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June 09, 2007
Threat to Churches looming ....
If anyone doubts that the government of the UK, in particular the Labour Party and its current leadership (and that includes Gordon Brown) is anti-Christian and pro-anything except Christianity, take a look at the new Charities Act 2006. From this year, every church will have to be able to prove that it is a "public benefit" in order to continue to enjoy its charitable status. Worse, Trusts set up by Christians to provide assistance and sometimes housing to the most needy in their congregations now face being stripped of their charity status with the consequence that Gordon Brown's thieves in the Treasury can strip them of their income and treat them as "companies" under the tax laws.
Why will they be able to do this you may ask. Simple, the new law requires that to be a charity you must be able to prove the following:
1. The public confidence objective is to increase public trust and confidence in charities.
2. The public benefit objective is to promote awareness and understanding of the operation of the public benefit requirement.
3. The compliance objective is to promote compliance by charity trustees with their legal obligations in exercising control and management of the administration of their charities.
4. The charitable resources objective is to promote the effective use of charitable resources.
5. The accountability objective is to enhance the accountability of charities to donors, beneficiaries and the general public.
There is further clarification of Public Benefit in 2(2) of the Act which states that this can include the promotion of religion, but then goes on to add that it includes belief in more than one god and in no god at all .....
Just to compound the situation, we must take account of the "Guidance" issued by the Commission which actually uses the word "unbenefit". Yes, you saw it here first. Whitehall speak no doubt, I despair I really do - someone should take the perpetrator of these abuses of the English language outside the building they disgrace, publically flog them and then hang them by their thumbs from the nearest bridge as a warning to others. But, back to the "Guidance". This allows the Commission to strip a body of charitable status if it or its activities can be deemed to be an "unbenefit" to the community. Can't see the problem? An "unbenefit" can be anything that is deemed to "promote religious hatred". Ergo; promoting the idea that Jesus Christ is Lord and the Son of the Living God, part of the Godhead is anathema to Muslims who see Him as a minor prophet. Promoting the idea that salvation is through Jesus and not through your good works, praying five times a day or any other "holy" action on your part is to "diminish" any other religion that does not share that view. In short, that could get your church stripped of its charitable status.
But, let's start at Number 1. on the list. Public confidence. Years of anti-Christian media coverage and even more years of promotion of the lie of "all faiths are the same" means that Public Confidence is something that will be incredibly difficult to prove. Compliance with the legal obligations on the part of the Trustees of any charity is not too difficult, unless you wanted to make life difficult of course. Then you could quite easily make it so difficult for the Trustees to provide all the proofs that it would drive them out of business. Job done, wind them up as a charity. That goes for Number 5 on the list as well, easy for the bureaucrats who make up the Commission to make life so difficult that it will be impossible to comply - especially if the Treasury is after the money! That leaves Number 4 - and what a wonderful catch all that will be. To ensure that Charitable Resources are effectively used. Well, what I may decide is the most effective use of the resources in a charity may not be what the Whitehall PC Brigade consider effective for their agenda. No more charity and again the Treasury sweeps the loot.
Looking at the proposed Guidance it is blindingly obvious that the Commission will be driven by secular ideologies and will want to exclude those "charities" which it does not consider benefit a sufficiently wide cross section of the populace. Thus "Lady Pevensey's AlmHouses for Impoverished Ladies of Quality" could find itself threatened with the removal of its charity status if it doesn't offer its almshouses to an open field (irrespective of the terms of the trust) to include the odd Billingsgate Fishwife, Pagan White Witch and Lesbian Single Parent. It is precisely this interpretation of "community" that led to a RNLI Lifeboat station near here recently being refused a Lottery Fund Grant because "it didn't benefit a wide enough section of the underprivileged and ethnic minorities." It's a bl**dy Life Boat Station for the love of God! I can well see that argument being applied to certain Trusts and Charities set up by Christian Churches to help members of their congregations - if they do not open it to all comers regardless of their faith, intent or membership of the relevant congregation they will not be given the status of a Charity.
Now there may be some out there who will think that this is an extremist position, but think carefully. Anyone recently who has had any dealings with the massed ranks of Whitehall will know that the denizens of the various Ministries never, ever, consider the consequences of what they do or say. The mantra is "there will always be some who must lose out in order for the majority to benefit". Well, if you believe that, you probably also believe in little green men, fairies at the bottom of the garden and the basic decency of the political classes. Don't worry, the men in white coats will have your strait jacket ready by the time you have finished reading this. Whitehall and those who run it, do not believe in applying common sense to anything. They will interpret this law, badly drafted and written as it is (as is all the legislation of the last ten years!) in the narrowest possible way. They apply it as strictly as they can - and they will get away with it, because most of those they apply it against will not have the wherewithall to fight them through the courts.
I forsee a bonanza for lawyers from this, an explosion of more worthless civil servants to administer it and the cramming of prisons with trustees of charities stripped of their status and assets on trumped up charges under this act.
Promote public confidence? Not unless it is in the purely secular fronts that promote the ideology of socialist control freakery. They will flourish because their trustees will all be the people who wrote this garbage and administer it. Watch this space as Christian Churches are picked off one by one.
Posted by The Gray Monk at June 9, 2007 06:19 PM
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