Latest news with #EnglishParliament
The Independent
08-05-2025
- Politics
- The Independent
English voters face ‘democratic deficit' without devolved parliament
English voters who do not have a devolved national parliament face a 'democratic deficit', a Conservative MP has warned. Andrew Rosindell described himself as a 'strong supporter' of the UK Parliament in Westminster but told the Commons that English people suffer with a 'rather diminished democratic voice'. Unlike Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales, where some decisions are taken by lawmakers in Stormont, Holyrood and Cardiff Bay, England does not have a devolved national assembly. Mr Rosindell told MPs that after the devolution process in the late 1990s, 'for the first time in centuries, the unifying lynchpin of these islands – the crown in Parliament – seemed to have been wrenched out of place'.Speaking in a debate about English Affairs, the Conservative MP later added: 'What must in any case be acknowledged is that England, the most populous region with the biggest economy, is the only home nation not to have her own devolved parliament. 'This has created a democratic deficit in which the proud people of England, such as those in my constituency of Romford, Essex, are left with a rich cultural heritage, as I've outlined earlier, and without a fully developed but rather diminished democratic voice.' Father of the House Sir Edward Leigh, the Conservative MP for Gainsborough, urged Mr Rosindell to 'please spare us another parliament'. The Romford MP replied that he was a 'very strong supporter of this Parliament and of this United Kingdom', added he 'would have most certainly not voted to break up our United Kingdom in the way that we have done', and said he would 'love to see' the London Assembly abolished in the capital. Liberal Democrat Scotland spokeswoman Christine Jardine intervened and said: 'What we did was devolve some of the power closer to the people so that they felt more represented, not in an attempt to break up the country, but – as a member of the party who was instrumental with the Labour Party in achieving it – so that we held the country together but gave people the feeling of being closer to where decisions were made.' Mr Rosindell replied that he thought 'all members of Parliament should be equal and elected representatives should be equal, but if you make different types of elected representation at different levels, it obviously means that English MPs have a different role than Scottish MPs, because they have Members of the Scottish Parliament in Scotland, which have another role'. Labour MP Adam Jogee, who opened the debate, had earlier said: 'We must work to ensure that people across England, and indeed all those across the United Kingdom, continue to feel pride in our flag and in our communities, and feel hope for the future and respect for our past.' The Newcastle-under-Lyme MP added that 'any talk about love for flag and country must be matched by an investment in the people who make them what they are – investment in our national health service, in our education and employment support services, in our arts and culture, and in our villages, towns and cities'. Communities minister Rushanara Ali said St George's day was an opportunity to 'fight against the forces of division' that present the English identity as 'an exclusive identity, that is a white only identity'. Mr Rosindell intervened and asked: 'Would the Government consider St George's Day to become a public holiday in England?' Ms Ali replied that she could not 'respond with a positive answer right now'. She added: 'We must inspire the next generation to carry forward the best of England through education, opportunity and the belief that no matter who you are or where you come from, you belong and you can help shape this country's future.'
Fox News
20-04-2025
- General
- Fox News
Historic Maryland church opens doors to visitors 320 years after closing down
Visitors have been able to step into a reconstructed 17th-century Catholic church in Maryland for the first time – an opportunity over 320 years in the making. Historic St. Mary's City, an archaeological organization, opened up its Brick Chapel on April 12. The building was originally constructed in 1667. St. Mary's City is a colonial town located in St. Mary's County, off the western shore of Chesapeake Bay. Fox News Digital spoke to Henry Miller, Ph.D., a senior research fellow at Historic St. Mary's City, about the opening, the result of multiple excavations since 1988. (See the video at the top of this article.) While a wooden chapel was first built on the site in 1645, the structure burned down when Maryland was attacked by English troops from the English Parliament. "But in the 1660s, things had settled down, and the Brick Chapel, the first major brick building in Maryland, began to be constructed," Miller said. "It was a very significant architectural achievement for the time and place." In the colonial era, it was generally forbidden by law for Catholics to have any churches, but Maryland offered a notable exception. "It was only because of Lord Baltimore's policy of liberty, of conscience and freedom of religion that [the church] could be erected," the expert said. "So [the church] is really an important statement about the beginnings of religious freedom in what is now the United States and beyond." The Brick Chapel was the center of Catholic worship in Maryland until 1704, when the colony's Protestant governor shuttered the building's doors, Miller said. The sheriff "locked the door, [took] the key with him, and never again allow[ed] that building to be used for worship." "The freedom of belief, the freedom of religion that Lord Baltimore had championed totally ended at that time period," the archaeologist said. "A few years later, the building was demolished, and it basically disappeared from view and memory for over 200 years." "That building could not have been constructed anywhere else in the English-speaking world at this time." The church was entirely forgotten about until 1938, when an architectural historian spotted peculiar remains of a cross-shaped brick building. Today, the Brick Chapel – rebuilt between 2004 and 2009 – has a recently finished interior that accurately captures what a 17th-century Catholic church would have looked like at the time. Miller recreated the building's interior through several means, such as researching similar churches and obtaining art that was commonly used in Jesuit churches, he said. Not many artifacts survive at the site, thanks to Jesuits who dismantled their church and reused the materials elsewhere. "The Jesuits were some of the first recyclers … They took everything above ground away and reused it," Miller said. "What we found were lots of fragments of plaster, of mortar and the five-foot-deep, three-foot-wide brick foundation." "We actually let visitors see some of that original brickwork," Miller added. "There was weird stone we found there in pieces, [and] we now know that they imported 14 tons of stone from Europe to pave the floor of this building." But the church still retains some original features. Miller also noted that the original tabernacle of the church survived, along with 17th-century lead coffins that visitors can view under a glass floor. "The graves are both all around and inside the chapel," Miller said. "There's maybe 60 or 70 graves in the chapel, but there's 300 to 400 outside." He added, "This was the largest 17th century cemetery in Maryland. So the grave distribution showed us also where the altar area, the formal area, began." Still, the process has been challenging – and Miller was only able to find one written description of the chapel, dating back to the late 1690s. "A Protestant governor, Francis Nicholson, was very anti-Catholic," the archaeologist said. "And he said in a report, 'The Catholics have several chapels in Maryland, including a good brick chapel at Saint Mary's.'" "We want you, as a visitor, to walk in and have a sense of what a 17th-century person would have seen." Miller joked, "Oh, how we wish he was a verbose kind of guy who would have given us more information. But for him to even say it was 'good' was probably a significant clue there." He added, "So it is based on lots of different information. It is as accurate as we can come up with." Still, the historian emphasized that no formal worship will take place in the new building - instead, it will exist as an exhibit on the history of religious freedom in Maryland. "The seeds of faith planted there … grew the church and the first diocese that was established in Maryland in the year 1790," Miller said. "So it truly is the founding place of the modern Catholic Church in the United States." "But it's also a symbol, and this is what's important," he said. "That building could not have been constructed anywhere else in the English-speaking world at this time." Visitors may be surprised by the elegance of the church's interior. Instead of a classic colonial New England church filled with wooden pews, the Brick Chapel has no pews at all. Miller noted that, in colonial-era Catholic churches, worshippers either stood or knelt. "The pews are more of a Protestant innovation," Miller added. "If you had a two-hour-long sermon, seating would be very helpful there. Catholic sermons were probably considerably shorter." Miller said that decades of work have created a "unique exhibit." "We also want you, as a visitor, to walk in and have a sense of what a 17th-century person would have seen," the archaeologist said. "We've hidden the exhibits in the arms of the building, where you don't see them until you get right up on top of them." "It's one that we have worked on for over 37 years, but I am delighted that it will finally be completed and we can start more effectively telling this significant American story."
Yahoo
25-03-2025
- Yahoo
On This Day, March 25: Saudi King Faisal assassinated
March 25 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1807, the English Parliament abolished the slave trade. In 1911, a fire at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City killed 146 people, mostly female immigrant workers. The tragedy led to the eventual enactment of many state and national workplace safety laws. In 1947, a mine explosion in Centralia, Ill., killed 111 men, most of them asphyxiated by gas. In 1954, the Radio Corporation of America began commercial production of color television sets. In 1957, Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands and West Germany signed a treaty in Rome establishing the European Economic Community, also known as the common market. In 1965, white civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo of Detroit, 39, was killed on a road near Selma, Ala. Three Ku Klux Klansmen were convicted of violating Liuzzo's civil rights, but not for murder. In 1975, King Faisal of Saudi Arabia was shot to death at his palace in Riyadh by a "mentally deranged" nephew who was later executed. In 1990, an arson fire swept an overcrowded social club, the Happy Land, in the Bronx borough of New York City, killing 87 people. Cuban refugee Julio Gonzalez, the arsonist -- whose former girlfriend worked at the club and survived the fire -- was convicted on multiple counts of arson and murder. He died in prison in September 2016. In 1994, U.S. forces completed a withdrawal from Mogadishu, Somalia, except for a small number of soldiers left behind to provide support for U.N. peacekeepers. In 2006, an estimated 500,000 people protested in Los Angeles against U.S. House-approved bill that would make it a felony to be in the United States illegally. The legislation, which also led to protests in other cities during this period, did not pass in the Senate. In 2010, an explosion sank a South Korean warship on patrol in the Yellow Sea, killing 46 sailors. North Korea denied accusations it had torpedoed the ship. In 2022, Foo Fighters drummer Taylor Hawkins died of a drug overdose in Bogatá, Colombia, shortly before the band were scheduled to perform. He was 50 years old. In 2024, federal agents raided the Los Angeles and Miami homes of musician Sean "Diddy" Combs as part of a sex trafficking investigation.
Yahoo
27-01-2025
- General
- Yahoo
On This Day, Jan. 27: Soviets liberate Auschwitz
Jan. 27 (UPI) -- On this date in history: In 1606, the surviving conspirators in the "Gunpowder Treason" plot to blow up the English Parliament and the king of England on Nov. 5, 1605, were convicted. They were executed four days later. In 1785, the first public university in the United States was founded as the University of Georgia. In 1888, The National Geographic Society was founded in Washington. In 1926, Scottish inventor John Logie Baird launched a revolution in communication and entertainment with the first public demonstration of a true television system in London. In 1944, the Soviet army lifted the Siege of Leningrad, a more than 2-year occupation of the Russian city by Nazi forces in which more than 1 million civilians died or went missing. In 1945, the Soviet army liberated the Auschwitz network of concentration camps in Poland, freeing some 7,000 survivors. Months later, four Jewish young women told United Press correspondent Edward W. Beattie Jr. how they used rouge to during their captivity to avoid being killed along with other prisoners who looked too ill to work. In 1967, U.S. astronauts Virgil "Gus" Grissom, Ed White and Roger Chaffee died in a fire aboard the Apollo 1 spacecraft during a launch simulation at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. In 1973, the United States and North Vietnam signed a cease-fire agreement following lengthy Paris talks between U.S. national security adviser Henry Kissinger and Vietnamese negotiator Le Duc Tho. The same day, the United States announced an end to the military draft. Although the mission officially ended in 1973, the Vietnam War would not be over until April of 1975. In 1984, singer Michael Jackson sustained a burn on his scalp during the filming of a soft-drink commercial. In 1987, U.S. President Ronald Reagan acknowledged mistakes and accepted responsibility in the Iran-Contra arms scandal. In 1991, U.S. planes bombed pipelines to Kuwaiti oil fields to cut off the flow of oil into the Persian Gulf. In 1996, France conducted an open-air nuclear test in the South Pacific. In 1998, in his State of the Union address, U.S. President Bill Clinton hailed the fact that the federal government would have a balanced budget in 1999 -- the first in 30 years. In 2002, a series of explosions at a military depot in Lagos, Nigeria, killed more than 1,000 people. In 2011, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security announced it was replacing the nationwide color-coded, terror-alert scale with a system that would focus on specific terror threats to potential targets. In 2013, fire at the overcrowded Kiss nightclub in Santa Maria, Brazil, killed more than 230 people, most of them victims of smoke inhalation. About 170 others were injured. In 2017, President Donald Trump signed his first executive order banning travel to the United States for people from seven mostly Muslim countries, prompting protests and multiple lawsuits. In 2024, Royal Caribbean's 1,198-foot-long Icon of the Seas, the world's largest cruise ship with a gross tonnage of 250,800, set sail on its maiden passenger voyage from Miami. The ship features 20 decks and can hold about 10,000 people.
