British adoption case to be reviewed

The social worker's initial rejection of the foster parents was 'wrong'.

Carolyn Moynihan | Nov 21 2016 | comment

In a significant development, the council that told a Christian couple that their concerns about same-sex parenting prevented them from adopting has agreed to reconsider its assessment following the involvement of the Christian Legal Centre.

At a meeting this week, the council recognised that the initial rejection was wrong. The couple will now be assessed by someone outside the council.

The case has attracted considerable media interest, including the interview above on BBC 2's Victoria Derbyshire show earlier this week, says Christian Concer

With the increase of social media websites there has also been a growing amont of criticism of these fascinating but time consuming forms of sharing. As I am helping produce content for a website myself I am saved from the bottomless pits of Instagram and Pinterest; but as I read Heather Zeiger's intriguing survey of some of this literature I identified strongly with one observation: Facebook provides a button in your email so you can check what you missed, at which point you are taken to the endless news feed page where you will spend (on average) twenty minutes scrolling. Too true, and it's even worse when you only look at your feed once a fortnight or so...

Strangely enough people still find time to read, judging by the quantity of new books that come out each year. Once again we have to ration our time with books, so it was a welcome initiative when Sydney bookeseller Portico launched their online Good Reading Guide five years ago. It was an ambitious and well designed site, and produced hudreds of reviews of worthwhile books for different age and interest groups. It's editor, Clare Cannon, shared her expertise and guidance with MercatorNet readers from time to time. Sadly, GRG will be closing in January as the cost of running the site has outrun resources. Harley Sims, who wrote many of the reviews, has written a nice tribute to this brave antipodean venture. Thanks, Harley, and Good Reading Guide.

Finally, a website woe of our own: An IT glitch forced our email program to send out a few dozen emails in the space of 2 minutes for two of the blogs. We apologise profusely for the error. We're working on fixing up the gremlin which caused it. It was not due to hackers.