Monthly Archives: April 2017

Bishop Declan Lang (Mazur/catholicchurch.org.uk)

The bishop said that every execution is a violation of the innate dignity of the human person

The Bishop of Clifton has reiterated his call for the Church to work for the complete abolition of the death penalty.

Bishop Declan Lang, who head the English and Welsh bishops department for international affairs said that while he welcomed the news that worldwide use of the death penalty had decreased, there was still much more progress to be made.

In a statement released today he said: More than 1,000 people were executed last year they are not just statistics. Every execution is a violation of the innate dignity of the human person and we must continue to heed Pope Francis call to work for complete global abolition.

I am encouraged by the UK governments continued opposition to the death penalty in all circumstances, as recently reiterated at the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Now is a critical moment for the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to actively prioritise its work in this area and help continue the trend towards a world without executions.

As the UK establishes new economic relationships outside the EU, it is also more important than ever that we use trade agreements as an opportunity to promote human rights, including abolition of this inhumane and indefensible punishment.

In an article for The Universe last year, Bishop Declan Lang said that during the Year of Mercy Catholics should commit themselves to seeking an end to executions everywhere.

Throughout his pontificate, Pope Francis has also repeated his plea for a world free from capital punishment.

In a message to a world conference against the death penalty last year in Oslo, Pope Francis said capital punishment contradicts Gods plan for individuals and society, and his merciful justice and said that growing opposition to the practice is a sign of hope.

The rest is here:

Bishop Declan Lang reiterates call for complete abolition of the death penalty - Catholic Herald Online

The regulation of housing associations needs sweeping changes, MPs have told the Guardian, after an investigation into troubled new-build developments, which have benefited from more than 60m of public money.

The investigation into properties across London found issues with five housing associations: Catalyst, Sanctuary, Notting Hill Housing, Wandle and the One Housing Group, who together control 175,000 homes. Problems experienced by tenants and homeowners have included structural defects, damp, mould, broken lifts, infestation by rats, and widespread issues with poor customer service.

Rushanara Ali, MP for Bethnal Green and Bow, called for a new system of transparency and official ratings. Why cant we have league tables for housing associations so we know who are the worst offenders? said Ali, who has led recent attempts in parliament to force the government to take action on oversights by housing associations. That would force them to act.

We cannot tolerate the poor practice were seeing now. We wouldnt tolerate it from private landlords, so theres absolutely no reason we should be tolerating it from publicly funded housing associations. Whats scandalous is that public money is being given to them, even when customer service is failing.

The Green party co-leader, Caroline Lucas, said the revelations highlighted the downsides of recent government policy. The appalling state of some housing association homes is the result of years of deregulation and profit-seeking being prioritised over the building of decent homes, she said. No one should have to live in these kind of conditions. Mould, flooding and rats might be relatively common in Londoners homes, but that doesnt make their presence in any way acceptable.

The shadow housing minister, John Healey who served as housing minister under Gordon Brown said the Guardians findings exposed huge issues about how social housing providers are changing. This investigation is a cautionary tale about some housing associations work, he said. When some of them are adopting a more commercial model, they need to take care not to adopt commercial building standards, which too often these days the public see as unsatisfactory.

The National Housing Federation, the umbrella organisation which speaks for housing associations, said residents in housing associations were overwhelmingly satisfied and that the examples uncovered by the Guardian were in no way representative of the general quality of these housing associations homes nor the sector as a whole.

But politicians and housing professionals have become increasingly concerned about some housing associations performance and the governments drive to cut back funding and regulation, much of which was put in place under the last Labour government.

The Audit Commission played a key role in monitoring housing associations performance, but was dissolved in 2015. In 2010, the then housing minister Grant Shapps announced the abolition of the Tenants Services Authority, which was responsible for inspecting housing associations and addressing residents concerns.

Now, although the government insists that a strong regulatory framework remains in place, further moves are afoot. The Conservative housing minister, Gavin Barwell, recently told the House Of Commons that the government was committed to deregulating the sector, and highlighted new moves that free housing associations from the need to seek official approval for organisational changes and selling off their stock. Barwells department said: Housing associations are regulated and need to maintain their houses to a decent standard Where necessary, wed expect local authorities to use their enforcement powers for dealing with any breaches [of regulations].

The Labour MP Jon Cruddas, whose consituency of Dagenham and Rainham will have tens of thousands of newbuild homes constructed over the next 15 years, said:.Whats happening to some housing associations mirrors what happened to the building societies. They chased the market, and demutualised, and became much more aggressive, at the expense of their civic inheritance. The worry with housing associations is similar: theyre getting bigger and bigger, and theyre becoming more marketised.

Calls are growing for a different system of regulation, which would boost the role of the housing ombudsman. Sixty-one people work for the housing ombudsman, said Ali. Thats not many. I would like the government to change the requirement for people to go to their MP before they make a complaint. That just delays things. And the ombudsman does not publish how many complaints have been submitted for housing associations. That needs to change.

See the rest here:

MPs call for sweeping changes to housing association regulation - The Guardian

There is only one thing worse than homosexual art, the painter Patrick Procktor was once heard to declare at a private view in the 1960s. And thats heterosexual art. It would have been intriguing to hear his views on Queer British Art at Tate Britain. All the more so since it includes several of his own works, including a fine line-drawing study of the playwright Joe Orton, completely naked except for his socks which he kept on because he felt they were sexy and reclining somewhat in the manner of Manets Olympia.

In fact, many of those included might have had reservations Oscar Wilde, for example, one of whose characters observed, The only artists I have ever known who are personally delightful are bad artists. There are quite a few of those included here. Then again, strictly speaking Queer British Art is not about art at all, but defined by law, and those who fell foul of it.

In other words, its concerned with a clandestine and persecuted group. Its para-meters are the abolition of the death penalty for sodomy in 1861 and the legalisation of sexual intercourse between consenting adults in 1967 (Oscars fate is grimly documented by a cell door from Reading Gaol).

The result, from the artistic point of view, is a lot of promiscuous mingling of the good, the indifferent and the simply awful (though sometimes, as in the case of Glyn Philpots paintings, also quite fun). Frankly dreadful items such as Walter Cranes enormous, pallid, silly Renaissance of Venus (1877) get in for the sake of a good story. Apparently, on first seeing this canvas Lord Leighton exclaimed, But my dear fellow, that is not Aphrodite that is Alessandro! He meant that the body was that of Alessandro di Marco, a successful male artists model.

The received explanation for this if the picture really was painted from life rather than being simply a blend of Botticelli and whimsy is that Cranes wife forbade him from using female models. The catalogue, however, prefers to interpret it as a case of gender fluidity, quoting with approval the comment of the painter W. Graham Robertson on Leightons remark: Still, she was a fine, upstanding slip of a boy.

Fluidity of gender is, naturally, a hot topic in queer studies an academic discipline as abstruse as particle physics, and discussed in equally impenetrable jargon. It is presumably because of complex equations worked out by trained queer scholars that pictures such as Cecile Waltons Romance (1920) a semi-nude self-portrait of the artist as a young mother with her two children are included. It comes in a section headed, rather broadly, Defying Convention.

There are moments, while walking around, when you begin to wonder whether there is any clear distinction between queer British art and British art, tout court. Indeed the non-British sculptor-painter Alberto Giacometti had the same thought, according to Lucian Freud. He told me he had decided to come and live in London, et je deviendrai un pdraste. Almost all my friends at that time were queer, and he had decided that that was the life!

Freud is not included in the exhibition, but many of his circle from the Forties and Fifties are John Craxton, John Minton, Francis Bacon. It is easy to imagine Bacons response to being seen in this company, aesthetically. He was a famously savage critic one friend gave up painting in despair after Bacons hilariously scathing reaction to his work.

He would probably have been equally entertaining if let loose on the audio guide to Queer British Art but perhaps unfairly so. There are some fine pictures here and there by the neglected Edward Burra, for example, and the almost forgotten Ethel Sands. The photographs, however, tend to catch the eye more than the paintings whether camp and fantastic, such as Cecil Beatons Stephen Tennant as Prince Charming (1927), or poignant like John Deakins frayed print of the two Roberts, Colquhoun and MacBryde, asleep (or passed out) in each others arms, c.1953.

Turning to the two stars of the show, there is much better Hockney on display in his triumphant retrospective and the Bacons are also far from his best. Its a shame that Tate couldnt get the latters Two Figures (1953) based on Muybridges photographs of naked wrestlers and informally known as The Buggers which is surely one of the truly great post-war British paintings. It hung for many years on Freuds bedroom wall. Francis, he recalled, liked to imagine that he was the one underneath.

Those more interested in visual delight than in social history albeit touching and amusing might like the new installation Forms in Space by Light (in Time) by Cerith Wyn Evans in the grand Duveen Galleries upstairs. It consists, in effect, of illuminated neon tubes that draw in the air above your head, producing an effect a little like a skein of vapour trails in the sky. Its free, fresh, energising and altogether lovely.

Here is the original post:

Would the artists in Tate's Queer British Art show have approved of being included? - Spectator.co.uk