Gordon Brown vows to lead Scottish campaign to win more powers for Edinburgh if voters reject independence. Daily Mail

Gordon Brown today vowed to lead the campaign for more powers for Scotland if it rejects independence in this month’s referendum.

The former prime minister, signalling his return to front line politics, said he
would push for further devolution within weeks of the September 18 vote.

Mr Brown is among senior Labour figures being deployed in a final push by the party to prevent its supporters being won over by the Scottish National Party.

With polls suggesting a late swing towards the Yes camp, Mr Brown urged voters not to ‘abandon’ the huge value to Scotland of pooling resources with the rest of the UK in areas such as pensions and healthcare.

He told an audience of activists and politicians at Westminster that he had asked Speaker John Bercow to allow him to lead a debate when the Commons resumes business in October to galvanise cross-party support for reforms.

A pledge of extra tax and legal powers for Holyrood in the event of a rejection of independence in the popular vote has been signed by the leaders of all three main Westminster parties.

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Canada can show David Cameron how to rescue our United Kingdom. Daily Telegraph

Almost 20 years ago, Britain looked on in amazement as it seemed that Canada was about to come apart. Just two weeks before the Quebec referendum, the “no” opinion poll lead had collapsed from 20 points to just 4 points and momentum lay with the mainly French-speaking separatists. Canada’s prime minister, Jean Chrétien, who had kept a low profile given his unpopularity with the Québécois, decided he had no choice but to intervene.

The overdue panic saved the country – just. The “yes” vote was 49.4 per cent.

Now, it is Britain’s turn to be two weeks from a referendum and Canada’s turn to be aghast. Earlier this week, I met Stephen Harper, its current prime minister, who seemed unable to believe that things had come this far. Canada’s struggle involved a French-speaking province with a different religion and history from the rest of the country. But where is Britain’s cultural chasm? “Canada is a country of many, many cultures,” Harper told me, but “the idea of separating English people from Scottish people in Canada is almost inconceivable.”

From abroad, the idea of Scots being so separate from the English as to necessitate the partition of the country must seem absurd. We have the same culture, the same two main languages (English and Polish) and the same world view. If anything, England should have the bigger gripe. A century ago, The Spectator was bemoaning the influence of Scots in London (a problem that persists) but this underscored an important point. The British state is not something foreign, but something Scotland helps to mould. Our country, its achievements and the world wars won together ought to have left something indivisible.

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Oswald Chambers, My Uttermost for His Highest

Watching With Jesus

Stay here and watch with Me —Matthew 26:38

Watch with Me.” Jesus was saying, in effect, “Watch with no private point of view at all, but watch solely and entirely with Me.” In the early stages of our Christian life, we do not watch with Jesus, we watch for Him. We do not watch with Him through the revealed truth of the Bible even in the circumstances of our own lives. Our Lord is trying to introduce us to identification with Himself through a particular “Gethsemane” experience of our own. But we refuse to go, saying, “No, Lord, I can’t see the meaning of this, and besides, it’s very painful.” And how can we possibly watch with Someone who is so incomprehensible? How are we going to understand Jesus sufficiently to watch with Him in His Gethsemane, when we don’t even know why He is suffering? We don’t know how to watch with Him— we are only used to the idea of Jesus watching with us.

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Calais is 'besieged by gangs of migrants': Fury of port chief as riot police are called in and France accuses Britain of being a soft touch. Daily Mail

·        At least 250 illegal immigrants attempted to board a ferry at the French port
·        Staff were forced to use a fire hose to stop the crowds pushing past them
·        Group pushed past machine gun-wielding police and climbed over fences
·        Eventually stopped as they ran up the ramp into the ferry's vehicle hold
·        Incident comes as Calais' mayor threatens to blockade the massive port
·        Natacha Bouchart is demanding Britain helps control immigrants
·        Deputy PM Nick Clegg condemns threat to cut 'umbilical cord' to Britain
 

Riot squads were sent into Calais last night after UK-bound migrants turned the French port into a ‘war zone’.

Anarchy broke out when 250 men burst into the town’s docks and tried to board vessels sailing for Dover.

One gang of marauders broke through gates and climbed over fences in a  desperate bid to reach a ferry.

Brushing off pursuing police officers, the migrants stopped only when the ship’s crew turned a fire hose on them and pulled up the car ramps.

The mayor of Calais last night begged David Cameron to come to Calais to tell the waiting hordes that Britain was ‘no El Dorado’. Natacha Bouchart said the UK was too soft on migrants.

Read more here:

The Way We Walk

Please send this,if you can

John Glass

2 mins · 

Fashid Fathi is imprisoned for his faith in the notorious Rajai Shahr prison. He is 35 year old today. If you are on twitter please petition Iran's supreme leader so he knows Fashid is not alone. The following is the tweet I have sent that you may wish to copy and paste

We appeal to Iran's supreme leader @khamenei_Ir to intervene in the release of Fashid Fathi @presstv ‪#‎happybirthdayfashidfathi‬

Oswald Chambers, My Uttermost for His Highest , His

They were Yours, You gave them to Me . . . —John 17:6

A missionary is someone in whom the Holy Spirit has brought about this realization: “You are not your own” (1 Corinthians 6:19). To say, “I am not my own,” is to have reached a high point in my spiritual stature. The true nature of that life in actual everyday confusion is evidenced by the deliberate giving up of myself to another Person through a sovereign decision, and that Person is Jesus Christ. The Holy Spirit interprets and explains the nature of Jesus to me to make me one with my Lord, not that I might simply become a trophy for His showcase. Our Lord never sent any of His disciples out on the basis of what He had done for them. It was not until after the resurrection, when the disciples had perceived through the power of the Holy Spirit who Jesus really was, that He said, “Go” (Matthew 28:19; also see Luke 24:49 and Acts 1:8).

Read more here:

John 17:6-19New American Standard Bible (NASB)

6 “I have manifested Your name to the men whom You gave Me out of the world; they were Yours and You gave them to Me, and they have kept Your word. 7 Now they have come to know that everything You have given Me is from You; 8 for the words which You gave Me I have given to them; and they received them and truly understood that I came forth from You, and they believed that You sent Me. 9 I ask on their behalf; I do not ask on behalf of the world, but of those whom You have given Me; for they are Yours; 10 and all things that are Mine are Yours, and Yours are Mine; and I have been glorified in them. 11 I am no longer in the world; and yet they themselves are in the world, and I come to You. Holy Father, keep them in Your name, the name which You have given Me, that they may be one even as We are. 12 While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your name which You have given Me; and I guarded them and not one of them perished but the [a]son of perdition, so that the Scripture would be fulfilled.

The Disciples in the World

13 But now I come to You; and these things I speak in the world so that they may have My joy made full in themselves. 14 I have given them Your word; and the world has hated them, because they are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 15 I do not ask You to take them out of the world, but to keep them [b]from [c]the evil one. 16 They are not of the world, even as I am not of the world. 17 Sanctify them in the truth; Your word is truth. 18 As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world. 19 For their sakes I sanctify Myself, that they themselves also may be sanctified in truth.

Matthew 28:16-20New American Standard Bible (NASB)

The Great Commission

16 But the eleven disciples proceeded to Galilee, to the mountain which Jesus had designated. 17 When they saw Him, they worshiped Him; but some were doubtful. 18 And Jesus came up and spoke to them, saying, “All authority has been given to Me in heaven and on earth. 19 [a]Go therefore and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, 20 teaching them to observe all that I commanded you; and lo, I am with you [b]always, even to the end of the age.”

The nationalists’ welfare plans: What the experts say | Better Together

The nationalists’ welfare plans: What the experts say | Better Together







“The DWP might say you can use our IT and administrative systems but it will come at a cost — particularly if you start differentiating welfare policies, because that will create an administrative burden that someone has to pay. That someone would be the Scottish government.” The Times, 12 June 2013

Northern light?

Northern light?

Beware the SNP’s false promise of social democracy, argues Gordon Brown

Progressives looking to an independent Scotland as the standard-bearer in the global fight against inequality will be sorely disappointed upon a closer inspection of the facts.

One of the propaganda devices of the Scottish National party has been to persuade left-of-centre opinion that breaking free from London rule would create a ‘northern light’ for social justice – a Scotland that is more just, more humane and more socially democratic. However, a Scotland which followed the policies outlined in the SNP’s white paper for independence and ended the system of pooling and sharing resources across the United Kingdom would quickly find that income and wealth would be more unequally distributed than in the country they abandoned.

It may seem paradoxical but the Scottish people’s much-vaunted egalitarian instincts are not reflected in the SNP’s prospectus for a separate state. Myth or reality, Scotland has always prided itself on both its democratic intellect – equalising opportunities in education – and its role as a pioneer of a civic society built on the idea that if the strong help the weak, we all become stronger. And although recent surveys have found Scottish and English opinion similar in their support for the NHS and for help for the unemployed – the difference lying only in a greater Scottish dislike of privatisation and private education – the idea of a socially concerned Scotland is a powerful one that influences how we act.

DANIEL HANNAN: Banning vacuum cleaners isn't about saving the planet - it's about Brussels grabbing even more powe. Daily Mail

Extremist parties are on the rise across Europe. The disaster of the French economy threatens to re-ignite the euro crisis. Russia is invading Ukraine. And what is the EU doing? Banning high-power vacuum cleaners.

Customers have been thronging High Street stores, like Boxing Day crowds, snapping up the last legal appliances that use more than 1,600 watts — the maximum power-limit decreed by Eurocrats and national politicians (including our own).

But it doesn’t stop there. Brussels is methodically working its way through our homes, proscribing any household machines that are deemed to use too much electricity. Televisions, dishwashers, tumble-dryers, toasters: all must now conform to the new low-power rules.

School sixth-formers used to debate whether the State had any place in the bedroom. Well, never mind the bedroom: I want the Government out of my bloody kitchen.

The last time we saw similar panic-buying was when the EU banned proper lightbulbs in 2009. A kind of dual stockpiling followed: retailers amassed the soon-to-be-outlawed incandescent bulbs, and consumers did the same.

Only now, five years on, have we ploughed through both sets of reserves. As a result, our rooms are lit by the strange light that comes from the low-quality halogen or LED versions.

Of course, the dimming of the lights may be useful when it comes to hiding the muck that vacuum cleaners are meant to remove. Various consumer organisations, including Which?, recommend the high-suction cleaners as the best way of extracting dirt rather than pushing it around.

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Views, Visions and Values.: Some Inspirational Christian Thoughts, Words for...

Views, Visions and Values.: Some Inspirational Christian Thoughts, Words for...: "The first thing that impresses us about the call of God is that it comes to the whole man, not to one part of him. The majority ...

Rugby World Cup 2015 - Team Talk Advert

theology as a ball and chain

theology as a ball and chain







Theology is important to me. I love it. I enjoy it. I am on a mission to understand the truth. I have a suspicion that there is a unifying theory that would be the key to understanding it all. I also concede that I could be wrong about this. But this is the theory that motivates me in my search. - See more at: http://nakedpastor.com/2013/05/theology-as-a-ball-and-chain/#sthash.HPvrcYg0.dpuf

SNP defence plans “amateurish and unrealistic” says former NATO chief. | Better Together

SNP defence plans “amateurish and unrealistic” says former NATO chief. | Better Together

A former senior NATO chief has slammed the SNP’s defence plans for a separate Scotland as “amateurish and unrealistic”.

General Sir Richard Shirreff, who was until recently NATO’s Deputy Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, also said there is “no certainty about Scottish membership of NATO.”

General Shirreff – Key Points

On the timescale for any possible NATO membership for a separate Scotland:

“It is highly unlikely that NATO will agree to any further expansion while the promise of NATO membership made to Ukraine and Georgia in 2008 is still on the table.” 

Salmonds Snake Oil!

Former trade minister Digby Jones against Scottish independence http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2738802/A-Braveheart-fiction-Scots-regret-former-trade-minister-Digby-Jones.html @MailOnline

Cappuccino Communication - Preaching

Cappuccino Communication - Example

Cappuccino Communication - Leadership Snares

'More Than Conquerors" from Rend Collective (OFFICIAL LYRIC VIDEO)

SNP Government plan for tuition fees in ruins | Better Together

SNP Government plan for tuition fees in ruins | Better Together

David Caldwell is the former Director of Universities Scotland.

The SNP government wants an independent Scotland to keep charging tuition fees to students from the continuing UK (yes, the UK would continue, just without Scotland) but not to students from any other EU country. That plan is now in ruins.

It already looked a non-starter. Every legal expert and senior EU official who had expressed a view publicly agreed that it did not comply with EU law. Even the legal opinion obtained by Universities Scotland, much cited by Scottish Ministers, stated explicitly that “RUK students will require to be treated no differently from other EU countries in a post independent Scotland”.

The Scottish government says that it has legal advice on the subject. Alex Salmond has been asked to disclose the source and content of that advice, but he has refused. It is hard to believe he would be so timid if he had authoritative advice supporting his case. On those occasions when he actually has some evidence to support his assertions, even when it’s just one opinion against numerous others taking the opposite view, has he ever been reluctant to produce it? 

Now the last shred of credibility the plan might have had has been demolished by the work of Sir David Edward. Sir David, as both a distinguished former judge of the European Court of Justice and a Professor of Law, is uniquely well placed to provide a definitive opinion.

His analysis is both thorough, based as it is on a careful examination of legal principle and all the relevant case law, and intellectually rigorous. It leads him to conclude that the SNP government plan is “shot through with confusion, inconsistency and irrelevance”, and that it would be incompatible with EU law and could not survive challenge in the European Court of Justice.