By Grace Boyle

A recent report has indicated that one in ten Glaswegian kids are at risk from abuse be it sexual, violence, injury or neglect. The main factors behind these levels of abuse? Scotland, and in particular the West, has a long history of alcohol, drugs and solvent abuse. Our children are the innocent victims of a society gone mad, of broken families, single parent families living on the breadline, absent fathers etc.

The various agencies appear to be working hard, in particular the NSPCC Full Stop campaign, but more needs to be done to give these children a voice and the confidence to ask for help.

In the words of the singer Pink ” why would a father take his own daughters rights away? ” And why would a mother turn a blind eye to their child being battered by the father, partner, friend?

The Principal executive of (SCRA) (Scottish Children’s Reporter Administration), Ms McIvor ” In Glasgow almost one child in ten is in need of care. What are the factors in society that are leading to such an incredibly high rate?”

“By focusing on the most difficult cases we are getting a better picture of the problems, but it is a disturbing picture”

Almost 5,000 troubled children have been taken into care this year in Scotland.

ww.childline.org.uk

By Adam Bergin

Jeff Stelling to be named new countdown host

SkySports presenter Jeff Stelling is to become the new host of long-running C4 quiz show Countdown, it has emerged. He is understood to be Channel 4′s top choice to replace retiring Countdown host Des O’Connor.
Stelling has cult status thanks to his Anchor role on Sky’s six-hour football results service.

Church stolen, claims Russian clergy

A church has been stolen from a village on the outskirts of Moscow according to Father Vitaly. Although the building was only being visited every few months by the local diocese, they had been considering resuming services there. It is thought that the church was taken away brick by brick, leaving just foundations and sections of the walls.
 

Monkeys stolen from wildlife park

Two squirrel monkeys were taken from Cotswold Wildlife Park in Oxfordshire on Monday night. Thieves cut through fences and smashed through a heavy door to enter the monkey enclosure. Staff fear the primates will be sold on the black market. The park’s curator, Jamie Craig, said: “The staff are upset and angry – they just don’t understand these people.

Survey reveals opposition to gay adoption

More than a third of people think gay couples should not be allowed to adopt children, a survey reveals today.
More than three-quarters (87%) of those who object said they think children need both male and female role models; and 76% said it would lead to the breakdown of the traditional family.
Children’s charity Action For Children, which commissioned the poll of 1,000 adults, said it was shocked by the level of prejudice.

Swinging vicar sacked after turning up drunk for service

A vicar who recently confessed she was a swinger and went to church drunk was defrocked yesterday.
The Rev Teresa Davies was banned from practising for 12 years after a church tribunal found her guilty of “conduct unbecoming or inappropriate to the office and work of a clerk in holy orders”.

Aretha Franklin tops rock list

Soul legend Aretha Franklin has been named the greatest singer of the rock era in a Rolling Stone magazine poll.
The 66-year-old, best known for her hit song Respect, topped the list of 179, which was made up of musicians, producers and other music-industry insiders.
Jazz maestro Ray Charles and Burger King Elvis Presley came 2nd and 3rd respectively.
The Top 10:
1. Aretha Franklin
2. Ray Charles
3. Elvis Presley
4. Sam Cooke
5. John Lennon
6. Marvin Gaye
7. Bob Dylan
8. Otis Redding
9. Stevie Wonder
10. James Brown

by Steven Allison

Leo Tolstoy once said “All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way”.

If all happy families resemble each other, does that therefore mean that a happy family is a normal family? When I apply the word ‘normal’ here, I refer to the concept of the nuclear family, which Merriam-Webster states dates back to the 40s.

The nuclear family is one that comprises of a father, a mother, and their children. More so today than ever, the notion of the nuclear family is becoming less commonplace. This can be attributed to various influences, such as the ever soaring rate of divorce, the greater acceptance of having children out with the confinements of marriage, and the tolerance towards same sex couples adopting.

The majority of people who find themselves a member of a nuclear family have parents who are seemingly happily married, and siblings who get on like a house on fire with each other and their parental unit, give or take the occasional anomaly. Even the Queen once said that “like all the best families we have our share of eccentricities, of impetuous and wayward youngsters and of family disagreements”.

But surely these people can’t believe that this state of family bliss will remain constant for the rest of their lives? Well as a member of a former nuclear family, I can vouch for the fact that yes, it is possible to be so deluded as to have faith in the fact that this rose spectacle tinted view of family life will continue until the end of time.

Until the summer of 2000, I was under the impression that my family were completely normal. We were all staying with my grandparents in Ardersier, a village between Nairn and Inverness, and bored one afternoon, my brother and I were looking at old family photographs. There was one on the wall of my grandparents’ bedroom, which I’m sure I had seen before, but I don’t ever remember being curious as to who the two children in it were, probably assuming that they were my dad and aunt when they were younger. As my brother looked at it, my gran walked in the room and my brother asked “Gran, who are the boy and girl in this?”. My gran looked at the floor, said “You’d better ask your dad that question”, and then walked out of the room. My brother and I looked at each other and laughed, thinking there must be some joke at our expense. There was some muttering next door and then my dad walked in, had us sit down on the bed, and then proceeded to tell us a story, which went something like this…

When he met my mother he was already married, but separated from his wife. He met my mum whilst she was working for him in a factory in Glasgow, fell in love and 9 months later, the wonderful little being that is me popped out of nowhere…possibly one of the best products of an ‘affair’ that I can imagine, obviously. By that time his now ex wife had met somebody else, a Canadian, and had moved to Canada with him, agreed by my dad on the condition that she provide him with details of their whereabouts and come to some arrangement regarding visitation. This promise was broken and they disappeared. For years my dad tried in vain to track them down, but regrettably this never happened.

Apparently he and my mum had always agreed that myself and my brother who was born 4 years later, would be told when “the time was right”. The time, it seemed, was never right, until the very day when an explosive question was asked that had to be given a truthful answer. My brother didn’t take it well and refuses to this day to discuss it, but my dad has always said to me that if I ever need to know anything more about it then I was more than welcome to ask. Caring for my dad too much, I have always been relectant to do this as I know how much it must hurt a human being to be reminded of such a loss.

I will never look for my half siblings and they will probably never search for my dad, as it is more than likely that they have been brought up believing that the man that brought them up is their father. If this is the case then they will definitely not know about my brother or I seeing as they were long gone by the time we were born.

So, this was the first time in my life, where my seemingly normal family morphed into the sort of dysfunctional family that are the content of a gritty storyline in a soap opera. My family was no longer part of the 2.4 children crowd.

Some time later in 2005, the family that continued as normal after the revelation of secret siblings that were unspoken of, was completely blown apart by an affair. My mum had been seeing a friend of my dad’s for some time, and after almost a year of them living together knowing that the love for him she once had was gone, she finally revealed the truth…on Mother’s Day. Needless to say, the phonecall of apology I was making for her card being late, became the last thing on my mind. it has taken us 3 years for us to get to a

My story, I think, reinforces that idea posed at the outset of this article: that a normal family is a happy family, and that I am sure each unaverage family has something very different to be upset about.

By Christopher Hall

The UK’s third largest supermarket, Sainsbury’s, has racked up half-year profits of 13.3% leading up to October 4th.

In the recent economic climate, the chain has announced underlying pre-tax profits of £272 million.

Sainsbury’s has now recorded 15 quarters of consecutive like-for-like sales growth, with customer numbers appearing to grow – with about 18 million customers a week.

The supermarket Chief Executive Justin King said the supermarket should continue to be successful and profits stay on the rise.

“Our universal customer appeal has been fundamental to our sustained performance,” said King.

Sainsbury’s was predicted to suffer from the current economical downturn due to its association with higher-price and higher quality goods, than many of its main competitors.

By James Davies

Baby P suffered at the hands of his mother, who claimed her son ‘bruised easy’.

The toddler, who cannot be named for legal reasons, was pronounced dead shortly after midday on 3 August at the North Middlesex Hospital in Edmonton, North London. Baby P’s mother, who made the 999 call, described to the operator that he was ‘blue, cold and stiff’.

She told social workers the day before he died that she was going to go home, hug her son and bake some cakes. The next morning he was dead.

The post-mortem examination on baby P, revealed that he suffered a catalogue of shocking injuries which the mother allegedly knew nothing about. He suffered: a number of bruises, cuts and scrapes along with a laceration to his ear lobe, several broken ribs and a broken back, a large gouge in his head (possibly from a dog bite), several missing toenails and fingernails, a tear from his lip to his gum and a tooth which he swallowed after it was knocked out.

Computer generated images of the baby’s injuries were shown to the jury at the court where two men were found guilty of causing the death of baby P, because the real images were to upsetting to show.

The mother of baby P had attended sessions with doctors and told GP’s that her son “bruises easily” and that she was worried in case she was accused of harming him. After a few more sessions with the doctor, unexplained bruising on baby P aroused suspicion and with no adequate explanation of what happened, Dr Jerome Iqwueke immediately referred baby P to a paediatric specialists at the Whittington Hospital.

He was examined by doctors and they concluded that it was non-accidental damage. Just two weeks before the end of his life, social workers said that his hands and face were covered in chocolate. Nothing unusual about a child with chocolate all over their face. Except, in baby P’s case, it was used to cover up bruises so not to alert social services to the brutal reality hidden behind the chocolate on his hands and face.

By Grace Boyle

National Adoption week is running from the 10th – 16th November and was started by the (Baaf) or the British Association of Fostering and Adoption. In the same week where Sarah Ferguson was filming undercover in the romanian orphanages to help educate the world on the awful conditions these children are still suffering, the plight of baby P has also shocked the country as the social services have yet again been blamed for the tragic way in which he was left to die, battered ,bruised, broken ribs, and back. The mother and her boyfriend had even tricked the visiting social workers by covering him in chocolate sauce to hide his bruises. The seventeen month old baby had been used as a human punchbag.

It is fifteen years since the outside world was shocked at the state of the orphanages in Romania since the news broke after Ceasescu’s topple. Many children were in fact not orphans, but couples couldn’t afford to feed their ever growing family and with no access to contraception, these unwanted children were simply given to the state and locked away. Nothing seems to have changed, so where is the the money raised from the various charitable organisations going and how is it being spent?

There are ,according to figures from (Baaf) ,over 4,000 children in the uk at present waiting for a new home, so where are they? Where are our orphanages and what state are they in.? How are our children being treated? It is time to look closer to home and ask a few questions as to the conditions our children are living in.

The world is right to be shocked about Romanian orphanages, but charity surely begins at home, and we can’t forget our own, we need to make sure that there are no more tragedies such as the sickening death of baby P.

www.baaf.org.uk

www.gmtv.com

What are we doing to protect our children? Where are our children? There are currently 4,000 kids in our country desperately waiting for a home