£16-million tourism project for Lincoln
Cathedral
LINCOLN Cathedral has secured a £900,000 grant from the Heritage
Lottery Fund to finance the first phase of a £16-million 20-year
development project. In addition to "essential conservation work",
it will seek to improve its offering to visitors and tourists as
"one of the finest cathedrals in Europe with the lowest visitor
figures". It recently lost a "substantial" English Heritage grant
and is currently on the Heritage at Risk Register.
Former Truro press officer to be sentenced for
abuse
A FORMER press officer for the diocese of Truro, Jeremy Dowling,
76, has admitted sexually abusing boys over more than a decade. He
assaulted five children from 1959 to 1971, while he was working as
a teacher in Devon. He retired from the diocese in 2009, after 25
years, and served on both diocesan and General Synods. He will be
sentenced on 10 July. The Bishop of Truro, the Rt Revd Tim
Thornton, said: "Crimes such as his cause people to doubt
themselves, their relationships, their faith - all aspects of
life."
New bid to change law on assisted dying
A NEW effort to change the law on assisted dying will be debated
by MPs, after a Private Member's Bill topped the ballot last week.
The Bill, tabled by Rob Marris, the Labour MP for Wolverhampton
South West, is based on the draft regulations drawn up by Lord
Falconer, whose Assisted Dying Bill ran out of debate time in the
last Parliament (News, 23
January). The regulations would mean that patients with no more
than six months to live, and who had demonstrated a "clear and
settled intention" to end their lives, would be prescribed a lethal
dose of drugs on the authority of two doctors. The Prime Minister,
who opposes a change in the law, has said that Mr Marris's Bill
will not be given government time in the House of Commons.
Christian disability charity welcomes ruling on PIP
delay
DELAYS in paying Personal Independence Payments (PIP) to two
disabled people - of 13 months and ten months - was unlawful, the
High Court ruled last week. But the judge ruled that their human
rights had not been breached. Liz Mell of Livability welcomed the
decision: "We hope that it will force the Government to act quickly
and take some of the strain off the disabled people." There are
currently 78,700 waiting for their applications for PIP to be
decided, of which 3200 have been waiting for more than a year.