A pot-pourri of human rights, parents’ rights, the Kirk and civil partnerships, bishops, cremation, property portfolios – and black spiders…

Church of Scotland and civil partnerships

Perhaps the biggest news of the week was that yesterday the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland agreed that ministers in civil partnerships may be ordained and inducted. A vote is expected on Thursday on the issue of same-sex marriage.

Human rights

The Conservative Manifesto 2015 states inter alia

“We will scrap Labour’s Human Rights Act and introduce a British Bill of Rights which will restore common sense to the application of human rights in the UK. The Bill will remain faithful to the basic principles of human rights, which we signed up to in the original European Convention on Human Rights. It will protect basic rights, like the right to a fair trial, and the right to life, which are an essential part of a modern democratic society. But it will reverse the mission creep that has meant human rights law being used for more and more purposes, and often with little regard for the rights of wider society. Among other things the Bill will stop terrorists and other serious foreign criminals who pose a threat to our society from using spurious human rights arguments to prevent deportation.”

A number of commentators have considered the possible options for the new Conservative government, Continue reading →