It is as if we have finally decided that all our troubles have been caused by foreigners. The rise of Ukip, the talk of foreigners taking all our jobs, of flooding our country which is already full and swamping our services. I have heard this on the doorsteps when I...

I am lucky enough to run a couple of children's art clubs. An art club is a weekly event where we put out poster paints, brushes and lots of other materials and children just come along and make and do whatever they want with it. It's free to the children...

Richard Rhodes the Cumbrian Police Commissioner has been the subject of allegations connected with his use of a chauffeur driven car and, it is reported, three members of Police staff have subsequently been arrested for offences against the Data Protection Act and for perverting the course of justice in connection...

Atheists should be celebrating today - the Daily Mail has acknowledged that people with a variety of different beliefs have a right to express those beliefs in the work place - even atheists no less! This is after the Equality and Human Rights Commission released some new guidelines for employers....

Someone is trying to exploit the deaths of six children for his own purposes - no I don't mean Mick Philpot - this time it is the Chancellor of the Exchequer who has seen an opportunity in a dreadful tragedy.

George Osborne has asked whether the tax payers should...

David Cameron wants to keep immigrants off the housing waiting lists for up to two years after they arrive and Labour is busy apologizing for their previous immigration policies - for not doing enough about it. Nick Clegg wants immigrants from 'high risk' countries to deposit some money to deter...

Chris Huhne and Vicky Pryce have been convicted of perverting the course of justice and sentenced to eight months imprisonment after one of the most high profile trials in years. They agreed to let Vicky Pryce take his penalty points enabling him to avoid being disqualified from driving. The Judge,...

How could virtually a whole society divest themselves of their moral responsibility for some of their most vulnerable citizens by handing over thousands of women and children to the Catholic Church to be kept in servitude in the Magdalene laundries? As we now know this happened in Ireland.

One...

It is alleged that, in 2004, our intelligence services kidnapped a family in Hong Kong and forced them on to a plane and flew them into the hands the violent and oppressive Gaddafi regime in Libya to be tortured for years. It appears Sami al-Saadi and his four children were...

To most people domestic violence is an abstract idea - to the victims it is a brutal reality.
As an ex-Police Officer I remember a women whose boyfriend had stabbed her in the back with a screwdriver - a women strangled and left in a ditch - another women...

George Osborne has conjured up an image of lazy unemployed people enjoying comfortable lives whilst other (decent) people get up early to go out to work. This feeds into the same theme in some parts of the media about lazy unemployed people but is far from the reality.

I...

The Archbishop of Westminster, Vincent Nichols, has called for Roman Catholics to get involved in politics and to campaign against gay marriage and is calling government plans to legalize gay marriage undemocratic. Meanwhile a public opinion survey shows three out of five people support the idea of gay marriage.

America has experienced a dreadful loss of young and innocent lives after the murderous shooting rampage in Connecticut. Such incidents are not unique to America but surely what matters is what a nation does to stop these things happening again.

Without a radical change in the attitudes of Americans...

That we had to wait until Jimmy Savile was dead to hear from people he had abused and exploited - says many bad things about how our society works - but that we are hearing about it at all is a good thing. Allegations of abuse in North Wales have...

It has been alleged that Savita Halappanavar, who was seventeen weeks pregnant, died in an Irish hospital after being denied an abortion - an abortion which might have saved her life. Her husband, who begged the doctors to help, was told "This is a Catholic country" and that whilst the...

What happened before and after the Hillsborough disaster is - quite rightly - under close scrutiny once again. It seems clear that the deaths of 96 football fans, was not investigated properly at the time and there are obvious questions about why it happened in the first place and how...

Malala Yousafzai - the fifteen year old girl shot by the Pakistani Taliban for championing education for girls - is many things: she is a brave, she is a person of principle and she is an inspiration to anyone who supports of the idea of human rights.

Her father...

In spite of the fact that levels of crime in the UK are still falling and have done for the last ten years the government television adverts encouraging people to go out and vote for the new crime commissioners cynically highlight violent crimes as if they were a feature of...

George Pratt - an eleven year old - has been prevented from joining the Scouts because he does not believe in a god. Looking at the Scout policies it appears that a belief in any god will do but a lack of belief will not. This policy is wrong and...

Chris Grayling and the Conservatives are promising to change the law on householders defending themselves against burglars. His argument appears to be based on an assumption that the current law does not support a householder who acts honestly to defend themselves where they think they are in danger from an...