Train fares ‘will increase 25% in next four years’ unless funding rules are torn up: Labour call for cap on price rises and simplified ticket structure Daily Mail

  Rail fares are on course to soar by about a quarter over the next four years

  Will rise by up to 5.6% next year - total increase of 24% since last election

  Labour calling for reform of 'broken market' including capping of fare rises 

  Shadow Transport Secretary: 'Our rail fares are among highest in Europe'

Rail fares are on course to soar by a quarter over the next four years unless funding rules are torn up, Labour will warn today.

Official figures released this morning are expected to show that rail fares will rise by up to 5.6 per cent next year.

The Campaign for Better Transport (CBT) said this would take the total increase to 24.7 per cent since the last election.

And Shadow Transport Secretary Mary Creagh will warn that fares will rise by a further 24 per cent by 2018 unless existing rules are changed.

Although annual rail fare increases are implemented in January they are based on Retail Price Index figures from the previous July. Under current rules, regulated train fares will rise by RPI plus 1 per cent.

Read the full article here:

RICHARD LITTLEJOHN: Why the world is dying to come here, Daily Mail

The discovery of 35 desperate people inside a shipping container at Tilbury docks is a real-life horror story. Basic humanity requires that we give them medical treatment and temporary accommodation.

Clearly they have suffered a terrible ordeal. They were dehydrated and close to suffocation. One of them died on the voyage from Zeebrugge.

There were 13 blameless children among those packed into what has been described as a ‘metal coffin’. We can only imagine what they have endured on their 3,500-mile journey across continents.

They have been exploited and put in mortal danger by callous traffickers, who trade in human misery.

But they weren’t kidnapped. While the children are exempt from any responsibility for their plight, all the adults involved knew what they were getting into.

They voluntarily paid the traffickers to smuggle them into Britain. Typically, it costs £20,000 to get from Afghanistan to Zeebrugge and a further £1,500 for a passage to England. I’m assuming they weren’t expecting to be flown first-class to Heathrow.

We are told they are all Afghan Sikhs fleeing Taliban persecution and they were attracted here because of the ‘thriving and established Afghan Sikh community in London’. There is also a thriving Sikh community in India, right on Afghanistan’s doorstep. So why didn’t they flee there? I’m sure they’d be more at home in the Punjab than Putney.

Why didn’t they seek asylum in Russia, or Turkey, or any of the countries that they crossed en route to Zeebrugge?

Read the full article here:

Oswald Chambers, My Uttermost for His Highest, Self Awareness

Self-Awareness

Come to Me . . . —Matthew 11:28

Matthew 11:28-30 The Voice (VOICE)

28 Come to Me, all who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest. 29 Put My yoke upon your shoulders—it might appear heavy at first, but it is perfectly fitted to your curves. Learn from Me, for I am gentle and humble of heart. When you are yoked to Me, your weary souls will find rest. 30 For My yoke is easy, and My burden is light.

God intends for us to live a well-rounded life in Christ Jesus, but there are times when that life is attacked from the outside. Then we tend to fall back into self-examination, a habit that we thought was gone. Self-awareness is the first thing that will upset the completeness of our life in God, and self-awareness continually produces a sense of struggling and turmoil in our lives. Self-awareness is not sin, and it can be produced by nervous emotions or by suddenly being dropped into a totally new set of circumstances.

Yet it is never God’s will that we should be anything less than absolutely complete in Him. Anything that disturbs our rest in Him must be rectified at once, and it is not rectified by being ignored but only by coming to Jesus Christ. If we will come to Him, asking Him to produce Christ-awareness in us, He will always do it, until we fully learn to abide in Him.

Read the full article here:

"The revelation of God's will has been brought down to us in words. The Bible is not a book containing communications from God; it is God's revelation of Himself, in the interests of grace; God's giving of Himself in the limitation of words. The Bible is not a faery romance to beguile us for a while from the sordid realities of life; it is the Divine complement of the laws of Nature, of Conscience and of Humanity; it introduces us to a new universe of revelation facts not known to unregenerate common sense. The only Exegete of these facts is the Holy Spirit, and in the degree of our reception, recognition, and reliance on the Holy Spirit will be our understanding." --Oswald Chambers, in God's Workmanship from The Quotable Oswald Chambers.

Theology test your worship songs, Christianity Magazine

What happens when you put the lyrics of some of our best-known worship songs under the theological microscope?

We’ve all stood in a Sunday morning service, bleary-eyed from a late night, and submissively warbled our way through an entire worship set without engaging our brains. We could have been singing anything.

And we’ve all sung lyrics to worship songs we didn’t fully understand. A favourite at my own church is the hymn ‘I Will Sing the Wondrous Story’, which includes the repeated line, ‘Sing it with the saints in glory, Gathered by the crystal sea’. Despite the fact that I don’t know what this refers to – and it sounds strangely like the title of an episode of Dr Who – I gamely sing it every time.

Many of us have sung things we don’t actually believe. Matt Redman’s magnum opus ‘Blessed Be Your Name’ contains the questionable line ‘You give and take away’, which seems to suggest that God actively causes, rather than allows, suffering. But is this really the nature of the biblical God? The trouble is, it’s such a good song.

LYRICS COUNT

In a Church culture in which personal engagement with the Bible is sometimes patchy, worship songs and hymns become a primary source of theology for some. For others it is the most dynamic tool in terms of connecting with God. We pick up memorable bits of scripture (often a bit mangled to fit the verse structure), and larger principles about God through the lyrics of our Sunday anthems. So the accuracy of their theology really matters.

The other reason we should carefully consider our song lyrics is a missional one. If a non-Christian, with no prior knowledge of the faith or its traditions, walks into your church, what might (s)he make of singing ‘These are the days of Elijah’? It gets worse at Christmas. Every year we force nominal believers to sing ‘Christian children all must be, mild, obedient, good as he’, thus reminding them why they only come to church once a year.

Read the full article here:

Cameron accuses Salmond of being 'desperate' after claims independence will protect the NHS from privatisation Daily Mail.

  The Prime Minister said health is already devolved to Holyrood

  Mr Salmond said NHS cuts in England would be replicated in Scotland

  Scottish Government's spending on private contractors has risen by 25%

David Cameron has accused the First Minister of ‘desperate’ tactics over his claim that separation will protect the NHS from privatisation.

The Prime Minister stressed health is devolved to Holyrood and controversial changes at Westminster cannot be imposed on Scots.

Alex Salmond, who went green bowling in Arbroath with Scotland's Commonwealth medallists today, has argued that NHS budget cuts south of the border would be replicated in Scotland – despite the fact Holyrood has received an extra £1.3billion from Westminster over five years.

He has persisted with the argument despite claims of hypocrisy after it emerged the Scottish Government’s own spending on private contractors rose by almost a quarter last year to more than £80million.

Mr Cameron said: ‘Health is a devolved issue. So the only person who could, if they wanted to, introduce more private provision into the NHS in Scotland is Alex Salmond.

‘I think this is a desperate man recognising the argument is going away from him making a pretty desperate argument.

‘Actually because of the protection on NHS spending that the UK Government has given that we would not cut NHS spending while we have had to make difficult decisions elsewhere - that has actually made sure under the Barnett formula that money is available for Scotland as well.‘So I think that argument does not stack up at all.’

Read more here:

Manchester United 1 Swansea City 2: Garry Monk's men deserve much more credit after proving everybody wrong, South Wales Evening Post

IF Manchester United are as bad as we have been told since Saturday lunchtime, why did nobody give Swansea City a chance of beating them this weekend?

Because for all the weaknesses within this United side compared to the various top-class teams Sir Alex Ferguson put together, the current crop were still expected to have far too much power for Swansea.

No-one, as Garry Monk pointed out afterwards, thought his team would have a hope in hell of troubling United on the first day of their new era.

Swansea, therefore, deserve more credit than they have received for what goes down as one of their most famous victories regardless of United's current state.

Predictably, Swansea's first ever league triumph at Old Trafford has been met with minimal praise for them and maximum criticism for United.

Last season, David Moyes was carpeted every time the Red Devils dropped points, yet Gylfi Sigurdsson's late winner has not prompted flak for Louis van Gaal.

Read more here:

Travelodge removes Bibles from its rooms, The Christian Institute

The nationwide hotel chain Travelodge has removed Bibles from all of its rooms, in a move criticised by the Church of England.

Bibles provided free by the Gideons have been taken away for “diversity” reasons.

The removals took place after refurbishment work across the hotel chain, which replaced the drawers where Bibles were being kept.

‘Cultural vandalism’

In response, a spokesman for the Church of England said: “It seems both tragic and bizarre that hotels would remove the word of God for the sake of ergonomic design, economic incentive or a spurious definition of the word ‘diversity’”.

Writing on the Telegraph website, commentator Tim Stanley described Travelodge’s decision as “an act of cultural vandalism upon a tradition that goes back 126 years”.

A spokesman for Travelodge said: “The reason is because of diversity. With the country being increasingly multicultural, we didn’t feel it was appropriate to just have the Bible”

Read more here:

Further Reading here:

Travelodge removes the Bible from every room: No one had complained... but chain 'doesn't want to discriminate'  Daily Mail