos or the other measures the Labour government introduced, these teams have made a real difference.

“What we have learnt is that no matter what measures you introduce, you need the officers to enforce them.”

But, he said, current plans for “savage cuts” to policing numbers would damage that work.

“No matter what announcements this Tory-led government makes, the truth is they are taking an unacceptable risk with the safety of our streets,” he said.

Health Adviser Sacked

Health adviser sacked for speaking out in the Guardian

David Richards pointed out that money for coalition’s new mental health strategy was coming from existing NHS budget

Sarah Boseley
The Guardian, Monday 7 February 2011

Nick Clegg announced the coalition’s mental health strategy on 1 February at the Marlborough Centre, north London. Photograph: Ian Nicholson/PA
The government has sacked an independent national health adviser for questioning in the Guardian whether the money for its mental health strategy was new or came from the existing NHS budget.

When Nick Clegg announced £400m to improve access to modern psychological “talking therapies” last Wednesday, David Richards, professor of mental health services research at the University of Exeter, told the Guardian that the money was not additional. Instead of being spent on training therapists, it could end up used to plug other gaps in the NHS, he said.

The case has echoes of that of Professor David Nutt, who was sacked by the then Labour home secretary Alan Johnson for publicly questioning drug policy.

Richards has been involved since 2006 in efforts to increase the numbers of trained therapists who can help the substantial numbers of people with anxiety and depression. For the last two and a half years, he has been a national adviser to the Department of Health’s improving access to psychological therapies (IAPT) programme.

He said it had been explained at a meeting of the IAPT group just over two weeks earlier that the money would have to come from the existing NHS budget. “We were very disturbed when we found this out,” Richards told the Guardian. “I personally feel very aggrieved that mental health is being used by this government to shore up its very poor opinion poll ratings and I don’t want to be part of it.”

In a letter to the paper today, Richards says his removal is “extremely disappointing”. His comments and sacking resulted from his frustrated efforts to get an answer to three important questions, he says. He wanted to know to what extent the money would come from cuts elsewhere in the budget; what mechanisms there were to ensure every penny was spent on training and therapy; and what systems had been put in place to ensure existing funds were not slashed as NHS cuts bit.

Richards writes in his letter: “The questions are not a matter of mere detail but of vital import for the many thousands of people trapped in a cycle of untreated misery and fear.”

There are potential problems in the interaction between the government and independent advisers from academia, he says, adding: “Politicians assume that independent advisers are just going to do what they are employed to do . There is a general issue about the use of advisers who come from a highly independent academic environment.”

However, unlike Nutt, who objected to government policy, Richards says he was simply asking for clarification.

Richards’s main achievement in the last few years has been the establishment of a highly trained group of around 1,500 psychological wellbeing practitioners, who deliver cognitive behaviour therapy-based, low intensity help to people suffering from anxiety and depression.

Their interventions are brief, but effective, he says – as recommended by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence. They make up 40% of the 3,600 therapists trained in the past three years. The programme aims to eventually train a total of 6,000.

The shadow health secretary, John Healey, said: “Evidence from a range of independent experts gives lies to ministers’ claims that the NHS budget will be protected next year. And this ‘new’ funding for talking therapies again appears to show them misleading the public.”

Meanwhile, a thinktank founded by Iain Duncan Smith is criticising the government for failing to take account of the impact of family breakdown on mental health. The Centre for Social Justice says ministers should have assessed the impact of dysfunctional families on the mental health of children and adults.

Its report, which defines family breakdown as “divorce or separation, dysfunction or dad-lessness”, says: “Working with the whole family not only prevents many children from being labelled as mentally ill but can also tackle the causes of their problems – often rooted in or sustained by the dynamics of family relationships.”

Disabled people fear cuts will make life ‘not worth living’

The Disability Alliance has been surveying disabled people’s views on Government reforms to Disability Living Allowance (DLA). They have found that 9% of disabled people and their families fear the Government cuts will cause death, suicide and make lives ‘not worth living’

Neil Coyle, Policy Director at DA, said “Disabled people are telling us in great numbers that they fear the overall cuts – but that losing Disability Living Allowance in particular has resulted in people questioning the value of their lives”.

The survey revealed that:

*   800,000+ disabled people could lose support if the £1 billion target for DLA cuts is realised
*   13% say cuts will increase their NHS use with further demand also on cash-strapped councils
*   25% of respondents are in work but half fear having to quit if they lose access to support
*   half of respondents believe DLA does not meet extra disability-related costs of living – and a third report it is ‘difficult’ or ‘very difficult’ to get by before cuts are implemented
*    two-thirds of respondents use DLA to link to other support (eg bus passes, council tax benefit and Carer’s Allowance) and fear that the Government plans will have a ‘domino effect’ which will significantly increase poverty and social exclusion for disabled people and their families.
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