Not another one!  Another arrogant U.N. female ready to bad-mouth  Britain

Britain is so safe to pick on I guess.  The same performance in Iran or Venezuela would get her locked up for slander or some such.  Wonderful Britain just tut-tuts

The United Nations was under fire last night for sending a Costa Rican human rights lawyer to Britain to investigate ‘absurd’ claims that Government welfare reforms have violated the rights of the disabled.

Catalina Devandas Aguilar is expected to visit the UK in the coming months to spearhead an inquiry into claims that Britain is guilty of ‘grave or systematic violations’ of the rights of the disabled.

The inquiry, by the UN’s Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, will report back on a range of issues, including whether welfare cuts have harmed disabled people. Other members of the committee include representatives from Uganda, Kenya, Tunisia and Thailand.

Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger last night described the inquiry as ‘the most absurd and offensive nonsense’.  He added: ‘We have a proud record in this country for the way we treat disabled people.

‘I am not an expert on disability rights in Costa Rica, but I suspect Miss Devandas Aguilar might be better off focusing her efforts much closer to home. The UN should keep their noses out.’

An inquiry is only ordered where the UN committee believes there is evidence of ‘grave or systematic violations’ of the rights of the disabled. It is understood Miss Devandas Aguilar is planning to lead a team of inspectors to the UK in the coming months to talk to campaigners.

Bill Scott, director of policy at Inclusion Scotland, a consortium of disability organisations, said he had been contacted by the UN after submitting a report to the Geneva-based committee.  He told Scotland’s Herald newspaper: ‘The UN have notified us they will be visiting Britain to investigate, and want to meet us.’

Tory MP Ian Liddell-Grainger last night described the inquiry as ‘the most absurd and offensive nonsense’

Disabled people have been affected by a number of welfare reforms in recent years. Disability campaigners claim they were hit disproportionately by the spare room subsidy. Critics say disabled people sometimes need a spare room for a carer or equipment.

Campaigners are also critical of Employment and Support Allowance. Claimants must undergo a test to see if they are capable of work and will have their payments cut by £30 a week to the level of Jobseeker’s Allowance if they are.

Ministers insist the changes have been designed to focus scarce resources on the most needy and encourage those who can work to return to the workplace.

The Department for Work and Pensions has declined to comment on the inquiry, but pointed out that the UK spends around £50billion a year on disabled people and their services. The UK also has stringent equalities legislation.

The investigation threatens to reignite the row between the DWP and the UN over ‘politically motivated’ attacks on Britain.

Last year a group of UN poverty ‘ambassadors’ attacked Britain’s welfare reforms. And in 2013, the UN’s controversial Brazilian housing ‘rapporteur’ Raquel Rolnik criticised cuts to housing benefit. Miss Rolnik, a former Marxist, was dubbed the ‘Brazil Nut’ after claims emerged that she had dabbled in witchcraft.

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Britain's leading Leftist, Jeremy Corbyn, is an utter nut

Jeremy Corbyn described the assassination of Osama bin Laden as a ‘tragedy upon a tragedy’ that would make the world a more dangerous place.

In TV footage which emerged online for the first time last week, the Labour leadership frontrunner criticised the killing of the world’s most wanted terrorist in a raid by US special forces.

He told Iranian national television, shortly after bin Laden was shot four years ago, that the 9/11 mastermind should not have received the ‘death penalty’, but should have been put on trial. Failure to do so, Mr Corbyn said, was ‘a tragedy upon a tragedy’, after the World Trade Center attacks, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Critics have described his remarks as ‘frightening’ and displaying a complete lack of understanding of difficult military operations. They will fuel the deep concerns of many voters about Mr Corbyn’s antipathy to Western foreign policy, and follow the recent chorus of criticism over his associations with Islamic extremists.

Bin Laden became the world’s most wanted man following the attacks on September 11, 2001, which killed nearly 3,000 people when two jets hijacked by extremists from his Al Qaeda network were crashed into the World Trade Center in New York, another hit the Pentagon and one crashed in Pennsylvania.

He was tracked down and shot dead in May 2011 at his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. David Cameron and former Labour leader Ed Miliband praised the US forces for their achievement and said the world was now a ‘safer place’.

But Mr Corbyn told Press TV’s The Agenda programme: ‘There was no attempt whatsoever that I can see to arrest him and put him on trial, to go through that process. This was an assassination attempt, and is yet another tragedy, upon a tragedy, upon a tragedy.

‘The World Trade Center was a tragedy, the attack on Afghanistan was a tragedy, the war in Iraq was a tragedy. Tens of thousands of people have died. Torture has come back on to the world stage … Can’t we learn some lessons from this?’

Presenter Yvonne Ridley, a controversial critic of the West, mentioned reports of a drone strike on another senior Al Qaeda figure, Anwar al-Awlaki, the following day. Mr Corbyn replied: ‘Yes and the next stage will be an attempted assassination on Gaddafi and so it will go on.

‘This will just make the world more dangerous and worse and worse and worse. The solution has got to be law not war.’ He added: ‘I think everyone should be put on trial. I also profoundly disagree with the death penalty under any circumstances for anybody.’

Kevan Jones, Labour’s defence spokesman, said: ‘This just shows you how out of touch he is with what most people’s views are.’

Nadhim Zahawi, a Conservative MP on the Commons foreign affairs select committee, said: ‘Osama bin Laden was a terrorist who any sensible human being in the world would want either killed or arrested. For him to call this a tragedy and appear to compare it to what happened on 9/11 is frightening.’

Alan Mendoza, deputy director of the Henry Jackson Society think-tank, said the comments ‘betray a complete lack of understanding of the conditions in which an extremely difficult military mission was undertaken’.


SOURCE






Pay gap? British women earn MORE than men till their 40s

Women are paid more than men until they reach their 40s, according to an official assessment of the gender pay gap.

It found that the difference between wage levels for male and female employees leans in favour of women rather than men among workers in their 20s and 30s.

Twenty-something women have earned more than men in the same age group for the past decade.

Now, in a further sign that the gender pay gap is retreating, the figures show that for the first time women in their 30s are also paid more than their male contemporaries. Men only become better paid when they reach middle age.

The disappearance of apparent pay bias against women in their 30s comes as growing numbers of women put off having children until later and later ages.

Figures covering last year show that women in their 20s, working full-time and without counting overtime, earned 1.1 per cent more on average than similar men.

The figures, published by the Office for National Statistics in its national hours and earnings survey, also show that women in their 30s out-earned men by 0.2 per cent on average last year.

But a pay gap in favour of men still cuts in after the age of 40. Women in their 40s are paid on average 13.6 per cent less than men, a disadvantage that rises to 18 per cent for those in their 50s.

Girls still earn less than boys until they reach 21. Among 16 and 17-year-olds, boys earn 16.9 per cent more than girls while for 18 to 21-year-olds the gap is 4.8 per cent.

The continuing pay gap in favour of teenage boys may be connected to the greater academic success of girls, which means most able women will go to university or further education. Women have closed the gap on men under 40 at a time when education, career and home ownership have become the priority over marriage and family for millions.

The average age at which a woman has a baby is now 30 and the proportion who have a baby over 35 has trebled since the 1980s. The traditional gender pay gap is also being challenged among the young high earners of Hollywood.

In June the Mail reported that for her latest film Jennifer Lawrence, 25, is to be paid almost double what her male co-star receives. The Hunger Games actress will reportedly get £12.5million to appear in Passengers, while Chris Pratt, star of Guardians of the Galaxy, will receive up to £7.5million

In the past, Oscar-winner Miss Lawrence, a vocal critic of the gender wage gap in Hollywood, has been paid less than male co-stars.

The ONS figures were supplemented by a survey by the Press Association news agency, which said that in 2013 a woman aged between 22 and 29 typically earned £1,111 more than a male rival.

Feminist campaigners said companies should close the pay gap at older ages by offering senior jobs to part-time or job-share managers.

Sam Smethers, of the Fawcett Society, said: ‘Sadly the opposite is true. Once you get to a certain level it is a full-time role, which excludes many women from roles they would be perfectly capable of doing.’

But Patricia Morgan, an author and researcher on the family, said: ‘If the pay gap in the 20s and 30s was the other way around there would be bucketloads of experts jumping up and down demanding that we act to address this dreadful inequality. No-one seems to worry about being unfair to men.

‘This is about women and their ability to choose to have children, and to look after them themselves. There is a smack of totalitarianism about the attitude which says women cannot choose to bring up their own children rather than pursue careers.’

SOURCE






ACLU: Force Catholic Hospitals to Abandon Catholic Faith

The woefully misnamed American Civil Liberties Union is launching a crusade to force Catholic hospitals to act against Catholic moral teachings and the natural law.

This is an un-American attack on religious liberty.

The ACLU's intentions came to light this week after it threatened to sue Mercy Medical Center in Redding, California, which is operated by the Sisters of Mercy. The hospital is a part of Dignity Health, a nonprofit that operates 40 hospitals — 22 of which are Catholic — in California, Nevada and Arizona.

As reported by the San Francisco Chronicle on Monday, Elizabeth Gill, an ACLU lawyer, sent a letter to the hospital threatening legal action if it would not relent on its refusal to allow a woman to be sterilized in its facilities after giving birth there to a child due next month.

"In an Aug. 17 letter to Mercy Medical Center in Redding, Gill said the ACLU would go to court unless the hospital reversed course and authorized the sterilization procedure," the Chronicle reported. "By denying 'pregnancy-related care'..., Gill wrote, the hospital is discriminating on the basis of sex, as defined by California law, and is also allowing 'your corporate entity's religious beliefs' to override a doctor's medical decision, violating a state law against the corporate practice of medicine."

On Tuesday, the Chronicle published another article with this lead: "Facing a possible sex-discrimination lawsuit, a Catholic hospital in Redding reversed its position Monday and agreed to let a woman's doctor sterilize her after she gives birth next month."

Dignity Health's Mercy Medical Center then issued a carefully worded statement indicating that the center, in fact, had not and would not turn away from the Catholic bishops' moral directives on health care.

"In accordance with policy, as well as state and federal law, we respect our patients' privacy by not discussing the specifics of their care," said Dignity's statement.

"What we can share is that in general, it is our practice not to provide sterilization services at Dignity Health's Catholic facilities in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services," said the statement. "As such, tubal ligations are not performed in Catholic hospitals except on a case-by-case basis where a formal review by a committee of physicians and others gives permission to perform the procedure."

"The hospital has always and will continue to operate in accordance with the Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services and medical staff bylaws," Dignity insisted in its statement.

The Ethical and Religious Directives for Catholic Health Care Services, published by the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops, say this about sterilization: "Direct sterilization of either men or women, whether permanent or temporary, is not permitted in a Catholic hospital. Procedures that induce sterility are permitted when their direct effect is the cure or alleviation of a present and serious pathology and a simpler treatment is not available."

The U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops has posted a collection of quotations from church documents on contraception, sterilization and abortion. It includes a statement from Pope Pius XII explaining that "direct sterilization" is a violation of the natural law.

"Direct sterilization — that is, the sterilization which aims, either as a means or as an end in itself, to render child-bearing impossible — is a grave violation of the moral law and therefore unlawful," said the pope.

"[W]hen sterilization began to be much more widely used the Holy See was obliged to declare openly and explicitly that direct sterilization, permanent or temporary, whether of men or women, is illicit in virtue of the natural law, from which the Church herself, as you know, has no power to dispense."

For its part, the ACLU made clear that its ultimate target was not this particular hospital or the outcome of the particular case discussed in the Chronicle. Its ultimate target is the practice of Catholic morality inside Catholic hospitals.

"While we are grateful Mercy Medical Center has agreed to provide medical care in this instance ... the reality remains that there is a clear conflict between the best interests of patients and the directives of the Catholic hospital system," said the ACLU's Gill in an ACLU press release.

"Religious institutions that provide services to the general public should not be allowed to hold religion as an excuse to discriminate or deny important health care," she said.

The ACLU then said: "The hospital's directives, written by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops, classify common reproductive health procedures as 'intrinsically evil."

In fact, Directive 70 published by the bishops says: "Catholic health care organizations are not permitted to engage in immediate material cooperation in actions that are intrinsically immoral, such as abortion, euthanasia, assisted suicide, and direct sterilization."

We now live in a country where self-proclaimed advocates of "civil liberties" believe they can get the courts to force Catholic institutions to cooperate in these evil acts.

SOURCE

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, FOOD & HEALTH SKEPTIC, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here. 

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