Sexual abuse hysteria in the Church of England finally put
right
Sex-related hysteria resulting in the defamation of the innocent has recently come undone in Australia's Higgins/Lehrman affair. See below about that:
https://australian-politics.blogspot.com/2023/08/drumgold-rise-and-fall-of-boy-from-mt.html
But the C of E got there first with abominable zeal to convict a genuinely holy man on no good evidence. "The woman must be believed" was again the poisonous basis for action. Who ever heard of a lying woman? I have posted previously on the matter. The source articles are belowLast week, 4 Canon Lane, Chichester, was renamed George Bell House. It had been called 4 Canon Lane since 2016. Before that, it had been called George Bell House. This forth-and-back reflects the strange sequence of events.
In 2015, the diocese paid compensation to ‘Carol’ for an alleged sexual assault by Bell, when Bishop of Chichester, in the late 1940s or thereabouts. In that year, the present Bishop of Chichester also gave her a formal apology. Bell had died, unaccused, in 1958.
The church process by which he was posthumously convicted nearly 60 years later had not included anyone speaking on his behalf. A number of us, one or two of whom had known Bell, started an informal group to clear his name. We were confident that the accusation was false and certain that the process had been wrong.
The latter point was conceded by the Church after a fine review by Lord Carlile. The former was not. The Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, asserted that a ‘significant cloud’ still hung over Bell. He finally retracted this in November 2021.
By then, poor Bell had been unpersoned by the diocese – his name, which had been hallowed, effaced. George Bell House, founded to promote his interest in vocation, education and reconciliation, was one example.
The re-renaming all but completes the formal restoration of Bell’s reputation. The Chapter of the cathedral, especially the interim Dean, Simon Holland, deserves credit, because this change was resisted in some quarters. The innocent man won in the end.
I hope history will record this fully. If, for example, you look online at the ICSA report on child abuse, which made Bell one of its cases, you will not pick up the vital fact that Bell did not abuse anybody.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/the-spectators-notes-280/
***********************************************Judge orders Southwest lawyers to take ‘religious-liberty’ classes with conservative Christian legal group
A federal judge has ordered three lawyers for Southwest Airlines to submit to “religious-liberty training” after it fired a flight attendant for her anti-abortion stance.
US District Judge Brantley Starr said the three legal eagles need to hone up on religious freedoms after defying his court orders in the flight attendant’s case — and said conservative Christian legal group Alliance Defending Freedom “is particularly well-suited” to set them straight.
While critics questioned the ruling, a spokesman for the group defended the judge’s ruling.
“The judge’s order calls for ADF to provide training in religious liberty law — not religious doctrine,” Jim Campbell, the group’s chief counsel, told Fortune magazine.
“It is baseless to suggest that people of faith cannot provide legal instruction if their beliefs differ from the audience.”
Starr, who was appointed to the bench by former President Donald Trump in 2019, is the nephew of former special counsel Kenneth Starr, who spent years probing Bill and Hillary Clinton’s alleged Whitewater scandal and uncovered the 42nd commander in chief’s affair with intern Monica Lewinsky.
The judge issued the ruling in the Southwest case after he said lawyers for the airline needed to brush up on the law after flight attendant Charlene Carter sued over her termination and won.
Southwest Airlines.
A federal judge in Texas has ordered lawyers for Southwest Airlines to undergo “religious-liberty training” after a flight attendant was fired after voicing anti-abortion views.
AP
Carter, who had been on the job for more than 20 years, was fired after she posted a series of social media messages slamming the flight attendant union boss for attending the anti-Trump, pro-abortion Women’s March in Washington, DC, in January 2017.
“You truly are despicable in so many ways,” Carter allegedly wrote in one message, which included an attached video of an aborted fetus, Fortune reported.
She took her case to arbitration after she was fired but lost — yet filed a lawsuit and was awarded $5.1 million by a Dallas jury last year — although Starr later lowered the award to $800,000.
The airline and the union are appealing the verdict.
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Businesses brace for deluge of new regs from Biden's labor cops
President Joe Biden’s appointees are poised to dramatically reshape the work lives of tens of millions of workers and the businesses that employ them. The Department of Labor, National Labor Relations Board and Equal Employment Opportunity Commission — each operating on a separate track — are readying to push out new regulations and rules on everything from overtime pay to who counts as an employee.
The packed agenda will allow Biden to champion his pro-worker agenda as his re-election campaign heats up and the president works to tamp down grumbling from some segments of organized labor, most notably the United Auto Workers.
Employers are bracing for the deluge, as August shapes up to be the start of a critical stretch for the federal government’s top workplace enforcers.
“It’s coming, and it’s coming in a big way,” Ed Egee, a vice president at the National Retail Federation, told POLITICO.
Several of the policies being developed have been in the works since the early days of Biden’s term but are only now coming to a head.
After a lull in public activity that overlapped with former Labor Secretary Marty Walsh’s departure and Julie Su’s bruising confirmation effort to succeed him, DOL in recent weeks has picked up the pace of its rulemaking.
This summer the agency has proposed safety standards for coal miners’ exposure to hazardous silica dust, completed a requirement that employers using anti-union consultants disclose their federal contractor status, and sent over language for several regulations to the OMB’s Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs — typically one of the final hurdles before public release.
DOL also has several closely watched policies that have not yet been finalized, including a revamp of the regulations that govern prevailing wage standards for federally funded construction projects, commonly known as Davis-Bacon, that has idled for nearly a year and a half since the initial proposal was released in March 2022.
But above all, employers are bracing for the unveiling of new DOL rules potentially expanding overtime pay requirements for millions of workers and a tighter definition of which workers can be classified as independent contractors instead of employees.
Both will inevitably face court challenges — including some that may seek to invalidate DOL’s policies by contesting Su’s ability to serve as acting secretary — and have been the subject of intense lobbying from both business groups and labor unions.
Raj Nayak, DOL’s assistant secretary for policy, said its regulatory agenda is a “key part of our broader efforts to improve the lives for workers around the nation.”
“The rules are a key part of our broader effort to make real improvements in workers’ lives — to give them more money in their paychecks, make sure they come home from work safe and healthy, that all workers have real opportunities, and that they can rest at night knowing their pensions are protected,” Nayak said in a statement.
The regulatory rush is partly being driven by the calendar. NLRB, in particular, is facing a time crunch as Democratic board member Gwynne Wilcox’s term expires August 27.
“The board is going to have a very, very active month of August,” Michael Lotito, who represents businesses for the law firm Littler Mendelson. “If you're thinking about going on vacation in August, you're going to have to take some time to see what the board is up to."
Democrats currently have a 3-1 majority, but the board has historically refrained from issuing precedent-shifting decisions and taking other controversial actions without at least three votes in support. Chair Lauren McFerran, whom Biden tapped in 2021, is viewed outside the agency as an institutionalist unlikely to break from that precedent, so Wilcox’s absence could bring consequential actions to a halt.
An NLRB spokesperson declined to comment.
Biden has re-nominated Wilcox for another term. But with Congress in recess for the month, a lapse is virtually guaranteed, though it is an open question for how long that will be.
As such, the board is expected to hand down decisions on several high-profile cases in the coming weeks — as it did Wednesday when the Democratic majority altered the framework used to assess the legality of employee handbooks and other workplace rules.
Companies fear the move will lead to even boilerplate conduct policies putting them at risk of NLRB investigations.
The ruling “inserted instability and confusion into the workplace and created risks for employers attempting to implement common sense policies that protect workers, customers, and the community,” Kristen Swearingen, head of the business-backed Coalition for a Democratic Workplace, said in a statement.
The NLRB is also racing to finalize regulations for determining joint-employer status, or when a worker is subject to two or more employers linked together in some way.
The issue is of particular importance to the tech and fast-food industries, among others, as the initial proposal released last fall would make it easier for the NLRB to hold companies liable for labor law violations committed by their franchisees or contractors.
“We really question how that’s how that's going to be implemented,” the National Retail Federation's Egee said, adding that the group is prepared to go to court over the issue.
While DOL and the NLRB have garnered the bulk of the pushback from businesses under the Biden administration, the EEOC has struggled. Democratic appointees have yet to hold a majority on the five-member panel during Biden’s time in office — boxing in Chair Charlotte Burrows.
The Senate in early July voted narrowly to confirm Kalpana Kotagal, whom Biden nominated more than a year prior. Kotagal will swing the commission over to Democrats — once she arrives, that is.
Kotagal is still in the process of joining the EEOC and does not have an official start date, she wrote in an email Friday.
Burrows’ window of opportunity may be brief. The chair’s own term has expired, and she will have to vacate her seat at the end of the year if the Senate does not reconfirm her.
That leaves only a few months for EEOC Democrats to act before they may again face a 2-2 split in 2024.
Burrows has been a vocal proponent of enhancing pay data reporting requirements as a tool to measure — and combat — wage disparities. The business community bristled at a previous attempt by the Obama-era EEOC to collect this data through the EEO-1 form that tracks workforce demographics, arguing it was too onerous and of questionable utility.
“We are very much expecting to see a return to some type of compensation reporting requirements that they tried to do back in the Obama era,” said Marc Freedman, vice president of employment policy at the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. However, "there’s a real sort of uncertainty on how they proceed on that issue."
An EEOC spokesperson said it is continuing to review the recommendations from the outside analysis of the Obama EEO-1 policy it commissioned and that any future changes would receive ample opportunities for public notice and comment.
There are other factors bearing down on Biden’s labor agencies, namely Congress.
House Republicans have proposed steep budget cuts for all three, which if enacted would likely require trimming headcount and other reductions. On the other hand, Senate appropriators have proposed very slight funding cuts to DOL and EEOC while holding flat the NLRB, and lawmakers will have to meet over the coming months to hash out a spending deal.
Regulations completed late in a president’s term can also leave them vulnerable following the election cycle, either through use of the Congressional Review Act by a hostile majority or — in the event of a change in administration — by being kept from ever taking effect.
“Everybody watches the calendar, and everybody knows how long things really take,” said Patrick Pizella, a former deputy and acting Labor secretary during the Trump administration.
He also said there is an emphasis on trying to get rules completed before the last year of a term to avoid last-minute bottlenecks or competing with other agencies for the administration’s attention.
“There's a tendency for departments to think that they're the only department that has something before OIRA,” he said. “That's just not the case. Their bandwidth is limited like everybody else.”
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Thank you, Dame Alison, thank you, Peter. For exposing the craziness of your woke banking practices
Judith Sloan
Forget ‘thank you, linesmen; thank you, ball boys’ or should that be linespersons and ball persons? I offer my deep appreciation to Dame Alison (Rose) and Peter (Flavel), the respective former heads of UK banks, NatWest and Coutts.
Without your valiant efforts to de-bank Nigel Farage, we wouldn’t be where we are now – which is hopefully at the beginning of an emerging sweet spot. It’s given new meaning to own goal, which we are all fully onboard with given the Women’s World Cup currently being played down under.
In my view, Ali – can I call her that? – should have walked the plank much sooner than she did and not because of any law. When is it OK for a banker to reveal the personal details of a customer to anyone, let alone a journalist? Call me old-fashioned, but that was always a sackable offence. As for the pathetic chairman, ex-Bank of England, he must surely go very soon. He wanted Ali to stay on after an imperceptible slap on the wrist.
I’m not sure I really blame the BBC journalist here. After all, he did ring through to Ali’s office the next day to confirm the story that the account had been cancelled for commercial reasons which was wrong, but what the heck. Farage’s account had been terminated after a 40-page dossier was assembled on him – just think of the resources consumed in that little exercise, including by wet-behind-the-ears graduates?
The conclusion was that Nigel’s views and values – racist, xenophobic, pro-Brexit, yada yada – didn’t align with those of an inclusive bank with purpose and so his account needed to be cancelled. I guess that’s because it’s such an inclusive thing to do, to cancel a customer.
Whoever thought that managing the reputational risk of the bank could involve de-banking a high-profile person like Farage, with almost unlimited scope to use the media, clearly had rocks in their head – and that’s being kind. Is the real conclusion that an adherence to wokedom is the equivalent of a non-surgical lobotomy?
The fall-out has been a joy to behold, well beyond Ali and Peter getting the chop (with generous termination packages, of course – they’re bankers). It turns out that de-banking is widespread and it is actually partly the fault of government policy and the crazy anti-money laundering regulations.
Of course, these regulations don’t really affect murderous Russian oligarchs or violent Albanian gang members. But given the proven law of unintended consequences, there have been some truly bizarre results.
Under the Know Your Customer Act – I’m not making that title up – a bank and certain other types of companies must identify politically exposed persons (PEPs) to guard against money laundering. Initially, it was only going to apply to non-UK PEPs, but that restriction was soon lifted. Being a PEP or related to a PEP is sufficient reason for a person to have their bank accounts cancelled, with no scope for appeal.
The current UK Energy Minister, Grant Shapps, has had a bank account cancelled and the same fate has befallen a number of his relatives. And this is someone who has net zero in his ministerial title!
But the story I love most is about Domenica Lawson, granddaughter of Nigel Lawson, former UK chancellor and then member of the House of Lords. In 2016, her mother applied to open a bank account with Barclays for her 16-year-old daughter who happens to have Down Syndrome. The request was denied and the reason given was her grandfather; he was deemed a PEP.
By this stage, Lawson was in his late eighties and it’s hard to conceive of any opportunity for Domenica to be involved in laundering money for her own or other person’s benefit. But the bank wasn’t backing down. The rules were the rules and Domenica was unable to open an account at Barclays.
It has also emerged that many businesses that deal mainly in cash have had their bank accounts cancelled. This is notwithstanding the fact that cash is still very commonly used for many small household transactions.
A number of Traveller groups has established window-cleaning businesses in an attempt to wean themselves off welfare, which is surely a welcome development. But various banks have decided to cancel their accounts because the transactions are excessively cash-based. Let’s face it, you can’t run a legitimate business without a bank account.
Understandably, Nigel Farage has a spring in his step as he encourages the de-banked to let him know their stories and to build up a picture of wilful, woke and insane behaviour by UK’s financial institutions.
The whole imbroglio has also lifted the spirits of the Sunak government, with various ministers expressing their displeasure at the treatment of Farage. The government has now committed to introduce legislation to prevent banks from cancelling accounts on the basis of the lawfully held views of account holders.
(Does this safeguard exist in Australia, you ask? It would appear not, with banks having wide authority to cancel the accounts of any customer they dislike or disagree with. At this stage, we haven’t seen any stupid behaviour on a par with that of Ali and Pete. But, let’s face it, you cannot survive without a bank account. It’s not the equivalent of being denied a decorated cake by a store owner who doesn’t like your sort. Just go to another bakery.)
As the Sunak government also takes the sensible and electorally palatable decision to walk back from net zero, a new broad pitch is emerging to no-nonsense, hard-pressed voters – we’re on your side, we think all that woke stuff is rubbish and we will wind back stupid policies as soon as possible. Chief among them is stopping the extension of the Ultra Low Emission Zone to outer London and the Zero Emissions Vehicle mandate.
Under the current terms of the Zev, 22 per cent of all cars sold in 2024 – yep, next year – must be fully electric (hybrids don’t count). The penalty for every normal car over the limit is 15,000 pounds – that’s right, 15 large ones – paid by the customer.
It has dawned on the Business Secretary, Kemi Badenoch, that this mandate will be impossible to meet, leading to angry and frustrated consumers as well as potential job losses in the industry. It’s odds-on to a dollar that the mandate will be significantly watered down.
So thank you Ali, thank you Pete: your stupid behaviour may have just been the jolt that the political leaders needed to focus on what voters are really seeking – genuine fact-based policies that deal with the issues at hand rather than the woke fantasies of a handful of inner-city luvvies, civil servants and rich bods dealing with their post-material anxieties.
https://www.spectator.com.au/2023/08/thank-you-dame-alison-thank-you-peter/
****************************************My other blogs. Main ones below:
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://edwatch.blogspot.com (EDUCATION WATCH)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
http://jonjayray.com/blogall.html More blogs
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Kristina Pimenova, once said to be the most beautiful girl in the world. Note blue eyes and blonde hair
Bliss: What every woman wants: to feel safe and secure in the arms of her man. Robert Irwin and Rorie Buckey. See 
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