Month: July 2022

Religion

The Inter Faith Network for the UK

With so many different religions bumping along together on these islands, the concept of facilitating better understanding and co-operation between them was […]

With so many different religions bumping along together on these islands, the concept of facilitating better understanding and co-operation between them was perhaps inevitable and certainly admirable. The Inter Faith Network for the United Kingdom (IFN) is a charity that was founded in 1987 after extensive preparations and research by John Brian Pearce (1935-) beginning in 1984.

Pearce later became an IFN Director. The first co-Chairs were Rabbi Hugo Gryn and Bishop Jim Thompson, supported by co-Vice Chairs Dr. Indarjit Singh, Dr. Mughram Al-Ghamdi and Om Prakash Sharma.

The IFN offers membership to various types of multi- and single faith groups around the country (currently numbering 176) and arranges seminars, joint initiatives, consultation and information services, including a directory. It encourages inter-faith sports and social activities and has contributed to the school curriculum for Religious Education. It has also worked with the Commission on Racial Equality.

Though its aims may seem idealistic and even unthinkable for some, the IFN’s shared Act of Commitment voices a hope that is entirely in keeping with the British psyche, that:-

“We commit ourselves,
As people of many faiths,
To work together for the common good,
Uniting to build a better society,
Grounded in values and ideals we share…”

(Image: Catholic Church England & Wales at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)

28/07/2022
3 min
2 years
213 words

Politics

The Brexit Party

2019 was the year the Brexit Party emerged as a phenomenal grass-roots success in British politics, focused on fully implementing the 2016 […]

2019 was the year the Brexit Party emerged as a phenomenal grass-roots success in British politics, focused on fully implementing the 2016 referendum vote to leave the European Union. The Brexit Party’s rapid progress can be summarised thus:-

Registration by Catherine Blaiklock in January 2019
Official launch in April 2019 with Nigel Farage as Leader
Election of 29 Members to the European Parliament in May 2019 (the largest representation there) as ‘insider’ guardians of UK sovereignty
Strategic placing of MP candidates in November 2019 to avoid splitting the ‘Please-Just-Get-On-With-Leaving’ vote…
…in the December 2019 General Election, won with a huge 80-seat majority by an ostensibly pro-Brexit Conservative Party, bolstered by voters who had never voted Conservative before, simply to “Get Brexit Done!”
Brexit finally happens on 31st January 2020! The Brexit Party hosts a celebration in London’s Parliament Square.

Kent-born Nigel Farage (1964-) had spent years campaigning for Brexit. Although his Party had no MPs, his charisma, his gift for speech-making and his political insights, rescued the UK from moving deeper and deeper into an EU behemoth.

In 2021 he stood down as Leader and the Party’s Chairman, Londoner Richard Tice (1964-), took over. The Party was re-branded as ‘Reform UK’, with an expanded range of common-sense policies for the post-Brexit country.

(Top image of Nigel Farage: Gage Skidmore at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)

25/07/2022
3 min
2 years
218 words

Quoting Neil Oliver...

I love Britain more than anywhere else in the world. With all my heart I declare that those of us born here, or who have made a home here by choice, are the luckiest, most blessed of all people. I am British. I will always be British.