That could amount to 1 million cases a year Fathers can behave badly, but the courts need to accept that mothers are just as likely to be at fault.If Mr Geldof is in error, it is in his implication that it is enough to recognise the injustices to put them right. But the very secrecy of the system makes the family courts unaccountable, not just for their anti-father bias but for their power over children's lives generally. But there is too much evidence that our present law, which is supposedly designed to put the interests of children first, allows parents to play legal games that harm them.The secrecy of family courts was designed to protect the privacy of children, and the dangers of their being used as pawns in a public dispute are real. In fact it is just as much evidence of how some mothers make it difficult or impossible for fathers to stay in touch.Some of the problems of family break-up cannot be resolved equitably by any social or legal system, as Solomon was not the first to discover. For too long, family courts have been encouraged to underplay the role of fathers. Too often, the tendency of the courts to grant custody - now called residence - to the mother has been abused to deny fathers their joint right to bring up their children.The fact that half of all separated fathers lose touch with their children has been cited as evidence of men's lack of commitment to child-rearing. The first is the anti-father bias of the family courts; the other is their secrecy.There has been a revolution in attitudes towards families and the role of women over the past four decades that has been overwhelmingly for the better But it has had some unpleasant unintended consequences. He wrote angrily in these pages yesterday about the injustices of family law, to publicise the launch of a book on the subject. There are two injustices in particular that cry out to be remedied, one reinforcing the other. Not for the first time in his life, Bob Geldof is right. That could amount to 1 million cases a year.Against harm on that scale, the Government's punitive attitude towards a drug that mostly makes people just a bit boring is quite baffling.. Professor Colin Drummond of St George's Hospital in London reports that 40 per cent of emergency hospital admissions at weekends are the result of alcohol-fuelled fights and accidents. It seems that the limited relaxation of the law against cannabis will not extend as far as allowing people to smoke it on the street; the police will still regard that as an arrestable offence. This news comes on the same day that the British Association for the Advancement of Science hears evidence of the extraordinary toll inflicted on the country by alcohol-induced disorder.
Intoxication in public can be unseemly, no doubt But this government does have its priorities in a twist. And as a pastor, scholar and teacher, his life was characterised by a deep and abiding sympathy, and by a respect for the value of each individual life.Stewart J Brown. He worked always to strengthen the connections of the British and German peoples. He presented the Stone Lectures at Princeton Theological Seminary in 1953 and the Montague Burton Lectures at Leeds University in 1974. In 1954, he served as President of the Society for Old Testament Study.While Porteous seldom spoke of his experiences in the Great War, those experiences had shaped him. First published in 1962, the volume would go through four German and two English editions. In 1967, he published a volume of essays, under the title Living the Mystery. He served for 21 years on the panel of translators who were responsible for preparing the New English Bible. He prepared the volume on the Book of Daniel for the widely used German commentary series Das Alte Testament Deutsch. He served as both Dean of the Faculty of Divinity and Principal of New College from 1964 to 1968.His contributions to Old Testament scholarship were significant. He was regarded as a peacemaker, one who found personal conflicts between his colleagues deeply painful, and who worked continually for reconciliation and a common sense of purpose. He was, moreover, a man of broad culture, who could discourse widely in philosophy, history, fine art and literature, who had an infectious sense of humour and fun, and an unending supply of anecdotes. As a scholar-teacher, he was very much a "college man", deeply committed to the work of the Faculty and to the welfare of students, even at the expense of his own scholarly work. |
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