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Presbyterian Church: Alderdice hits out at Charity Commission over dossier response

Presbyterian Church: Alderdice hits out at Charity Commission over dossier response

BBC Newsa day ago
One of the authors of a dossier alleging a culture of bullying and abuse of power within the Presbyterian Church in Ireland has said he feels let down by the response of the Charity Commission.The document, compiled by former Alliance Party leader Lord Alderdice and Roy Simpson, alleges the mistreatment of ministers and members who held differing views.Lord Alderdice said that despite submitting the dossier to it three years ago, the Charity Commission "hasn't even made enquiry about it".The commission said it is "aware of concerns regarding the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and is looking into the issues raised".
The Presbyterian Church in Ireland said the Charity Commission had informed it that a document had been submitted to them "relating to matters concerning the church". "The commission has not asked the church for any comment on this document. "Should we be approached by the commission to do so, we will cooperate fully."
Speaking on BBC Radio Ulster's Talkback programme, Lord Alderdice said that the Charity Commission "has somewhat let us down"."I don't know why. "If it is that they don't have the resources, they need to be talking to the government to say 'you've given us a job to do, we don't have the resources'," he said."When they say to you we are investigating or we are exploring, they haven't even picked it up with the Presbyterian Church."Lord Alderdice said his complaint goes beyond the question of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland, to whether or not the Charity Commission for Northern Ireland is "actually fit for purpose"."Is it actually there doing what it's supposed to do? Three years on I have to say one has to be questioning that."
In its statement the commission said: "The commission has received a file in connection with this. "As documentation submitted to the charity regulator by a concerned party, this information is currently under active consideration."The Presbyterian Church in Ireland case involves a lot of detailed and sometimes quite complex information, which has resulted in the investigation taking longer than usual to complete."The commission will keep reviewing the information we've received and aims to move things forward toward a suitable outcome over the next few months."
Because the PCI operates across the island of Ireland, the report was submitted to charity regulators in both Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland.The Charities Regulator in the Republic says it does not comment on matters regarding individual charities.
The co-author of the dossier, former Presbyterian minister Roy Simpson, said that they interviewed and investigated 12 people, adding that that was "only really the tip of the iceberg".He added: "These people are very decent people, they're upright people, they're people who have given their lives in service to the church, they're not cranks and they don't tell lies."They feel like they've been subject to spying, stalking, they've been subject to bullying, they've been subject to harassment and all sorts of derogatory comments said about them."There seems to be a pattern of behaviour from a small number of officials in the Presbyterian Church and unfortunately the same people, the same perpetrators, crop up again and again."
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Russia says talks on Ukraine's security without Moscow are a 'road to nowhere'
Russia says talks on Ukraine's security without Moscow are a 'road to nowhere'

Reuters

time2 minutes ago

  • Reuters

Russia says talks on Ukraine's security without Moscow are a 'road to nowhere'

MOSCOW, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Russia said on Wednesday attempts to resolve security issues relating to Ukraine without Moscow's participation were a "road to nowhere", sounding a warning to the West as it scrambles to work out guarantees for Kyiv's future protection. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov particularly criticised the role of European leaders who met U.S. President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy at the White House on Monday to discuss security guarantees for Ukraine that could help to end the three-and-a-half-year-oldwar. Lavrov said Russia was in favour of "truly reliable" guarantees for Ukraine and suggested these could be modelled on a draft accord that was discussed between the warring parties in Istanbul in 2022, in the early weeks of the war. At the time, Kyiv rejected that proposal on the grounds that Moscow would have held effective veto power over any military response to come to its aid. "We cannot agree with the fact that now it is proposed to resolve questions of security, collective security, without the Russian Federation. This will not work," Lavrov told a joint news conference after meeting the foreign minister of Jordan. "I am sure that in the West and above all in the United States they understand perfectly well that seriously discussing security issues without the Russian Federation is a utopia, it's a road to nowhere." Lavrov's comments highlighted Moscow's demand for Western governments to directly engage with it on questions of security concerning Ukraine and Europe, something it says they have so far refused to do. Moscow this week also restated its categorical rejection of "any scenarios involving the deployment of NATO troops in Ukraine". Lavrov accused the European leaders who met Trump and Zelenskiy of carrying out "a fairly aggressive escalation of the situation, rather clumsy and, in general, unethical attempts to change the position of the Trump administration and the president of the United States personally... We did not hear any constructive ideas from the Europeans there". Trump said on Monday the United States would help guarantee Ukraine's security in any deal to end Russia's war there. He subsequently said he had ruled out putting U.S. troops on the ground in Ukraine, but the U.S. might provide air support as part of a deal to end the hostilities. Lavrov said the proposals discussed between Russia and Ukraine in Istanbul in 2022 were a "very good example" of a possible security blueprint, noting that they would also have required Ukraine to become a neutral state and give up its ambition to join NATO. Under the draft discussed then, Ukraine would have received security guarantees from a group of countries including the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council - China, Russia, the United States, Britain and France. A partially agreed draft said the guarantor states - including Russia - would respect and observe Ukraine's independence and sovereignty and refrain from the threat or use of force against it. Ukraine wanted the guarantors, if it came under attack, to provide assistance that could include "closing airspace over Ukraine, providing necessary weapons, using armed force in order to restore and subsequently maintain the security of Ukraine as a permanently neutral state". But Russia insisted any decision must be agreed by all guarantor st ates - meaning Moscow would have a veto.

Boomers behaving badly: Why the over-60s are the wildest generation
Boomers behaving badly: Why the over-60s are the wildest generation

Telegraph

time32 minutes ago

  • Telegraph

Boomers behaving badly: Why the over-60s are the wildest generation

Gransnet, the popular social networking site for grandparents, is aflame. Not with disputes over how to roast a chicken or subdue a pack of feral toddlers, but with the question of whether joining Palestine Action is morally acceptable or not. And this, rather than student unions or the bars of Dalston in east London, is the place to be debating it, as baby boomers take up the cause of an organisation that was banned under terror legislation last month. New figures from the Met Police reveal that of the 532 people arrested for supporting Palestine Action in London earlier this month, the average age was 54 but the largest group was people in their 60s (147 arrests), closely followed by 97 arrests of those in their 70s. Twentysomethings, long thought to be the natural foot soldiers of protest, trailed in third place with just 54 arrests. 'It's important to remember these people came of age in a period obsessed with social justice,' says Bobby Duffy, an academic and author of The Generation Myth: Why When You're Born Matters. 'They had the spirit of May 1968, [a period of civil unrest in] France, behind them, and experienced regular protests against the status quo in the UK and US. Retirement also gives you more time – there's a squeezed middle of people too busy with work, children, mortgages and ageing parents to look outward. But when you're young and when you're old, you have the space to focus on what you really care about.' Patricia, 75, has spent decades on the picket line protesting against nuclear weapons and the Iraq war, and for abortion rights and marriage equality. Joining Palestine Action, she believed, would have been the logical next step. 'We're the right people to be doing it,' she says. 'I'm not planning to become a lawyer or travel to America, so the worst-case scenario of a criminal record doesn't really affect me.' But in the end it was her millennial children that intervened. 'My daughters were so upset by the idea I might be arrested that I reconsidered.' Increasingly, we are all having to upend our notions that protest is the preserve of idealistic undergraduates. Many of the marches against Donald Trump have seen retirees outnumber students, while the Extinction Rebellion protests have been almost as thick with grey hair as pink. Who could forget the photographs of a then 60-year-old Emma Thompson perched on a boat in Oxford Circus a few years ago? 'I have often said that baby boomers are going to fundamentally reshape what ageing looks like,' says Jennifer Ailshire, a professor of gerontology at the University of Southern California. 'We had the stereotype of a grandma knitting or an old fellow gardening because we have associated ageing with frailty and ill-health and a lack of ability to be out in social spaces. Boomers are the first generation in the history of the world to have really benefited from new medical interventions and advice on how to stay fitter for longer, and as a result a great number feel younger and seem younger than those who came before them.' Duffy agrees that health is the largest reason for this culture-changing shift. 'Life expectancy in the UK is now over 80; for many, that means a second act spanning decades,' he says. Another important factor is wealth. 'This generation of retirees has far more disposable income than any other. They benefited from rising house prices, golden economic conditions, generous final-salary pensions and free higher education. That creates the means to have an unusual level of freedom.' The third is attitudes. 'This is the post-war generation that drove changes in gender equality, sexual behaviour and individual freedom,' says Duffy. 'They're distinct from their parents in almost every social measure so it's no wonder they are approaching old age with a very different mindset.' This last point is evidenced by the fact that boomers are wilder in their politics – and their pleasures. This is in comparison to both the silent generation and (somewhat shamingly for anyone under 40) their own adult children. Around Britain, millennials and older Gen Zs – who have largely moderated their drinking and swapped clubbing for 6am yoga classes – are quietly watching their parents' social calendars and holiday plans completely outpace their own. Lucy, 33, now refuses to have dinner with her parents during the week. It's not because she is too busy, or because she has too much on to leave work on time. It's not even because they live too far away – after they retired, her parents sold the family home in Wimbledon and bought a two-bedroom flat in Bloomsbury so they could be closer to the best restaurants and bars in the capital. 'I can't see my parents because I can't take the hangovers at my desk the day after,' says Lucy. 'My friends and I tend to stick to one or two drinks, or we meet up to exercise if it's a Monday or Tuesday, but my parents ply me with cocktails and wine and when I refuse they joke about me being pregnant. I love them to bits but I've realised I need to limit my time with them to weekends. They're just too much for me.' This isn't just anecdotal. Baby boomers now drink more alcohol than any other age group, according to figures from the now defunct Public Health England. Studies show that three in 10 boomers drink five days or more a week, while less than 1 per cent of Gen Z does the same. 'Alcohol drinking is incredibly generational,' says Duffy. 'It's about what you were socialised into, but also other changes: it is more difficult and more expensive for young people to get alcohol, whereas boomers were brought up on the idea that going out means drinking. Back then, there was massive sponsorship of big events by alcohol companies, and the advertising of alcohol was embedded everywhere; now young people tend to associate heavy drinking with health problems.' As for going out, Ailshire argues that boomers have always been a particularly social generation. 'Younger adults today have far less time for leisure, and the idea of a single-earner household has almost completely gone out the window,' she says. As a result, millennials are struggling to pay childcare bills and mortgages, and simply don't have the money for babysitters and restaurants. Similarly, those in cities often don't have space in their houses for dinners and parties. 'Then there is the fact that phone addiction eats up so much of younger generations' free time,' says Ailshire. 'It all adds up to a picture where over-60s are socialising much more than those coming up behind them.' And where drinking goes, other traditionally 'bad' behaviours often follow. The over-65s have experienced a 20 per cent rise in STIs in the UK in the last five years, while in Australia, a government report this year found that alcohol, tobacco and drug use among the over-60s had doubled in a decade. Globally, the pattern repeats itself. In France, Les Papy Boomers have become a political force, organising environmental protests from Marseille to Paris. In the US, the 'Raging Grannies' have made headlines for turning up at demonstrations in feather boas and floppy hats, singing protest songs rewritten to target companies in the fossil fuel industry. In Japan, a wave of 'silver start-ups' has seen retirees launching fashion brands, dance studios and even underground nightclubs. Boomers, in other words, are not quietly retiring to potter around the garden and watch Midsomer Murders. And while younger generations may be physically fitter and more socially progressive on paper, they are finding it difficult to match the heady mix of financial freedom and healthy, work-free years their parents are clearly benefiting from. What remains to be seen is whether this is a generational anomaly – the final flourish of a cohort born into a rare period of post-war prosperity who went on to dominate the culture of nearly every decade they have been adults in – or whether it is the new template for ageing in the 21st century. 'I think sadly this is unique to the boomers,' says Ailshire, who was born in 1981. 'I just don't think we will be able to retire at the age baby boomers have, and nor will many of us have the same level of wealth when we are no longer working. The boomers are the aberrant generation – and I'm not confident that the concept of a wild retirement will endure much beyond them.'

‘Much-loved' Finnish MP, 30, found dead in Helsinki parliament building
‘Much-loved' Finnish MP, 30, found dead in Helsinki parliament building

The Independent

timean hour ago

  • The Independent

‘Much-loved' Finnish MP, 30, found dead in Helsinki parliament building

Tributes have been paid to a Finnish MP who was found dead in the country's parliament building in Helsinki. The death of Eemeli Peltonen, a 30-year-old MP for the Social Democratic Party (SDP), was confirmed by the communications office for the Finnish parliament, the country's national broadcaster Yle reported. Helsinki police told The Independent that one person died at around 11am on Tuesday at the Parliament House, and that foul play is not suspected. 'He was a much-loved member of our community and we will miss him deeply. A young life has ended far too early,' chair of the SDP parliamentary group Tytti Tuppurainen said. Prime Minister Petteri Orpo suspended all official political work by his office for the rest of the day. A minute's silence was arranged by Mr Orpo, who said Mr Peltonen was popular among his colleagues, public broadcaster Yle reported. 'We received truly shocking news from Parliament, our shared workplace. One of our colleagues has died in the parliamentary premises. This is very sad news," Mr Orpo said, according to Yle. "At the same time, we send strength to the family, loved ones and colleagues. This deeply affects all of us' Confirming the death, speaker of the Finnish parliament Jussi Halla-aho wrote on X: 'On behalf of the Parliament, I express my condolences to the family and loved ones of Representative Peltonen. Peltonen was a well-liked and respected colleague across party lines.' 'Police are investigating the cause of death, but so far they do not suspect foul play,' police said, adding that an investigation is being launched into the cause of death. Born in 1994, Mr Peltonen began serving as a city councillor aged when he was still a teenager in 2013. In 2017, he became the chairman of Järvenpää council, a position he remained in for four years. He first ran as a parliamentary candidate in 2019, when he received 3,492 votes but was not elected. Four years later he was elected in the 2023 parliamentary elections in Uusimaa, receiving 5,747 votes. In late June, Mr Peltonen revealed on social media that a kidney problem leading to an infection had kept him away from much parliamentary work in recent weeks. He said he was bring treated with 'an intravenous antibiotic cure in Meilahti [outskirts of Helsinki], which takes its time'. 'I'm already discharged from hospital, but due to the situation I'm on summer sick leave and I'm now fully focused on recovering from the illness,' he added.

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