Explaining 'Terrible Things'.

Why did God allow this to happen to us?

Gavin Lawrie  30 March 2021 CT.

(Photo: Unsplash/Prateek Gautam)

The Christmas card read: "In a moment...everything changed". Down through the centuries worldwide this has been acknowledged by billions of Christians.

During another moment in time everything changed for Jane and Keith (not their real names). Such happenings often prompt difficult questions like: Why did God allow this to happen to us? The notoriously difficult exercise of trying to interpret silence.

A momentous moment

In their senior years this loving couple retired for the night as they had done thousands of times before during a long and happy marriage...but this night was different. Unknowingly, somewhere between about 1- 4 a.m. whilst asleep Jane suffered a stroke the effect of which was not discovered until morning.

If a stroke occurs during waking hours apparently an emergency dash to hospital can make all the difference to the long-term outcome, but this time significant change had occurred.

In different ways they are both victims of that unexpected, uninvited and unwanted moment, now having to adapt like anyone who has to live with the result of chronic illness. A sixty three year old lady friend of mine is effectively a quadriplegic, the devastating result of slowly advancing crippling multiple sclerosis, a personal tragedy also not of her wanting.

How to explain?

Hence the perplexing issue of what some call the permissive will of God. A severe event (perhaps with irreversible consequences) is said to be within His permissive will in that God did not prevent it from happening.

We know that He is not distantly indifferent to personal suffering and encourages us to: Cast all your anxiety on Him [why?] because He cares for you. (1 Peter chapter 5 verse 7). Nor does He cause bad things to happen to us. Natural disasters, birth defects and chronic illnesses are agonisingly difficult issues, whilst some situations involve divinely preventable abhorrent behaviour such as the brutal actions of dictators.

The obvious go-to book of the Bible for seeking insight, an answer or at least some guidance or solace is the book of Job. The personal devastation that befell him was as extreme as it could get but Job never received from God an explanation or answer. Instead, towards the end of the book God asked Job seventy questions some of which appear below.

Unanswerable

Would you discredit My justice? (Job chapter 40 verse 8)

Will the one who contends with the Almighty correct Him? (40:2)

Who is this that darkens My counsel with words without knowledge? (38:2)

Where were you when I laid the earth's foundations? (38:4)

Who shut up the sea behind doors when I said: This far you may come and no farther? (38:11)

Do you watch when the doe bears her fawn? (39:1)

Do you know the laws of the heavens? (38:33)

Afterwards Job said to God: I know that You can do all things...Surely I spoke of things I do not understand...My ears had heard of You but now my eyes have seen You. Therefore I...repent in dust and ashes. (Job chapter 42 verses 5,6). Graciously he was restored as: The LORD blessed the latter part of Job's life more than the first...And so he died old and full of years. (Job chapter 42 verses 12 & 17).

Can any mortal question or cross-examine God and expect an answer? One may come promptly or not at all, maybe not yet but later or perhaps in a way least expected.

And the answer is...

Tantalisingly, the Bible does not give one. As excruciatingly difficult as that must be in the face of prolonged suffering (I have not yet experienced this), one may never come. Whilst not an answer to 'why', God tells us what we can do in response. He: comforts us in all our troubles so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we have received from Him. (2 Corinthians chapter 1 verse 4).

Further, it records that: in all things God works for the good of [who?] those who love Him. (Romans chapter 8 verse 28). And Jesus says He is: with us always. (Matthew chapter 28 verse 20).

A preacher said the correct question is not 'why' but 'where' is God in suffering - such as at Jesus' brutal crucifixion, the Holocaust insanity, and at 9/11. He was at Jane's bedside that night.

Fundamentally important

One of the fundamental issues that has become so profoundly important to me as I reflect on my 73 years which bring me ever closer to the one event that every human being must face whether we are an atheist, dictator, king or president, butcher or grandmother is...how did it all begin.

This is crucially relevant to the necessity of Jesus' rescue mission. It is no literary mistake that our Creator commenced His book saying "In the beginning God created...", making the Old Testament (OT) critical to understanding the NT.

Back to the Christmas card

"In a moment...everything changed", even our calendar. Instead of counting down from higher numbers as B.C. changed to A.D, we now live in the year 2021: from what? The world-changing moment happened when God lovingly entered world history through the birth of Jesus so that reconciliation between Himself and us could occur.

He alone decided when the time was right. God loved so much the world He had created that He gave Jesus to us so that whoever believes in Him will not suffer solitary confinement in hell forever separated from Him, but instead will enjoy life forever in heaven with Him surrounded by: a multitude that no one could count. (John chapter 3 verse 16 & Revelation 6:9).

We need to make the next move.

Courtesy of Press Service International

Last Month in Denmark.

 

Getty Images

OLIVER JJ LANE

3:05

14 people have been arrested across Denmark and Germany as police break up a suspected Islamic State-loyal terror cell in the process of acquiring bomb-making materials and firearms.

Press Conference takes place — Breitbart London update, Friday 1155:

Speaking at a press conference on Friday morning, Danish counter-terror chief Lene Sørensen said the plot intercepted by officers in recent days is suspected to have radical Islamist inspiration.

A report of the comments in Denmark’s oldest newspaper Berlingske notes Sørensen said she couldn’t be sure exactly where the terror cell was planning to strike, but that it was likely inside Denmark or Germany.

Her colleague Flemming Drejer said an Islamic State flag was found during police raids, and that; “We have found the ingredients needed to make a bomb. We have also found weapons such as pump [action shotguns] and a hunting rifle with binoculars. These are some findings that concern us.”

The security officers said there was no imminent danger to the public.

Read the Associated Press newswire on this story below: 

COPENHAGEN, Denmark (AP) – The number of people arrested in Denmark and Germany over an alleged terror attack plot rose to 14 on Friday with six more people placed in pre-trial detention.

All but one of the suspects were arrested in Denmark. Three of them were Syrian nationals, aged 33, 36 and 40, who were arrested last weekend.

Authorities in Germany and Denmark initially on Thursday announced eight arrests, and on Friday, another six people were held, police said.

All the detention hearings in Denmark were held behind so-called double closed doors, meaning the case is shrouded in secrecy and few details are made public. The Danish Security and Intelligence Service is planning a news conference later in the day.

The agency, known by its Danish acronym PET, said Thursday that the people arrested in Denmark were suspected “of having acquired ingredients and components for the manufacture of explosives, as well as weapons, or having participated in this.”

The persons’ identities and other nationalities were not made public.

Earlier, German authorities had announced the first three arrests – two in Denmark and one in Germany. They said the suspects were alleged to have purchased several kilograms (pounds) of chemicals in January that could be used to manufacture explosives.

A search of a residence in the city of Dessau-Rosslau, between Naumburg and Berlin, turned up 10 kilograms (22 pounds) of black powder, and fuses, the German prosecutor said. More chemicals were seized in Denmark.

PET said those arrested in Denmark are suspected of “having planned one or more terrorist attacks or participated in attempted terrorism.” It did not say where such an attack would take place. Breitbart.

Tender Mercies.

Birdie.

 

Is The UK Any Better?

Is it 'too late' for America to be spared God's judgment? John MacArthur gives warning.

Is it 'too late' for America to be spared God's judgment? John MacArthur gives warning

By Michael Gryboski, Christian Post Reporter  FOLLOW| Tuesday, March 30, 2021

Pastor John MacArthur speaks at Grace Community Church's Shepherd's Conference in 2020. | Facebook/Shepherds' Conference

California megachurch Pastor John MacArthur spoke about the possibility that the United States is already under judgment for its acceptance of progressive sexual ethics, among other things, during his Palm Sunday sermon.

MacArthur preached a sermon at Grace Community Church of Sun Valley titled “Chosen in Him,” mainly focused on Mark 12 and the passage commonly known as the Parable of the Vineyard Owner.

The parable speaks of a vineyard owner who allowed tenants to oversee his vineyard, only to have them take control of it and kill everyone the owner sent to collect on what they grew.

“What then will the owner of the vineyard do? He will come and kill those tenants and give the vineyard to others. Haven’t you read this passage of Scripture: ‘The stone the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; the Lord has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes?’” concluded the parable, as rendered by the New International Version.

MacArthur said in his sermon that the parable was one of judgment, saying that “with this parable,” Jesus “pledges the destruction of Jerusalem and the nation.”

“Vengeance will come and it must come and it did,” said MacArthur, referring to the sacking of Jerusalem by the Roman Empire in AD 70, or about 40 years after Jesus was crucified.

“The temple was never rebuilt, the priesthood was never recovered. No sacrifices, no ceremonies, no Sadducees, no Pharisees, no priests, no chief priests to this day. The whole system ended.”

Throughout the sermon, MacArthur spoke about the times in the Bible when different figures, including the Prophet Isaiah of the Old Testament and the Apostle Paul of the New Testament, spoke about it being “too late” for some to be saved.

“Go tell them,” preached MacArthur, paraphrasing God’s call to Isaiah in Isaiah Chapter 6, “it’s too late. You wouldn’t listen, you wouldn’t see, you wouldn’t believe, and now you can’t.”

“Tell them it is too late. Judgment is already in motion.”

Near the end of his sermon, MacArthur addressed how he believed the passages about the parable and the notion of being “too late” to be saved applied to the modern church.

One lesson he felt was important was that “it can be for a generation of people too late. Too late for eighth century [BC] Israel, too late for first century [AD] Israel, but it can be too late for every nation.”

“How do you know when a nation passes the point where salvation is possible for a people?” asked MacArthur, who answered by citing Romans 1.

“When you see a nation deep in sexual sin, pervasively affirming of homosexuality, and the insanity of a reprobate mind, where they make laws to criminalize righteousness and to legalize gross evil, you know that nation’s under judgment,” said MacArthur.

MacArthur went on to state that “our message to this nation” is that “it’s too late for the nation, we’re under judgment,” but added that “it’s not too late for the elect.”

“What’s our message to this nation? You’re under judgment; it’s too late. Judgment has been unleashed. You can hear, but not understand. You can see, but not perceive,” he said.

“But God has His people. So we warn, because we don’t know who those people are and we also offer the grace of the Gospel. That’s our calling.”

MacArthur’s recent sermon echoed past comments by the controversial pastor and prolific author. For example, in 2011 at the Resolved Conference in Palm Springs, California, MacArthur said that the United States was “a nation in crisis in divine judgment.”

“I look at America … people say, 'What is wrong with this country?' That is what’s wrong with this country. Right there. They have rejected the Word, the law of the Lord, the Holy One Himself,” said MacArthur at the time.

“As somebody said a few years ago, if God doesn’t destroy America pretty soon, He’s going to have to apologize to Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Let's Hear It For Our (Largely) Wonderful Police!

Reaping the anti-west whirlwind.

Violence against the police in Britain is increasing. Why is anyone surprised?

Melanie Phillips Mar 24

Police van burning in Bristol riot

We are now beginning to see the results of the supine establishment response to Black Lives Matter and the related campaign of demonisation against white society and the police.

Last Sunday — in no small irony — a “Kill the bill” demonstration in Bristol, against a proposed new law giving the police greater powers to curb demonstrations, turned into a riot against the police. There were further arrests for breaches of Covid regulations at another related demonstration in Bristol on Tuesday night.

In Sunday’s disorder, said to be the worst rioting in Bristol for a decade, some 21 police officers were injured by a mob armed with glass bottles, bricks and scaffolding. A police station had its windows smashed, and a police vehicle was set on fire while officers were inside.

As the Telegraph reports, Andy Roebuck, chairman of the Avon and Somerset Police Federation, said:

They tried to set fire to a police van with officers inside. To my mind that is attempted murder. I spoke to two officers who said they genuinely feared they would be killed. 

It was said that an orderly protest had been hijacked by thugs. Police are reportedly hunting for up to 500 violent extremists who were involved. 500! With 3,000 having attended the initial peaceful demonstration, that’s some hijack!

But why is anyone surprised? 

For months and indeed years, there’s been a steady and wildly unfair demonisation of the police.

They’ve been attacked for trying to enforce Covid regulations, as they are required to do but for which they have been accused of turning Britain into a “police state”. 

They were attacked for heavy-handed policing of Covid regulations at the demonstration over violence against women following the murder of Sarah Everard, whose body was found after she disappeared while walking home in south London.

Conversely, they were attacked for failing to react robustly at a Black Lives Matter  demonstration which vandalised statues and threw projectiles at retreating police officers. 

Since the 1993 Macpherson report, which on the basis of no evidence whatsoever damned the entire police service as “institutionally racist,” they have routinely been attacked for this alleged collective guilt. Now, on the basis of the death of a black suspect pinned to the ground in Minneapolis by a police officer’s knee, Black Lives Matter has turned up the temperature against the police to boiling point.

Many cultural and political figures in Britain have supported BLM despite the fact that its programme is anti-white, anti-west and demands that the police be defunded and abolished.  Among these supporters was the Labour party leader, Sir Keir Starmer, who proudly tweeted a picture of himself and his deputy “taking the knee” in his Westminster office. 

It was irrelevant that Starmer subsequently distanced himself from the BLM demand to defund the police. For reprehensible as the BLM platform is, the real damage is done by these respectable supporters who are literally genuflecting to the claim that their society is intrinsically evil. 

By failing to denounce BLM  for what it actually is — a subversive, racist, anti-white group aiming to overthrow western society —  and, even worse, supporting it as a moral cause, they help give these and other political subversives the feeling that the revolutionary wind is with them. 

The progressive classes have been lazily and irresponsibly giving this kind of succour to unconscionable agendas for years.  Nihilist or hard-left activists bent on overturning western society have been regularly morphing from one anti-west cause to another — Stop the War, Occupy, Extinction Rebellion and now Black Lives Matter. 

At every stage, these revolutionary wannabes have found swathes of respectable society nodding along to one vicious slander after another against the west — that America commits human rights abuses worse than Middle Eastern tyrants, that capitalism is unjust and punishes the poor, that industrialisation is bringing about the imminent extinction of life on earth, and that white western society is intrinsically evil.

Instead of saying robustly that these are all wicked lies against the west and denouncing their perpetrators as potential totalitarian despots, many in positions of cultural authority have endorsed the message if not the tactics. So the universities are falling over each other to “decolonise” the curriculum — that is, censor it and replace objective and balanced analysis by distorted propaganda that teaches students to hate their own society.

And instead of denouncing the instigators of the violence against the police, some people in responsible positions actually blame the police. The Telegraph reports that Dr Jo Grady, president of the University and College Union which represents more than 120,000 academics and support staff in further and higher education and who opposes the policing bill, said on Twitter: 

You don’t have to be comfortable with the idea of violence or damage to understand that when the police turn up to events they also bring with them potential for violence. They literally bring violent tools, which are often deployed quickly to police with fear, not consent.

All this has led political thugs to become intoxicated with their own power. They have observed that taking to the streets in violent disorder may enrage some — but much more significant, it also elicits only indifference or actually gains support from many others. With allegedly conservative or high establishment figures describing Covid restrictions as “Stasi-like” oppression and calling for civil disobedience, with companies and other bodies requiring employees to denounce themselves for “unconscious bias” and white privilege, and with the police being damned if they do and damned if they don’t and finding themselves trying to police a society which is increasingly tearing up its own rules, is it any wonder that those bent on nihilist or revolutionary disorder believe their time has come?

The activists of “No Fixed Abode Anti Fascists”, which was involved in the Bristol demonstration, describe themselves as a “group of squatters, travellers and homeless people combating fascist and bailiff thuggery”. They have taken over a disused police station near the spot in south London from where Sarah Everard went missing. The Times reports: 

Her killing brought an outcry about violence against women and the Metropolitan Police was accused of heavy handedness at a vigil for her at Clapham Common. Some officers have said that the vigil was hijacked by far-left groups after ACAB (All Cops are Bastards) was daubed on a police van.  

The anti-fascist group has used the acronym on social media posts about the planned eviction at the former police station. Its social media contains images of disorder in Bristol and Clapham Common.  

Squatters refused to comment yesterday on their involvement in either event, resorting to profanities when asked by The Times. One supporter said: “Kill the Bill has taken off as a campaign and people are willing to take to the streets for it. I am one of them.”

There are intelligence warnings that more violent confrontations by activists are in the pipeline. By endorsing the calumnies against the west being perpetrated by those intent upon bringing it down, a shallow, cowardly or ideologically twisted cultural establishment has sown the wind. Now Britain is beginning to reap the whirlwind.

Rees-Mogg Slams 'Red Khan'.

 

Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

JACK MONTGOMERY

 12 Feb 2021228

Leading Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg ripped the London mayor as ‘Red Khan’ for the BLM-inspired commission he has established to audit the “diversity” of the capital’s monuments, street names, and other memorials.

The colourful Leader of the House of Commons was speaking in response to Andrew Rosindell, the Member of Parliament for Romford — and a Conservative party colleague — who raised the issue of Mayor Sadiq Khan’s new Commission for Diversity in the Public Realm and the fact that “unsurprisingly, it seems to be made up almost entirely of left-wing political activists, campaigners, and celebrities, instead of historians and experts”.

“[D]oes my Right Honourable Friend share my concern about these unelected activists being givent he power to interfere with London street names and monuments, and will he consider granting a debate in Government time to discuss how we can defend our great capital history’s proud history and heritage?”

“I absolutely agree with my Honourable Friend; it seems to me that the Mayor of London has replaced Red Ken as Red Khan,” replied Rees-Mogg, referring to the first man to hold the Labour-created office, hard-left controversialist Ken Livingstone.

“Who would have thought that you would have a more left-wing leader of London than Ken Livingstone? But now we do, and Red Khan is he,” the Tory lamented.

“It is quite wrong that these loony left-wing wheezes should be inflicted upon our great Metropolis, and I think the mayor in his zeal is potentially treading on the toes of council anyway; the councils have the right to name streets, by and large, not the mayor of London, and I don’t think he should interfere in things that are not his responsibility,” he continued. Breitbart.

Well Done, Mr Lammy.

 https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1416747/David-Lammy-English-row-LBC-British-race-racism-news-latest-vn

Tackling Trauma.

A Bible-based approach to help people who have experienced trauma.

Staff writer  29 March 2021.

(Photo: Unsplash/Kiwihug)

The Bible Society has launched a new programme to help churches, faith groups and chaplains support their communities in working through trauma. 

Navigating Trauma is rooted in mental health best practice and uses contextual Bible reading to help people explore what Scripture has to say about suffering, and God's relationship with those who have experienced trauma.

It spans five core sessions with a further eight optional sessions that take place within small groups led by trained volunteers. 

Bible Society Chief Executive Professor Paul Williams said it was a "significant" time to be launching the initiative.  CT.

Liberal Bias Undermining Democracy.

Exclusive: Right-wing protests 'more likely to be criticised because of liberal biases'.

Baron Walney, an independent adviser on political violence, said he wanted to expose 'doublethink' over demonstrations

ByCharles Hymas, HOME AFFAIRS EDITOR and Steve Bird27 March 2021  . DT.

Hanlon's razor explains more politics than you could ever imagine!

 Hanlon's razor is a principle or rule of thumb that states "never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity". Known in several other forms, it is a philosophical razor that suggests a way of eliminating unlikely explanations for human behaviour.

Be Encouraged.

The 'Accomplishments' of Pornography and Liberal Sex Education In Our Schools.

 Simon Bailey, who leads the National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) on child protection, speculated that the school sex scandal has been fuelled by online pornography and the sexualisation of women. Yesterday the chief constable also revealed that police had already received 'in excess of 7,000' reports from people online. More than 100 schools have been named in thousands of harrowing anonymous testimonies on a website set up by former private school pupil Soma Sara, 22, to expose misogyny, harassment and assaults in schools. There have even been allegations of a 'rape culture' at some institutions, sparking a major Whitehall investigation into the growing scandal that has seen some of Britain's most elite schools named in accounts of sex abuse. Schools named on the Everyone's Invited website include Eton College, St Paul's School, Dulwich College, Westminster School and Highgate School. Mail.

'Outright Lies'?

 https://www.christianpost.com/news/james-dobson-outraged-by-bidens-first-press-conference.html

Birdie.

 

Communism ALWAYS Fails.

 Independence Daily. Written by flyer.

It never ceases to amaze me just how many Liberal, Left leaning people seem to think that Communism is a good idea; despite how many millions of people that have perished under this ideology. Let’s look at some examples.

The Soviet famine of 1921-22 was extreme, people even resorted to cannibalism in an effort to stay alive (e.g. here). What started this famine was Russia being drained after the First World War and to civil wars but the subsequent actions of the Soviet Communist Party exacerbated the problem greatly:

“Even after the civil war wound down, requisitioning of grain and other food supplies provoked violent confrontations between Soviet authorities and peasant producers” (link) 

It must have been unbearable to be a food producer and expected to starve to death while the food you produced was loaded onto trucks and whisked away to serve the needs of the Communist party.

It is unclear just how many people died as a result of the above famine, it was in the millions with some estimates putting the number at five million. Throughout all of this, the needs of the Communist party came first while people starved. Stalin even used the opportunity to wage a campaign against the church because of the hold that it had on the peasantry. Talk about not letting a crisis go to waste!

The Soviet famine of 1932-33, the Ukrainian famine, was more extreme still. Today, while Russia acknowledges the famine, it falls just short of calling it genocide but this is a matter of opinion with many people asserting that this is what it in fact was:

“In the years 1932 and 1933, a catastrophic famine swept across the Soviet Union. It began in the chaos of collectivization, when millions of peasants were forced off their land and made to join state farms. It was then exacerbated, in the autumn of 1932, when the Soviet Politburo, the elite leadership of the Soviet Communist Party, took a series of decisions that deepened the famine in the Ukrainian countryside. Despite the shortages, the state demanded not just grain, but all available food.” (link)

The death count after two such famines is now running into the tens of millions, all due largely to the bloody mindedness and needs of the Soviet Communist party. Stalin was also particularly vindictive towards the Ukraine because so many of them had a strong desire for independence.

Let’s fast forward many decades to the Greek government-debt crisis that started in 2009. Greece was the holder of crippling debt, on the surface the country’s problems were started by the financial crisis of 2008 but there were and still are more fundamental problems, one problem being the Euro currency which is basically a renamed Deutschmark, far too strong for the 53rd largest economy in the world to be able to compete with a powerhouse like Germany.

The European Union was having none of this – it would never acknowledge the fact that its Euro was a political rather than sound economic construct. The EU was just as bloody minded as Stalin, all that mattered were his and the Communist party’s goals regardless of who suffered.

The Greek people certainly did suffer during this Greek debt crisis, they had little access to money and food, unemployment soared and people are still suffering the aftermath to this day (link). There were even cases of cancer patients dying in agony without anaesthetic according to some news reports. Alexis Tsipras, the then Prime Minister of Greece, threatened to default on the debt but after protracted negotiation with the EU, it seems that he was brought into line.

The negotiations between Greece and the EU went on for months, every few weeks the Eurocrats would meet to discuss the crisis, they would arrive in private jets, stay in the world’s finest hotels while consuming the finest food and wine. While all of this was going on, the Greek people were starving and suffering, the needs of the European Union came first, regardless of the suffering of the people that the EU, like Stalin, probably regarded as peasants.

For me this is one of the first times that I saw through the virtue signaling propaganda of globalist organisations like the European Union and saw them for the ruthless Communist organisations (with a stench of Nazi) that they really are. Yet still there are millions of ordinary people and career politicians that see their best career path serving globalist organisations, they refuse to see the reality, they still believe the lies.

Today the world is at a crossroads, while we in Britain have been obsessing over Brexit, globalisation has been moving on at a fast pace. The European Union may be crumbling but the United Nations – increasingly dominated by the Chinese Communist Party – and it’s other globalist tentacles like the World Health Organisation are rapidly superseding it.

None of the policies, economics, the social engineering of multiculturali [remainder of message body omitted; too large]

Frank Skinner's Prayer Book.

 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2021/03/26/frank-skinner-people-like-hear-demons-not-believe-actual-demons/

Yet Another Trade Deal Comes In! - What Was £5billion Last Year Promises Much Higher Returns.

 Britain and Thailand have agreed to strengthen this relationship by creating a Joint Economic and Trade Committee.

This afternoon, Ms Truss and Thailand’s Minister of Commerce and Deputy Prime Minister, Jurin Laksanawisit, signed a Memorandum of Understanding to increase collaboration.

The announcement today follows a Joint Trade Review conducted by both sides in 2020.

Discussions highlighted sectors including, agriculture, financial services, healthcare and technology which could be explored further by the UK. Express.

Possible or Impossible?

 

UK's Staggering Number of Worldwide Trade Deals Shocks EU Rigid!

Humiliated' EU shocked at how rapidly UK has signed trade deals - vaccine war is revenge.

THE EU has been shocked at the rapid progress Britain has made in signing trade deals around the world and is still feeling "humiliated" that the UK left the bloc, a senior minister has told the Sunday Express.

By DAVID MADDOX, POLITICAL EDITOR, Express.

 https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1415796/brexit-news-uk-trade-deals-outside-eu-vaccine-war-revenge 

Asylum Applications Down.

Applications for Asylum Fell to Lowest Levels Since 2013, Coronavirus Blamed.

Applications for asylum in the EU fell in 2020, with coronavirus restrictions suggests proper border controls are achievable. Breitbart.

Blogger: zero asylum seekers who turn up on our doorstep should be admitted. They have already broken UN guidelines to 'go to the nearest safe country.' Technically, for the UK - this could only be Ireland.

Personally, I would like to see one exemption made - to specifically help Christians who are persecuted. 'The neighbouring safe country' does not really apply to them if located in the middle of a host of hostile-to-Christianity, Islamic countries.