Intercessor Focus: praying for 2020
Pray for Brexit leavers and remainers to end enmity and rebuild a genuinely United Kingdom. Boris Johnson has an 80-seat majority; may his government members speak with strong voices in Brussels and achieve God’s purposes for our nations. There is a possibility that we will leave the EU without a deal on World Trade Organisation terms. May we be philosophical: Britain has been through worse in the past and moved on. Many promises were made before the election. Pray for the new government to reignite the North of England while keeping to its promise not to increase taxes (see also next article). Pray for enough new houses to be built on brownfield sites to end the housing crisis. May the promised 31,000 nurses and 20,000 police officers be recruited, trained and used by God to build a safer, healthier society. Pray also for local elections on 7 May to bring people back to voting on local issues, not national ones.
Civil service changes
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 10 is planning a string of changes to the structure of government, with several departments set to be merged or rebadged in the early months of Boris Johnson's administration. Rachel Wolf, the Tory manifesto author, said officials should expect to be kept on projects where they ‘know the background’. In a move that could anger civil service unions, she hinted at a ‘rethink of incentives, numbers and pay’ in the organisation. She is urging Downing Street to oversee a wider change in the organisation, saying civil servants were currently too focused on ‘stakeholders’ and not the public, with too many officials seeing special interests as their customers. For information about a government reshuffle, go to
British pastor and children drown
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 made swimming difficult for them’, and that they were somehow dragged into the middle of the pool. The hotel owners issued a statement stressing that exhaustive investigations by the police confirmed that the pool was working normally and there was no malfunction of any kind. They also cited the police statement that ‘the tragic accident was due to the lack of swimming expertise of the victims’. Olubunmi said that they were able to swim. Her family is not satisfied with the idea that it was a simple accident, and may open a parallel investigation into the deaths.
BBC ‘a secular church’
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 tells us what we ought to think about things. Mr Moore had difficulty trying to get information about climate change onto the programme, even though he was the guest editor and should have had a free rein. He said the obstacles came because of bureaucracy and the fact that Roger Harabin, the environment editor, is ‘so biased’. Nick Robinson defended his colleague, stating the BBC is regulated by Ofcom. The director of Affinity, a network of UK churches, said that he has ‘a lot of sympathy’ with Mr Moore; BBC intolerance of any other view causes questioning and framing of questions to be based on a number of presumptions.
Youngsters with knives at school
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 they were under ten - the age of criminal responsibility. The most common age group for suspects was 14- to 15-year-olds. Five adults were also investigated for having knives on school premises. These figures follow similar disclosures by the majority of forces in England and Wales; numbers are much higher in places like London. An October investigation found that thousands of children had brought weapons to school, with some suspects as young as four. Pray for churches, support workers, and social services as they seek to help overwhelmed parents juggling busy lives with badly-behaved children and teenagers.
Personal debt crisis
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 (credit cards, personal loans and overdrafts) was £225bn. A decade ago Britain was near the peak of cheap credit-fuelled debt binges. Many hoped that personal debt would be reined in. This has not happened. Borrowing increased as wages failed to keep pace with inflation. These statistics do not include secured borrowing such as mortgage debt or student loans, which increases the figure substantially. Experts believe the personal debt surge is due to credit becoming cheaper towards the end of the decade. StepChange, a debt charity, recently estimated that across Britain, over three million people fell behind on an essential household bill in the last 12 months.
Church discourages bias against women
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 priests enables different types of conversations that probably wouldn't happen if you're a man. My background as a nurse means people often talk to me in a different way.' The presence of female leaders within the Church has risen in recent years, with the number of women in senior leadership positions doubling between 2012 and 2017. Of the 115 UK bishops within the Anglican Church, currently 25 are women. However the door is still closed for female priests within the Catholic Church.
Cyprus: rape case
UK foreign secretary Dominic Raab expressed ‘serious concern’ about a possible miscarriage of justice by a Cypriot court convicting a British teenager of lying about being gang-raped on holiday. The 19-year-old originally told police she was raped by twelve Israeli youths. She withdrew her complaint two weeks later, saying she was ‘forced’ to do so by police who left her ‘scared for my life’ and who did not record the interview; it was her word against theirs in court. The alleged attackers have returned home, while she faces jail and a fine. The case raises questions about Cyprus’s treatment of victims of sexual assault. Protesters claim the Cypriot authorities ‘always find a reason not to believe women who claim they have been raped’. The teenager has been contacted by others who were ‘forced to remain silent’ during similar experiences. She will be sentenced on 7 January.
Pope Francis: put away phones at mealtimes
Despite their ability to connect us to others across the globe, mobile phones may undermine the benefits we derive from interacting with those across the table at mealtimes. Pope Francis wants us all to switch off our cell phones and socialise during dinner, and research backs him up. Researchers have grown increasingly concerned about the psychological and social consequences of excessive smartphone use, and some restaurateurs have taken matters into their own hands by instituting cell phone bans or offering diners discounts if they surrender their phones. In a recent piece of research for a psychological journal, participants felt more distracted during mealtimes when their phones were present, thus decreasing their enjoyment of time spent with friends and family. Also, incidents of head and neck injuries related to cell phone use have risen steadily over the past two decades.
Global: anti-Semitism on the rise
Hudson Valley towns, north of New York, have seen an influx of Hasidic Jews in recent years, and they have been suffering violent attacks following a deadly 10 December shooting rampage at a kosher market where six Jewish people died. New York City police received at least six reports of attacks in one week. Mayor Bill de Blasio promised an increased police presence in neighbourhoods with large Jewish populations. In London, anti-Semitic graffiti were daubed on a synagogue and several kosher shops during the Jewish festival of Hanukkah. The graffiti showed the Star of David and ‘911’, referencing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that Jews are responsible for the 9/11 terror attack or Kristallnacht, the organised nationwide attack on Jews which began in Germany on 9 November 1938. In November newspaper headlines stated that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Europe, riding a wave of nationalism. See also