A Kent GP said to a vulnerable patient that he would "eternally suffer" if he did not put his faith in Jesus, a medical watchdog has been told.
The General Medical Council (GMC) heard Dr Richard Scott, whose surgery is in Margate, told the 24-year-old patient that he would not give him medication.
A GMC panel in Manchester heard that the patient was told "his only hope of recovery was through Jesus".
Dr Scott disputes the account of the consultation in August 2010.
The remarks were said to have made at the end of a consultation at the Bethesda Medical Centre in Margate.
After discussing medical matters Dr Scott said, as a committed Christian, he had simply offered the patient the chance to talk about the role faith may have in helping with his problems.
At the four-day-hearing, Andrew Hurst, counsel for the GMC, claimed the doctor had told the man, known only as patient A: "He did have a cure, which would cure him for good.
"His one and only hope of recovery was through Jesus.
"If he did not turn to Jesus and hand him his suffering he would suffer for the rest of his life."
Anonymous witnessDr Scott disputes the account given by the patient, described by the GMC's own lawyer as a man with a "troubled psychological history".
When the case was first heard in September it was adjourned after the patient refused to give evidence.
The GMC heard that the patient had agreed to give evidence by phone on condition he was given anonymity and without the public or press present at the hearing.
Dr Scott said he was being denied a proper hearing after the GMC agreed to the patient's request on Monday.
An application by Dr Scott's lawyers for an adjournment to seek a judicial review to try to overturn the rules was rejected by the GMC's Investigation Committee.
Radio transcriptsMr Hurst pointed the GMC committee to transcripts of comments made by Dr Scott on BBC Radio 2's Jeremy Vine Show and on Nicky Campbell's show on BBC Radio 5 live, speaking of his faith and its use in treating patients.
He said medical rules stated doctors "must not express to your patients your personal beliefs, including political, religious or moral beliefs, in ways that exploit their vulnerability or that are likely to cause them distress", and good medical practice stated the "first duty" of a doctor is the care of a patient".
The GMC was criticised over its alleged "persecution" of Christians after the case was first heard last September - which it rejects.
Mr Hurst said the GMC did not have any bias for or against any religion either way and medics could talk about faith - but Dr Scott had simply "crossed the line" and gone too far.
"The GMC's position is not one that is hostile or opposed or biased against Christianity or any other religion," he said.
"Nor does it seek to promote a wholly secular society."
He was then asked by the chairman of the committee who had prepared the transcripts of the radio programmes to be used in evidence against Dr Scott.
"The National Secular Society," Mr Hurst replied.
The case continues.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
London 2012: Olympics opening ceremony details revealed - BBC News
The Olympic Stadium will be transformed into the "British countryside" for the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Games on 27 July.
A cast of 10,000 volunteers will help recreate country scenes, against a backdrop featuring farmyard animals and landmarks like Glastonbury Tor.
The opening scene of the £27m ceremony will be called "Green and Pleasant", artistic director Danny Boyle revealed.
He added the show would create "a picture of ourselves as a nation."
"The best way to tell that story is through working with real people," said Boyle, who has reserved a role for NHS nurses in proceedings.
There have already been 157 cast rehearsals and Boyle added: "I've been astounded by the selfless dedication of the volunteers, they are the pure embodiment of the Olympic spirit and represent the best of who we are as a nation."
The set will feature meadows, fields and rivers, with families taking picnics, people playing sports on the village green and farmers tilling the soil.
Real farmyard animals will be grazing in the "countryside", with a menagerie of 30 sheep, 12 horses, three cows, two goats, 10 chickens, 10 ducks, nine geese and three sheepdogs.
One billion people worldwide are expected to watch the opening ceremony.
Boyle, best known for directing Oscar-winning film Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting, said the show was inspired by The Tempest and would be about a land recovering from its industrial legacy.
The world's largest "harmonically-tuned" bell, weighing 23 tonnes and measuring 2m tall x 3m wide, will ring inside the Stadium to start the Shakespeare-inspired spectacle, featuring 900 children from the six Games host boroughs.
The bell, which was produced by the Whitechapel Bell Foundry and is inscribed with a quote from The Tempest's Caliban: "Be not afeard, the isle is full of noises", was installed in the Stadium last week.
Boyle said it was appropriate because: "That's how communities notified each other that something important was going to happen...after the war the bells were rung in London to announce the peace and we will begin our Games with a symbol of peace."
Among the other features will be two mosh-pits - one representing the Glastonbury festival and another the Last Night of the Proms - filled with members of the public.
Tickets for these positions are yet to be allocated, with organisers still to decide how to distribute them.
The set will feature real grass, an oak tree and "clouds" suspended from wires above the stadium - one of which will produce rain, provided the British weather does not provide its own on the night.
Meanwhile, the home nations will be represented by Maypoles topped with a thistle, a leek, a rose and flax.
A full dress rehearsal will be held for a capacity crowd of 80,000 in the Olympic Stadium, which will be fitted with a million-watt sound system.
The production team at 3 Mills Studios is completing work on nearly 13,000 props, while staff in the production department are creating 23,000 costumes for the four Olympic and Paralympic ceremonies.
'Fantastic celebration'Seb Coe, who chairs the Organising Committee Locog, said it would be one of the biggest sets ever built for a show.
"I'm sure [it] will be a fantastic celebration that will welcome the 10,500 athletes from around the world and make our nation proud," he said.
The three-hour ceremony will begin at 21:00 BST with "an hour of culture", followed by the athletes parade, then the lighting of the cauldron and a fireworks display to bring down the curtain.
Boyle is collaborating with electronic musical duo Underworld, whose 1990s rave classic Born Slippy featured in Trainspotting. They have already mixed two tracks at London's Abbey Road studios.
Asked about timings for the ceremony, Boyle said the music will be used to help dictate the pace of athletes parading around the stadium.
The director, who said it would be impossible to keep details of the show secret, said he was trying to represent something of everyone's dreams in the ceremony and hoped viewers would "find something of themselves" in what they saw.
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
London 2012: Oscar Winner Danny Boyle Details Olympics Opening Ceremony Plans - Hollywood Reporter
LONDON -- Oscar-winning director Danny Boyle plans to transform the Opening Ceremony of the London Olympics into a surreal vista of a "green and pleasant land" at the newly built host stadium in Eastern London.
Boyle, wearing his hat as London 2012 Olympic Games Opening Ceremony artistic director, will orchestrate a cast of thousands of people and live animals, including 12 horses, 10 chickens, nine geese and 70 sheep.
Also on show before any athlete has performed will be a village cricket team; a model of Glastonbury's Tor (Hill), known for the world-famous music festival; and a parade of nurses.
Each of the four nations in the United Kingdom will be represented by their national flower -- the rose of England, the thistle of Scotland, the daffodil of Wales and flax from Northern Ireland.
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The opening scene promises real grass, real plows, real soil and, according to Boyle, clouds that would supply "rain" if there is none on the night in order to ensure an authentically British atmosphere.
"The ceremony is an attempt to capture a picture of ourselves as a nation, where we have come from and where we want to be," Slumdog Millionaire director Boyle said. "The best part of telling that story has been working with our 10,000 volunteers."
He also told gathered media Tuesday that there will be British humor and that the country's history will be represented, but "not in a box-ticking way," and that the show will reflect "parts of our heritage but looking forward as well."
To date, a total of 157 cast rehearsals have taken place, with volunteer performers giving up their evenings and weekends to take part in preparations at a site to the east of London.
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The ceremonies prop store at the East London studio facility 3 Mills Studio is producing 2,956 props, and staff in the costume department are working to produce 23,000 costumes for all four ceremonies. The work includes sewing 24,570 buttons onto the costumes for one of the opening sequences.
Boyle already had revealed that the three-hour Opening Ceremony would be entitled "Isles of Wonder," a title based on a speech by Caliban in Shakespeare's The Tempest that will be referenced throughout the four ceremonies of the Olympic and Paralympic Games.
Boyle said the opening show would not be a musical but a narrative set to music.
British electronica band Underworld has recorded two lengthy tracks at Abbey Road to score the action. The Closing Ceremony promises to be a more traditional celebration of British music.
The ceremonies will cost a total of £81 million ($126 million).
The British government recently said it was pumping in an extra $64.3 million from a $14.6 billion public sector funding package to double the budget for the Games ceremonies, justifying the move by saying it was a "once in a lifetime" opportunity to promote the U.K.
The opening evening is expected to run as an hourlong cultural extravaganza before the traditional parade of athletes and the lighting of the Olympic cauldron and the fireworks.
Boyle said the giant bell will ring to begin the show.
The London Olympics run July 27-Aug. 12.
Source: www.hollywoodreporter.com
Kent remains on flood alert after heavy overnight rain - Kent Online
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Heavy rain floods a road in Northfleet. Picture: Genny Jones
A weather warning remains in place for Kent today as the River Darent continues to be on flood alert.
Forecasters at the Met Office say they rain will last until at least lunchtime - and some showers could be heavy.
Water levels on the River Darent from Westerham to Dartford - including Otford, Eynsford and South Darenth - remain high after heavy overnight rain.
The Environrment Agency said the flood alert will be in force until at least 3pm.
The Environment Agency has issued 45 flood alerts, with more than 38 in the south east.
Meanwhile, Kent County Cricket club have moved tonight's Friends Life t20 match against Sussex Sharks to the St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury, after flash flooding in Tunbridge Wells.
Motorists are also being told to take extra care on the roads. There were delays on Kent's motorways this morning as traffic was slowed down by heavy spray.
Heavy rain flooded the junction of St Marks Avenue and Beresford Road in Northfleet.
A tree lies in the middle of the River Medway in Maidstone
And a tree ended up in the River Medway, in Maidstone, close to the bridge that is part of the gyratory road system.
The swollen river has claimed part of the footpath near the Kentish Lady mooring.
A fallen tree also blocked The Square, in Hadlow, at about 9am today.
Have you taken any pictures of heavy rain or flooding? Tweet us @Kent_Online or email them to multimediadesk@thekmgroup.co.uk.
Monday, June 11 2012
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Judge_Mental wrote:
As the water companies prefer to give dividends to their shareholders rather than building reservoirs and adopting sound water management principles, nature has made its own arrangements for water storage.
12 Jun 2012 5:59 PM
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mars 40 wrote:
And we are on drought restrictions! come on Southern water/South East water and Thames water stop being greedy, i have so much water stored i won't need to touch the hosepipe this summer at all?
11 Jun 2012 10:29 AM
Source: www.kentonline.co.uk
Government defends gay marriage law change plans - BBC News
Downing Street has defended plans to change the status of civil ceremonies to allow gay and lesbian couples in England and Wales to get married.
It said it was confident safeguards to stop religious organisations being forced to take part in services would not be overturned by European courts.
The Church of England has said the move would "alter the intrinsic nature of marriage as the union of a man and a woman".
Ministers plan to pass the law by 2015.
In its 11 June response to a consultation on the issue, the Church of England said plans to exempt religious organisations from performing gay marriages would be unlikely to survive legal challenges in domestic and European courts.
However, Home Secretary Theresa May has said she believes ministers can create safeguards to protect the concerns expressed by religious groups.
Analysis
If the state sanctions marriage between same-sex couples, and one of those couples is deeply religious and wants their marriage ceremony to take place in a church or other place of worship, could they bring a legal challenge?
The answer is yes, and the basis is article 9 of the Human Rights Act which protects freedom of thought, conscience and religion.
Any such challenge would be likely to end up at the European Court of Human Rights and would be against the UK government's decision to legalise only gay civil marriages, and ban religious ones.
Like the blanket ban on prisoner voting, it is entirely possible that the European Court would declare the restriction unlawful.
However, critically, that would not compel religious institutions to carry out same-sex marriages.
It would be more likely to allow religious institutions to choose whether to marry gay couples, and indeed allow individuals within those institutions to choose whether to conduct religious ceremonies.
That would lead to a patchwork landscape for those seeking a same-sex religious marriage, with couples having to shop around.
It could also lead to ructions within a religion where the governing body remains against same-sex marriage, but individual members of the clergy decide that they are content to perform a religious ceremony.
"The government is not going to ask anybody to do anything that is against their conscience," she said.
"We want to ensure that we can put into place a framework that makes sure that those people who don't want to host same-sex marriages are not required to do so."
Civil partnerships were introduced in 2005 to give same-sex couples the same legal rights as married couples, but the law does not allow such unions to be referred to as marriages.
The government rejected the Church of England's assertion that the consultation exercise, which closes on Thursday, was "flawed, conceptually and legally".
Downing Street said the government welcomed the submission by the Church of England and would carefully consider it.
But the prime minister's spokeswoman confirmed that the government still intended to legislate on gay marriage by the end of this parliament.
"It is the government's view that marriage is one of the most important institutions we have got," she said.
"The consultation paper makes very clear that no religious organisation will be forced to conduct same-sex marriages as a result of our proposals."
She added that the government had taken legal advice on the likelihood of a challenge to the European court before drawing up its proposals and that Tory MPs, some of whom had expressed opposition to the plans, would be given a free vote.
Meanwhile, the National Secular Society said it was "incorrect" for the Church of England to "usurp Parliament's power" by claiming it could not redefine marriage.
"The Church's case rests on the risible proposition that introducing same-sex civil marriage will render the Church vulnerable to a European Court forcing it to conduct same-sex religious marriages too. The freedom of religion provisions, however, would ensure this could never happen," it said.
Gay rights campaign group Stonewall described the latest concerns raised by the Church of England as "scaremongering"
The Catholic Church in England and Wales has urged people to sign an online petition organised by the Coalition for Marriage.
More than 550,000 people have so far signed the petition set up by the "umbrella group of individuals and organisations in the UK that support traditional marriage and oppose any plans to redefine it".
Source: www.bbc.co.uk
