The "compassionate release" of a convicted PanAm bomber in 2009 was an affront to justice and to the families of the 270 people who died in Lockerbie, Scotland, on Dec. 21, 1988. It looks even worse given the perspective that the following year has provided....

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • * Economics, Politics • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Libya • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • --Scotland

Iraq's prime minister has said the country is "independent" as the US formally ends combat operations.

Nouri Maliki said the country's security forces would now deal with all threats, domestic or other.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Iraq War • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Middle East

Pope John Paul II was seen as the great communicating pontiff, a man who went out from the Vatican to engage with the world. The message was clear and the symbolism spot on: remember him kneeling to kiss the ground when he came to the UK during the Falklands war in 1982? The present pope, Benedict XVI, could not be more different. A scholarly man who made his way as the previous pope's enforcer in the Vatican, he is not a natural communicator.

Benedict XVI's regime has seen several PR disasters: the Regensburg address in 2006, which was widely interpreted as an attack on Muslims, then the suggestion that saving humanity from homosexuality was as important as saving the rainforest, and the decision to pardon Richard Williamson, the Holocaust-denying British bishop.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Media • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic • Pope Benedict XVI

"They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old"—we are all familiar with Laurence Binyon's lament for the fallen of World War I. "The Great Silence" is the less-known story of the aftermath of that war: of those who were left and who did grow old. It complements Juliet Nicolson's earlier account, in "The Perfect Summer," of the golden period prefacing the outbreak of hostilities, an interlude of prosperity that only served to throw the horror of the conflict and the social disintegration that followed into sharper relief.

Of the five million British servicemen who went out to fight in the European trenches, 1.5 million came back with permanent injuries and disfigurements; others were traumatized in less immediately obvious ways. Taking stock, the Illustrated London News wrote at the time that the war had "destroyed millions of men, broken millions of lives, ruined great cities and hamlets"; it had left "a belt of earth ravaged, crowded the world with maimed men, blind, mad, sick men, flinging empires into anarchy." Those who did return, anticipating the "land fit for heroes" promised by the British Prime Minister Lloyd George, found that neither glory nor reward were forthcoming. The economy had collapsed, jobs were scarce and housing was in short supply. Once the euphoria following the Armistice had run its course, the silence that descended when the guns finally stopped was largely one of stunned bewilderment.

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Filed under: * Christian Life / Church Life • Parish Ministry • Death / Burial / Funerals • * Culture-Watch • Books • History • * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Herewith the BBC lead in write up:

The retiring Bishop of Durham, Dr Tom Wright, has called for a renewed focus on social mobility in the light of "the long failure of the enlightenment project". Speaking to James Naughtie, he said that in an "increasingly religious age" we needed to find new ways of dealing with the way "human beings mess things up".

Listen to it all (about 6 3/4 minutes).

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • History • Philosophy • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe

The Vatican's spokesman hopes that the Pope's visit to the U.K. will make known the positive contribution of the Christian faith to a widely "secularized" society. Touching on the delicacy of relations between Anglicans and Catholics, he also commented that meetings between the Pope and representatives of the Church of England during the trip are "very significant."

On Wednesday, the Vatican released the final schedule for Pope Benedict XVI's Sept. 16-19 visit to the U.K. Accompanying the announcement was a Vatican Radio interview with Fr. Federico Lombardi, the Holy See's spokesman.

The final program will see the Pope in Scotland on Sept. 16, when he will meet with Queen Elizabeth II and celebrate an outdoor Mass in Glasgow. Over the next two days of the trip, he will spend time meeting with religious leaders, the faithful and representatives of civil society in a series of gatherings and celebrations in London, England.

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A Roman Catholic adoption charity's appeal to be allowed to discriminate against gay people wanting it to place children with them has been rejected.

Catholic Care wanted exemption from new anti-discrimination laws so it could limit services provided to homosexual couples on religious grounds.

The Charity Commission said gay people were suitable parents and religious views did not justify discrimination.

The Leeds-based charity said it was "very disappointed".

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And now, congregation, put your hands together and give thanks, for I come bearing Good News. Britain is now one of the most irreligious countries on earth. This island has shed superstition faster and more completely than anywhere else. According to an ICM survey, 63 per cent of us are non-believers, while 82 per cent say religion is a cause of harmful division. Now, let us stand and sing our new national hymn: "Jerusalem was dismantled here/in England's green and pleasant land."

How did it happen? For centuries, religion was insulated from criticism in Britain. First its opponents were burned, then jailed, then shunned. But once there was a free marketplace of ideas, once people could finally hear both the religious arguments and the rationalist criticisms of them, the religious lost the British people. Their case was too weak, their opposition to divorce and abortion and gay people too cruel, their evidence for their claims nonexistent. Once they had to rely on persuasion rather than intimidation, the story of British Christianity came to an end.

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A. – It is a very rich, intense and articulate program. Of course there is great expectation and excitement in the lead up to the first day, which immediately sees the Pope’s meeting with Her Majesty, the Queen. It is also the day when he will meet with Scotland, which is a very important part of this journey. I would like to remind people that the Pope’s visit to Scotland coincides with the Feast of St. Ninian, who is the patron saint and evangeliser of Scotland. As such it is a very important day for Scottish people. We think it will be a great celebration, a very beautiful moment. Then, I would highlight the Pope's great address in Westminster Hall, his meeting with civil society, the world of culture, with all the most active and influential members of English society. This certainly will be a closely watched moment. The Pope will address, on a very broad level, the problems facing society in the United Kingdom and in the world today. Then there is the ecumenical dimension, in his meeting with the Anglican Primate, the Archbishop of Canterbury: the ecumenical celebration is certainly of great significance. We also know that it is a delicate moment for Anglicanism, because of internal debates. It is also a delicate time in relations with the Catholic Church, because these debates also reflect on the relationship between Anglicans and Catholics. Then, obviously, we come to the culminating moment which takes place in two stages, if you will: the vigil in Hyde Park in London and the Beatification in Birmingham dedicated to the figure of Newman. So with this great figure, who is almost “the spiritual heart of this visit”, the journey ends. We know that the Pope accepted the invitation for this visit because of the occasion of Newman’s Beatification.

Q. - Many have pointed to a special bond between Newman, this great nineteenth century pastor and intellectual and Joseph Ratzinger, Benedict XVI. What are your thoughts?

A. – It’s not unfounded[…] because in the person of the Pope, Benedict XVI, we have a profound synthesis between faith and reason, and I would add, even spirituality. There is a connection between living the Christian witness in today's world, in the modern world, giving all the reasons of Christian faith for those who seek it, giving the reason for our hope in the world today, and displaying a deep faith, a very careful, very great, vibrant spirituality as well as a very broad pastoral sensibility. The figure of Newman is complete, he is a fascinating character because of his depth, not only for his intellectual dimension, but also his cultural and pastoral dimension. His ability to convey the completeness of the cultural commitment to the world of today is captivating. He is certainly the perfect figure to present the dignity of Christian witness as capable of addressing the problems and the biggest questions of modern man, to modern society.

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Pope Benedict XVI will arrive in the the UK on September 16 to visit Edinburgh, Glasgow and London before heading to Birmingham to attend a beatification ceremony for Cardinal John Henry Newman, a 19th century convert to Catholicism, who had been a leading Anglican cleric in Oxford.

The ceremony, on Sunday, September 19, which is part of the process towards a person becoming a saint, will be attended by hundreds of Catholics from Oxfordshire.

Father Daniel Seward, a priest at the Oratory Church, in Woodstock Road, said it was important for the city’s Catholics to see the beatification of a leading Oxford figure.

He said: “We will be sending seven coaches of worshippers up to Birmingham, about 300 people.

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Professor Harries lauded Pullman for writing with "moral clout" and said he had enjoyed the book.

And he agreed with Pullman about the humane qualities of Jesus.

However, he said the author had put a "great abyss between Jesus the Good man and what the church has done to him".

Prof Harries said this was not true to the New Testament.

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The Simon Wiesenthal Center criticized Cardinal Keith O’Brien, Scotland’s Catholic leader, for condemning the U.S. system of justice as based on “vengeance and retribution” and a planned renewed investigation by the U.S. Senate Foreign Relations Committee of Scotland’s release of convicted Lockerbie bomber Abdelbaset al-Megrahi. In defending the release of al-Megrahi, who allegedly had three months to live and who received a hero’s welcome when he arrived in Tripoli Libya last year, Cardinal O’ Brien praised Scotland’s “culture of compassion” where “justice is tempered with mercy.”

“It was misplaced compassion in the first place that led to this travesty of justice,” said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, a leading Jewish Human rights NGO. “Now Cardinal O’Brien’s words only add to the suffering of the families of 270 innocent people blown out of the sky over Scotland.”

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I have just touched down in America for a week, and am immediately reminded about the extraordinary manners of the Americans. In the loos at Atlanta Airport, a man pulled at the door of an occupied stall, only to find it was locked. “Excuse me, sir,” he immediately said.

A middle-aged blonde lady, also in Atlanta Airport, bumped into a young man, and said with a laugh, “Oh, I’m sorry, I was drifting off there.”

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Dublin Archbishop Diarmuid Martin has told priests that the Vatican has rejected the resignations of his two auxiliary bishops following their reported involvement in the Roman Catholic Church's cover-up of child abuse.

The Vatican's rebuff deals a blow to Martin, a veteran Vatican diplomat who was appointed in 2004 to lead Ireland's most populous diocese through a growing storm of child-abuse scandals. From the start he has clashed with predecessors who suppressed reports of child molestation and transferred abusive priests to new parishes in Ireland, Britain and the United States.

"Following the presentation of their resignations to Pope Benedict, it has been decided that Bishop Eamonn Walsh and Bishop Raymond Field will remain as auxiliary bishops," Martin said in a letter sent this week to priests and other Dublin church officials.

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[Catholic Herald question]: What do you feel is the significance of the Pope visiting Westminster Abbey in particular, rather than another prominent Anglican place of worship such as St Paul’s?

In 1982, Pope John Paul II of course came to Canterbury and so he met the Archbishop of Canterbury there. That was a very significant and important occasion.

That was a pastoral visit. This is a state visit, so he’s coming partly as head of state, as well as head of the Roman Catholic Church, and every head of state is invited to come and lay a wreath at the grave of the unknown warrior.

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(ACNS)

Q. When did discussions about this change first take place? Who drew up the new articles and on what basis?

The issue was first raised at the time of the ACC meeting in Dundee, Scotland, in 1999, and a drafting committee was established after the Hong Kong ACC meeting in 2002. The drafting committee met with me on a number of occasions between 2002-2005, and the Committee’s draft was the subject of intensive discussion at the Nottingham ACC meeting in 2005.

Q. There’s recently been media speculation that proper procedures weren’t followed as regards getting assent to the change from the old constitution to the new.

It’s good to see that there are Anglicans out there who care that things are being done properly. Certainly no one in the Communion is above criticism. I’ve already explained that a change to the Constitution was planned and discussed at several ACC meetings. Then, as required by Article 10 of the old constitution, the draft was circulated for approval by the provinces of the Communion after the 2005 Conference. It finally achieved the requisite level of replies—two thirds of Anglican Communion provinces—and this was reported to the ACC in Jamaica in 2009, after which it was submitted for registration at Companies House and by the Charity Commission.

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A new superbug that is resistant to even the most powerful antibiotics has entered UK hospitals, experts warn.

They say bacteria that make an enzyme called NDM-1 have travelled back with NHS patients who went abroad to countries like India and Pakistan for treatments such as cosmetic surgery.

Although there have only been about 50 cases identified in the UK so far, scientists fear it will go global.

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On a global scale, Britain, the foremost Protestant nation through the rabid religiosity of the English and the Scots, mobilised its empire in aggressive opposition to papal power, while Catholic Ireland spawned its own spiritual diaspora by exporting generations of priests and people to the United States, Australia, New Zealand and Canada.

In the perspective of this fire and dungeon history, it is a stunning turnaround that Pope Benedict has selected 'Protestant Britannia' ahead of 'Catholic Ireland' for an official state visit next month.

Even more remarkably, Pope Benedict will meet his host, Queen Elizabeth, the head of the Anglican Church of England, in Edinburgh, the capital of Presbyterianism.

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The leader of the Roman Catholic Church in Scotland has attacked the US over the release of the Lockerbie bomber.

Cardinal Keith O'Brien said the Scottish government was right to free Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi last year on compassionate grounds.

US lawmakers want Scots politicians to explain their decision to a committee, but the cardinal said ministers should not go "crawling like lapdogs".

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • Foreign Relations • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • Africa • Libya • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • --Scotland • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Churches • Roman Catholic

It is a fascinating read with a lot of focus on "Islamism."

Update: Brian Whitaker thinks it is wide of the mark.

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • Violence • * Economics, Politics • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

I have a suggestion for an area of public life where cuts in spending are in urgent need and would, I believe, be widely welcomed: weddings. Over the last several years the cost of the average wedding has ballooned to about £20,000. And as a recent survey showed: with the expectation of ever more expensive presents, the need for new clothes, hotel bills and the like, the cost of simply attending a wedding is now well over £500.

But it isn't just about the money. For the problem with the modern wedding is that it's too often a glitzy stage-set overly concerned with the shoes, the flowers, the napkin rings and performing to the cameras. I'm delighted for Chelsea Clinton and her new husband Mark. But judging by some press reports, the most important thing about the wedding was her two Vera Wang dresses. And yes, I blame the media here, not the happy couple. For the pervasive influence of the media on the look and feel of weddings - not least those weddings that are featured in celebrity magazines - has encouraged an atmosphere of narcissism and self-promotion to work its way into the very fabric of the modern wedding celebration....

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One episode has always stuck in my mind – which illustrates the mentality of the City. I once travelled to Zug in Switzerland, to interview a metals trader who had been at the centre of a suspected £150 million fraud. As ever, the companies concerned had preferred not to press criminal charges (they don’t because the burden of proof is higher and they don’t want any negative publicity falling on them). But there had been a civil case and the judge’s findings had been pretty conclusive and highly critical. The metal concerned was aluminium. Instead of finding a dealer full of remorse for what he’d done, I met a person who expressed bafflement – he could not understand why I’d gone all that way and why I was so concerned about events that had occurred some years previously.

“Why don’t you ask me about copper?” he said. “Make a note of where the copper price is six months from now.” Mostly for theatrical effect and to please him, I produced a diary and wrote down “copper” in six months’ time. Exactly six months to the day, copper was reported to have risen to an all-time high – on the back of rumoured buying from my interviewee and his associates.

That’s what the City is like. One of the abiding terms in the market is “eat what you kill” – you hear it trotted out regularly as a justification for the bonus system. It’s a “me, me” culture in which everyone is out for themselves.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • Credit Markets • Stock Market • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Listening to David Cameron’s first speech on the steps of Downing Street, Archbishop Vincent Nichols says he nearly fell off his chair at the Prime Minister’s pledge to work for “the common good”.

His surprise was down to the fact that only a few weeks earlier, Catholic bishops had published a document offering election advice to churchgoers called “Choosing the Common Good”.

Sitting comfortably now in a shaded garden off the main road in Lourdes, the leader of the Church in England and Wales admits to being encouraged at the echoes of Catholic teaching emerging in the language of the new Coalition Government.

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You may find the link to the audio here.

Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Politics in General • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Theology • Ethics / Moral Theology

Catholic leaders in Scotland have denounced the coalition government’s plans to leave intact the 1701 Act of Settlement, which bans the monarch from marrying a Roman Catholic.

“When a monarch is free to marry a Scientologist, Muslim, Buddhist, Moonie or even Satanist but not a Catholic, then there’s something seriously wrong,” said Scottish Roman Catholic Bishop Joseph Devine of Motherwell.

In a written answer given to the House of Commons on June 30, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State at the Cabinet Office, Mr. Mark Harper stated “there are no current plans to amend the laws on succession”

Bishop Devine, who during the General Election had urged Catholics not to vote Labour due to their social policies, expressed outrage over the Cameron government decision.

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The Education Secretary said he would be "interested" to look at proposals for non-religious schools from figures such Professor Richard Dawkins.

Prof Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, said last month that he approved of the idea of setting up a "free-thinking” school.

The comments follow the publication of Coalition plans to give parents' groups, teachers and charities powers to open their own schools at taxpayers' expense.

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Lord Chris Patten, named by the British Prime Minister to be in charge of Benedict XVI's trip to the United Kingdom, said that the visit will be "an incredible success."

He told Vatican Radio on Monday that those who criticized the Pope's Sept. 16-19 trip will be surprised to discover its importance.

"I am absolutely certain that all the preparations undertaken by the government, local governments, the episcopal conferences of Scotland and England, will make the Pope's visit an incredible success," Patten affirmed.

He acknowledged that the preparation of the Papal visit has been more complex than expected, above all because the organizers underestimated the "complexity involved in fitting together the State visit aspects and the pastoral aspects, so that they were a seamless whole."

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[P.D. James] James is, the profile shows, a thoroughly decent, thoughtful, and very charming person, the sort of person you’d welcome as a neighbor or even as a mentor or model. She’s a poster girl for the kind of urbane, skeptical, unflappable, worldly-wise Englishness beloved of Anglophiles. You can’t help but feel that the world is a better place for having P. D. James in it.

And yet part of that Englishness is a kind of religion whose appeal I don’t understand. It’s partly the agnosticism about the next world — I want a bit more definite knowledge than that in exchange for my Sunday mornings — but more the loss of the participation in the Divine life of which the promise of life eternal is a part.

Reading the profile after Mass today, it seemed to me that she gave up what is most entrancing about the Christian Faith....

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BP Plc plans to appoint Robert Dudley to succeed Tony Hayward as chief executive officer as the board looks to recover the company’s position in the U.S., two people with knowledge of the matter said.

Dudley, the director of BP’s oil spill response unit, is ready to be announced as the company’s first American chief on July 27 and to take the helm Oct. 1, one of the people said, asking not to be identified because a final decision hasn’t yet been made. The decision was reached in discussions with board members about how best to take BP forward and rebuild its U.S. position, the person said. The BP board meets tomorrow to “rubber stamp” the plan, the second person said.

“The fact he is American should help to keep things a little more straightforward in his dealings with the U.S. administration,” Ted Harper, who helps manage $6.8 billion at Frost Investment Advisors in Houston, said today. He doesn’t hold BP stock. “Dudley’s most important task will continue to be making sure that the well is capped.”

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • Corporations/Corporate Life • Energy, Natural Resources • --The 2010 Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK

The US government secretly advised Scottish ministers it would be "far preferable" to free the Lockerbie bomber than jail him in Libya.

Correspondence obtained by The Sunday Times reveals the Obama administration considered compassionate release more palatable than locking up Abdel Baset al-Megrahi in a Libyan prison.

The intervention, which has angered US relatives of those who died in the attack, was made by Richard LeBaron, deputy head of the US embassy in London, a week before Megrahi was freed in August last year on grounds that he had terminal cancer.

The document, acquired by a well-placed US source, threatens to undermine US President Barack Obama's claim last week that all Americans were "surprised, disappointed and angry" to learn of Megrahi's release.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Terrorism • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK • --Scotland

The Anglican Church's second most senior cleric, after the Archbishop of Canterbury, joined faith and civic leaders from across the city at a special event last night to celebrate the federation of the six towns 100 years ago.

Ugandan-born Dr Sentamu, who was the country's first black archbishop, was guest speaker at the King's Hall event organised to highlight the contribution of faith to the area over the past 100 years.

Addressing around 250 guests, he said: "Great people of this city may I be with you to banish fear.

"Fear has a crippling effect more than anything else. We will not be afraid."

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • Archbishop of York John Sentamu • * Culture-Watch • Religion & Culture • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Credit Freeze Crisis of Fall 2008/The Recession of 2007-- • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

Perhaps the only consistent thing about Britain’s socialized health care system is that it is in a perpetual state of flux, its structure constantly changing as governments search for the elusive formula that will deliver the best care for the cheapest price while costs and demand escalate.

Even as the new coalition government said it would make enormous cuts in the public sector, it initially promised to leave health care alone. But in one of its most surprising moves so far, it has done the opposite, proposing what would be the most radical reorganization of the National Health Service, as the system is called, since its inception in 1948.

Practical details of the plan are still sketchy. But its aim is clear: to shift control of England’s $160 billion annual health budget from a centralized bureaucracy to doctors at the local level. Under the plan, $100 billion to $125 billion a year would be meted out to general practitioners, who would use the money to buy services from hospitals and other health care providers.

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Filed under: * International News & Commentary • England / UK

David Cameron's "big society" speech on Monday called for more "people power" and "a new culture of voluntarism, philanthropy, social action". The trouble is that this requires not only an end to top-down, command-and-control state sovereignty but also civic limits on free-market capitalism. By viewing human associations and intermediary institutions as more fundamental than either state or market, religious traditions are indispensable to a vibrant civil society.

Much of secular politics still views the voluntary sector either as extension of the state or a sub-section of the market. This subordinates social bonds either to uniform state law or to proprietary market relations or both. Indeed, state and market collude by subjecting the whole of society to formal standards that abstract from real, embodied relations of family, friendship, community, habit, ritual and celebration – as Archbishop Rowan recently argued.

Moreover, the purpose and scope of voluntary, civic activity is severely constrained: it merely compensates for state and market failures, rather than supporting the autonomy of the communities, groups and associations that compose civil society.

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[Lord Faulkner of Worcester]... asked: “Does the Government’s commitment to gender equality extend to great national institutions such as the Church of England?”

And he asked whether David Cameron intended to “have a word” with the bishops and archbishops currently in the Lords “in order that we may have some female bishops in this House before the end of this decade”?

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The projected image was of international statesmen gathering in solidarity with an Afghanistan
marching forward. But the alacrity with which they headed for their planes after spending the briefest of times in Kabul seemed to mirror the West's haste to get on the exit route from this costly war.

There had, in the many previous conferences on Afghanistan's future, been an air of expectation and even optimism. But the gathering for the "Kabul process" was permeated with an undercurrent of past disappointments and trepidation for the future.

The pledges made, already well-trailed, were trotted out without much conviction, the declaration of support for Hamid Karzai who had been accused by some of his Western backers of stealing last year's election, delivered with little enthusiasm. Nine years after the fall of the Taliban, Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, talked of the road ahead "being full of challenges" and "questions by many on whether success was even possible".

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Defense, National Security, Military • Foreign Relations • Politics in General • War in Afghanistan • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • England / UK

Everybody in the west knows the fable of the grasshopper and the ant. The grasshopper is lazy and sings away the summer, while the ant piles up stores for the winter. When the cold weather comes, the grasshopper begs the ant for food. The ant refuses and the grasshopper starves. The moral of this story? Idleness brings want.

Yet life is more complex than in Aesop’s fable. Today, the ants are Germans, Chinese and Japanese, while the grasshoppers are American, British, Greek, Irish and Spanish. Ants produce enticing goods grasshoppers want to buy. The latter ask whether the former want something in return. “No,” reply the ants. “You do not have anything we want, except, maybe, a spot by the sea. We will lend you the money. That way, you enjoy our goods and we accumulate stores.”

Ants and grasshoppers are happy. Being frugal and cautious, the ants deposit their surplus earnings in supposedly safe banks, which relend to grasshoppers. The latter, in turn, no longer need to make goods, since ants supply them so cheaply. But ants do not sell them houses, shopping malls or offices. So grasshoppers make these, instead. They even ask ants to come and do the work. Grasshoppers find that with all the money flowing in, the price of land rises. So they borrow more, build more and spend more.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • * Economics, Politics • Economy • The U.S. Government • The National Deficit • * International News & Commentary • America/U.S.A. • Asia • China • England / UK • Europe

U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron announced plans to use “hundreds of millions of pounds” from dormant bank accounts to fund community projects, while Business Secretary Vince Cable said lenders “ripped off” customers.

Cameron said he will press ahead with a proposal set out in the coalition government’s program to establish a “Big Society Bank” to finance moves by charitable groups and not-for-profit companies to take over jobs currently done by the government.

“These unclaimed assets, alongside the private-sector investment that we will leverage, will mean that the Big Society Bank will over time make available hundreds of millions of pounds of new finance to some of the most dynamic social organizations in our country,” Cameron said in a speech in Liverpool, northwest England, today.

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Filed under: * Economics, Politics • Economy • The Banking System/Sector • * International News & Commentary • England / UK

It is clear that the fundamental principle of freedom of belief and of the right to manifest one's own belief must continue to be upheld in a free society, whether for Christians, Muslims or anyone else.

Such a principle does not, however, exist in isolation and has to be balanced against other considerations of the common good and of public order.

As far as the wearing of the Burka is concerned, there are, first of all, questions of safety.

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Filed under: * Anglican - Episcopal • Anglican Provinces • Church of England (CoE) • CoE Bishops • * Culture-Watch • Law & Legal Issues • Religion & Culture • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • * Religion News & Commentary • Other Faiths • Islam

The call that drove a stake through the heart of one nation and gave another sweet revenge after 44 years was this World Cup’s most dramatic moment.

And also its most disappointing.

It wasn’t just Frank Lampard and England that deserved better than the outrageous blown call that denied them a valid goal and sent Germany to a 4-1 victory and a place in the quarterfinals.

Soccer deserves better.

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Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Sports • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe • Germany

I am still in shock that Frank Lampard's obvious goal was not allowed. Very good to hear Jurgen Klinsman on ESPN say "it's a disgrace."

Filed under: * Culture-Watch • Globalization • Sports • * International News & Commentary • England / UK • Europe • Germany