News and Opinion

It is entirely at the discretion of Local Education Authorities whether they pay for ‘home to faith school transport’ by providing a special subsidy to help children with parents of certain religions get to a school that inculcates their religion rather than attend their local school. Currently, 40% of all English Local Education Authorities (including Leicestershire) pay for such transport incurring a cost of more than £20M (2008/09) met by the Council Tax payer. Ninety out of one hundred and fifty-two Local Education Authorities (i.e. 60%) do not provide such transport. The subsidy isn’t available for all children from a religious background travelling to ‘faith’ schools, nor to those of no faith, but only to a select few, whose parents follow a privileged religion and have “chosen” to send their children to a school other than their nearest allocated one. The scheme defies logic. How can it be right to provide transport to sectarian ‘faith schools’ but not to other scho

It is entirely at the discretion of Local Education Authorities whether they pay for ‘home to faith school transport’. That is provide a special subsidy to help children with parents of certain religions get to a school that inculcates their religion rather than attend their local school. Currently, 40% of all English Local Education Authorities (including Leicestershire) pay for such transport. This is at a total cost of £20.5M (2008/09) to the Council Tax payer. Ninety out of one hundred and fifty-two Local Education Authorities (i.e. 60%) do not provide such transport. The subsidy isn’t available for all children from a religious background travelling to ‘faith’ schools, nor to those of no faith, but only to a select few, whose parents follow a privileged religion and have “chosen” to send their children to a school other than their nearest allocated one. The scheme defies logic. How can it be right to provide transport to sectarian ‘faith schools’ but not to other sch

Last night’s lecture at Secular Hall was given by Prof. Andrew Tobin of Leicester University. He’s a practising micro-biologist and also a believer in Christianity. It seems an earlier talk had prompted him to want to explain how being a scientist and being a Christian believer were entirely compatible. As far as I’m concerned he failed in his mission – and what is more it seems he only succeeds in it in terms of his personal life by separating off his science and his religious beliefs into completely separate compartments in his psyche. Thus he seemed unable to deal with a simple question by one of the audience – ‘how, as a scientist, can you marry up your scientific method with your belief in the magic reported in the Bible – the miracles, the resurrection and ascension, the water into wine, etc?’ I’m sure that problem will be dealt with by others but something else he said got me thinking on a different tack. This was his emphasis on Christianity as a source of values an

A great deal is now being said about tactical voting in Thursday’s general election. Labour ministers have dropped several hints and even made overt calls on Labour supporters to vote tactically for the Lib-Dem candidate (in Tory/Lib-Dem marginals) in order to prevent Tory gains. So far nobody on the Lib-Dem side has reciprocated. This is a result of their determination to appear confident they can displace Labour for second place in the popular vote and thereby establish a legitimacy for their primary goal of electoral reform. Think of the coming upswell of opinion against first-past-the-post if more people vote Lib-Dem than Labour and yet they come out with only one-third of Labour’s tally of seats. This is not at all unlikely. Because of the way the three parties votes are unevenly spread through the country the Lib-Dems would not win a majority of seats even if their popular vote was significantly greater than those of the other two parties. It also indicates the Lib-