It is harvest time for strawberries in the northern Philippine town of La Trinidad, so strawberry farmer Alice Rivera will start repaying a loan extended by a Geneva-based ecumenical church loan fund - writes Maurice Malanes.

"This is what we appreciate ... we can start repaying our loans only immediately after the harvest season starts," said Rivera, who is 45. She is just one of 7,000 clients being served by the Ecumenical Church Loan Fund-Philippines (Eclof-Philippines), whose initial seed fund was provided by Eclof International, a non-profit micro-finance organisation.

Rivera, a widow and mother of a nine-year old son, has started harvesting strawberries from a 500-square-metre lot that she leases from the farm of Benguet State University, an agricultural school.

Starting this January up to May 2012, she expects to harvest an average of 20 kilograms every three days. As of 25 January, Rivera said she had retailed her 20-kilogram produce at one hundred pesos (about US$2.35) per kilogram.

"Although retail prices fluctuate ... I can still earn something, enough to send my kid to school and set aside some amount to repay my loan," she said in an interview in late January when ENInews went with four Eclof staff to visit their clients.

Given eight months by Eclof to pay her 20,000-peso (US$467) "agricultural loan," Rivera said she was confident she could pay off her loan before May.

Eclof-Philippines follows what Eclof local branch manager Valentina Tangib describes as a "flexible policy" for agricultural loans. "Before, our policy for small business and agricultural loan repayment was uniform in which we collect loan payments monthly," Tangib said.

Tangib and her staff found that farmers had difficulty repaying their loans since they could only start earning three months after harvest. Since five years ago, they have made it a policy that agricultural loan clients are given eight months to repay their loans.

Meling Telcagan, aged 60, a cut-flower farmer specialising in growing "Malaysian mums" (a species of chrysanthemum), has also been taking out Eclof's small loans since 2005. Most flower growers like Telcagan time their first harvest during February because flowers are more in demand then.

Besides Valentine's Day, when a dozen mums are priced at as much as two hundred fifty pesos (US$5.84) to three hundred pesos (US$7), February is also a flower festival season for neighboring Baguio City during which mums are popular items.

Other flower plots in Telcagan's greenhouse will be harvested in March and April, the season of school graduation, while other plots are planned for June, a wedding month.

"I thank God for giving my family a net income of eighty thousand pesos (US$1,869) during only a month of harvest last year," she said. Telcagan says she plans to repay her 30,000-peso (US$817) Eclof loan by March.

[With acknowledgements to ENInews. ENInews, formerly Ecumenical News International, is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]

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Disability Rights UK, a membership organisation representing over 500 NGOs across the country, has strongly criticised the coalition government's controversial Welfare Reform Bill.

Neil Coyle, Disability Rights UK Director of Policy and Campaigns, declared yesterday: “The Government’s removal of protections for some disabled people from the Welfare Reform Bill ignores the hundreds of thousands of disabled people directly affected, the hundreds of charities who have highlighted the potential devastating impact for disabled people and their families, the House of Lords who proposed additional protections and the Joint Committee on Human Rights who suggested the Bill will cause destitution.”

Disabled people are disproportionately represented among benefit claimants due to educational attainment issues, higher poverty, lack of accessible work and employer discrimination.

The Bill aims to cut 280,000 disabled people from receiving out of work benefits altogether and 500,000 disabled people to be made ineligible for a benefit designed to help with disabled people’s higher costs of living.

These plans have long term cost implications being ignored by DWP – including a substantial potential increase in (avoidable) NHS use and rise in demand for council social care services - which many disabled people are being made ineligible for due to council budget cuts.

House of Lords amendments had secured protection for some disabled children, disabled adults needing longer than a year to find work and disabled students.

Disabled people believed their fears and concerns had been acknowledged and addressed in the Lords, says Disability Rights UK, but but this hope has been removed in the Commons' demand for short term welfare expenditure cuts which ignore risks of higher future costs.

Huge political awareness has been raised around the WRB debate by the Spartacus Report on DLA and the social media driven Spartacus campaign led by disabled and sick people themselves.

A third of all disabled people already live in poverty, but the Bill will now enforce destitution for some families and individual disabled people, say critics. The amendments would merely have softened the blow of the cumulative impact of the Government’s cuts, they add.

Neil Coyle continued: “Disabled people remain the hardest hit by cuts. But the Government has completely failed to analyse the full cost of proposals. Cuts have consequences for disabled people and their families, but will also mean the NHS and councils experience higher costs through higher health, care and poverty needs. The Government has chosen to ignore long-term needs and costs in the short-term search for departmental savings.”

* Disability Rights UK: http://www.disabilityalliance.org/

* The recommendations of the Joint Committee on Human Rights report on the likely impact of the WRB on disabled people are online at: http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/jt201012/jtselect/jtrights/233/...

* Spartacus Report and campaign: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/spartacusreport

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SNP Work and Pensions spokeswoman Dr Eilidh Whiteford MP has hit out the ‘compassionless UK coalition’ after MP’s overturned House of Lords amendments to their Welfare Reform Bill on 1 February 2012.

Dr Whiteford said there was increasing evidence that the welfare system should be devolved and highlighted evidence from the Scottish Local Government Forum Against Poverty and Rights Advice Scotland who have warned that UK welfare reforms will remove a safety net for hardworking taxpayers and their families.

Dr Whiteford declared: “The UK Government has exposed itself as an out-of-touch and compassionless coalition. It is increasingly clear that the only way we will get a welfare policy that suits Scotland’s needs is by having the powers to set that policy in Scotland."

She continued: “From time limiting contributory Employment and Support Allowance to cuts in the availability and level of crisis loans, it is the most disadvantaged in our communities that are paying the price of the Tories reforms."

“Reform of the benefits system is necessary but the Tory/LibDem Coalition Government’s plan looks increasingly like an assault on the most disadvantaged. We must not have cuts for the sake of cuts. Not only would that risk forcing the most vulnerable in society into a perilous position, it also takes vital capital out of the economy without consideration of the impact," said Dr Whiteford.

“While reform is necessary, it must be done carefully and decisions on entitlements based on medical need – not government spin," she said.

“The welfare system should maximise the potential for all people to work and live free from poverty, however, this cannot be achieved through cuts in support for disadvantaged people," Dr Whiteford added.

“This issue shows yet again the different stance Scotland would take if we had the power to legislate on this issue and it is our clear view that it is the Scottish Parliament, not the UK Parliament, that should decide on welfare policy for Scotland – as would be the case if Scotland was independent,” the Scottish National Party Work and Pensions spokeswoman at Westminster concluded.

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The Church of England’s decisions about women bishops are likely to have a major impact on its mission as well as its ministry. If the church appears to be reluctant to accept and fully use women’s gifts, attempts to attract and involve more people across a wide age-range may be undermined.

Research findings: cause for concern

Findings from the 28th British Social Attitudes survey were published in December 2011. It showed a serious decline in religious belief and practice in recent decades. 31per cent in 1983 did not belong to a religion, compared to 50 per cent now (64 per cent of those aged 18-24).

There are various reasons for this. But evidence suggests that the widespread perception that Christianity treats women as inferior is one of the factors.

For instance in 2008, Women and Religion in the West: Challenging Secularization, edited by social scientist Kristin Aune of the University of Derby and two others, was published by Ashgate. This revealed that, in England, Christian churches had lost over a million women worshippers since 1989, in part because of their perceived attitudes.

“Because of its focus on female empowerment, young women are attracted by Wicca, popularised by the TV series Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” Dr Aune observed. “Young women tend to express egalitarian values and dislike the traditionalism and hierarchies they imagine are integral to the church.”

In contrast, there is evidence valuing women’s gifts has a positive effect on mission. For instance, a 2010 University of Warwick paper, 'Statistics for evidence-based policy in the Church of England: Predicting diocesan performance', by Leslie J Francis and colleagues, examined the factors linked to differences in diocesan performance during the Decade of Evangelism, from 1991-2000. In dioceses with a higher proportion of women clergy, the Church of England tended to enjoy more growth or slower decline.

Taking into account the fall in church membership and involvement, and even nominal Christianity, such findings deserve serious consideration.

The debate over women bishops

There is wide public support for allowing women to be bishops in the Church of England. A YouGov online survey in July 2010 of Britons aged 18 or over found that 63 per cent were in favour and only 10 per cent against, while the remaining 27 per cent expressed no opinion. By the end of 2011, after dioceses had discussed the issue, it had become apparent that there was overwhelming support among churchgoers too.

Moving forward on this matter would greatly assist the church in mission and ministry in England today. The decision on whether women should be eligible to be bishops in the Church of England (or senior clergy or elders in other churches) does not simply affect potential candidates, but has far wider implications.

The role of bishops is not merely administrative: they are there to nurture and support other clergy in their calling and, most importantly, to enable the priesthood of all believers, in all their diversity, so that the whole people of God in each locality can witness in word and deed to the good news of Christ.

The exclusion of any section of the Christian community from being even considered as bishops can have a demoralising effect on those who, at parish level, are seeking to live out their faith within an often sceptical society, and to help to build God’s realm of justice and peace in an deeply unequal and sometimes harsh world.

There has been growing recognition that both men and women are made in God’s image and that, in Christ, barriers are broken down: in the words of Paul’s letter to the Galatians, “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.”

Yet the church has often failed to communicate this effectively to the wider world, in part because this is not fully reflected in its own life. Some churches seem unsure how to respond when the Holy Spirit calls and empowers women.

There is an understandable wish in church circles to accommodate the small minority of churchgoers who still do not accept women’s ordained ministry, and proposals have allowed generous provision to enable them to be ministered to by solely male clergy, including the delegation of pastoral functions to male bishops.

Some are uneasy with this but have accepted it because of the desire to move forward together. However there is a risk that concessions could be extended so far that the role of women bishops was seriously undermined, and ordination of women to the episcopate might become unworkable. This would be a tragedy, not only for the Church of England but also for Christian witness nationally.

However, a positive decision by the Church of England to open up all orders of ministry to women as well as men could promote mission, especially if used as an opportunity to share the theological reasoning behind the move. For, now as much as two thousand years ago, Christians believe that the living Christ continues to invite men and women, people of different ages, ethnicities, cultures and backgrounds, to follow, be transformed, join in changing the world and become inheritors of eternal life.

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© Savi Hensman is a respected Christian commentator on religion, politics, theology and social policy. She is an Ekklesia associate.

The government's decision to overturn House of Lords amendments to the Welfare Reform Bill was “totally wrong”, says the National Housing Federation.

The organisation has pledged to "keep fighting" against the coalition's “unfair” proposals, it said today (2 February 2012).

Among the controversial measures in the WRB is the decision to cut housing benefits for social tenants who are deemed to under-occupy their homes as well as a £26,000-a-year benefits cap - which has been heavily criticised or questioned by charities, churches and more recently the Institute for Fiscal Studies.

National Housing Federation Chief Executive David Orr said: "The decision by MPs to reject the Lords' Bedroom Tax compromise is a blow to thousands of families in social housing across the country, many of whom are already struggling to make ends meet."

He continued: "That over 70 organisations, from disabled charities to mortgage lenders, came together in support of this change to the Welfare Reform Bill shows just how important this issue is. It is unjust to penalise people for under-occupying their homes when they have nowhere else to move to."

"Given the level of opposition in the Lords to these proposals and their potential impact, it is totally wrong for the Government to shut down discussion by claiming financial privilege," said Mr Orr.

'We will continue to campaign against these unfair proposals," he declared.

The government has reaffirmed its commitment to "transitional arrangements" and promised a nine-month "grace period" for tenants hit by the overall benefit cap after losing their job.

The National Housing Federation said it welcomed the new arrangements but warned that they are insufficient on their own and will do little to protect families.

"We remain concerned that this crude measure will lead to a rise in rent arrears, homelessness and child poverty," said NHF chief Orr.

* National Housing Federation: http://www.housing.org.uk/

* See also: Unfair to tenants and taxpayers: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/16225

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People living with cancer in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland have warned MPs that the Westminster government's welfare changes could push patients and their families into poverty.

Groups of disabled, sick and other people have been making similar points, but yesterday the coalition government voted down amendments that would have ameliorated what critics say are some of the worst aspects of the Welfare Reform Bill.

Writing in the Herald newspaper based in Glasgow, Elspeth Atkinson, director of Macmillan Cancer Support in Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales declared: "Cancer patients want to work. They haven't chosen to give up the safety of employment. The assertion that providing hard-earned benefits at a time of greatest need encourages a dependency by seriously ill cancer patients on benefits is simply not based on fact."

She continued: "The Government's plan to cut Employment Support Allowance after one year will leave around 7,000 cancer patients up to £94 worse off each week, simply because they have not recovered quickly enough. These are people who have paid into the system all their working lives and it is wrong to put them under further financial and emotional distress on top of recovering from a life-threatening illness."

"In our experience of treating and supporting cancer patients, one year is not long enough for many people to recover from cancer treatment. Chemotherapy and radiotherapy can be highly debilitating. The ongoing and severe side-effects can leave patients struggling for years. Although there is clear evidence that one year is not long enough for patients to recover, the Government seems determined to press ahead with the changes," said Ms Atkinson.

She concluded: "We accept the benefits system is in need of reform. However, cutting help for cancer patients will only succeed in causing stress and worry to people going through an already difficult time."

Macmillan Cancer Support in Scotland offers practical, emotional and financial help to people affected by cancer. It provides trained medical professionals to the NHS and have cancer centres throughout the country where people receive expert care in a specially-designed environment.

It also campaigns to improve the lives of people in Scotland living with cancer.

* Source: Poverty Truth Commission, Scotland - http://povertytruthcommission.blogspot.com/

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Mental health charity Mind says that it "will continue to fight for improvements to the welfare and benefits system", despite the Welfare Reform Bill vote in the House of Commons on 1 February 2012.

The message was echoed by thousands of people on social networking sites this morning, as questions were also raised about the legality of government cuts to essential provision for sick, disabled and vulnerable people.

There is also anger in the House of Lords at the government's use of 'financial privilege' to deny the second chamber its constitutional revising role, and at other "sleights of hand" as one critic put it - referring back to Lord Freud's earlier attempt to use a procedural motion to overthrow the will of the House, which has voted an unprecedented seven times against the government on the WRB.

Despite the enormous campaigning efforts of people across the disability world, MPs have now voted to overturn the House of Lords' amendments to extend the time limit on contributory Employment & Support Allowance to two years.

332 MPs voted in favour of keeping the time limit to one year, beating the 266 who voted against by 66 votes.

MPs also overturned six other amendments made by the Lords, reinstating plans to cap the amount of benefits a person can receive to £26,000 annually, and preventing young disabled people who have never worked from claiming ESA.

Paul Farmer, Chief Executive of Mind, commented: "We are bitterly disappointed that the House of Commons has chosen to implement this arbitrary one year time limit."

He continued: "The Government’s own figures clearly show that the vast majority of people on Employment and Support Allowance need the help to remain in place for more than a year."

"Forcing someone with a mental health problem to look for work before he or she is well enough to do so risks seriously undermining their recovery, and could even make them more unwell," said Mr Farmer.

"This is a short-sighted move which could in the long run incur huge health and social care bill, and we urge the Government to reconsider," he said.

"Mind will continue to fight for improvements to the welfare and benefits system, and to the Welfare Reform Bill in particular," the Mind Chief Executive concluded.

The charity also thaned the 467 people who used its cyber-facilities to urge their MPs to support the Lords’ amendments.

* Mind: for better mental health - http://www.mind.org.uk/

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A group of theologically conservative American Christian leaders is joining with animal rights defenders to advocate against cockfighting, calling the practice of watching and betting on roosters who fight to the death antithetical to biblical values - writes Chris Herlinger.

"Christians should stand up and speak out against this barbaric practice which horrendously abuses God's creatures," said Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Convention's Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission, in a 24 January 2012 statement.

Concern about cockfighting is focused on the state of South Carolina, where critics of the practice are trying to strengthen the state's laws against it. Though cockfighting is illegal in all 50 US states, it remains a misdemeanour in 11 of them, including South Carolina.

The Humane Society of the United States describes cockfighting as "a lucrative crime, with gambling winnings offsetting even the maximum misdemeanour fines," and is working with such groups as the South Carolina-based Palmetto Family Council, a Christian advocacy group with ties to national pro-family Christian organisations, to toughen legislation against what some describe as a "blood-sport."

Oran Smith, the Palmetto Family Council's executive director, said that South Carolina is increasingly attracting people interested in watching cockfighting and betting on the outcome.

"As a matter of state pride, we must strengthen our laws now," he said. Smith's organisation has produced a video that has drawn praise from the Humane Society for its strong stance against cockfighting.

The video argues that cockfighting is antithetical to biblical principles, citing Genesis 9:9-10, in which God speaks of establishing a covenant with both humans and animals. "Wanton cruelty toward animals is frankly unbiblical and unChristian," Smith says in the video, which can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/palmettofamily.

In the video, Land says humans are called to "respect every living thing... Cockfighting is a pornography of violence. People who watch it are going to be brutalised by it."

"Religious leaders had a founding role in the humane movement in the 19th century. Today in the 21st century, they remind us of our solemn responsibilities to other creatures," said Wayne Pacelle, head of the Humane Society, praising the work of Christian leaders for working against cockfighting.

"Their voices can help guide the nation toward better decision-making and behaviour when it comes to our treatment of animals."

[With acknowledgements to ENInews. ENInews, formerly Ecumenical News International, is jointly sponsored by the World Council of Churches, the Lutheran World Federation, the World Communion of Reformed Churches and the Conference of European Churches.]

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As expected, the coalition succeeded in using its Commons majority to overturn all Lords amendments to its Welfare Reform Bill at Westminster yesterday (1 February 2012) - including one ameliorating a top-slicing overall benefit cap strongly opposed by charities and churches.

In so doing the government was accused of abuse of parliamentary process and manipulation by opponents, as Prime Minister David Cameron sanctioned the use of relatively obscure 'financial privilege' provisions to ensure that the second chamber cannot effectively block or delay cuts and changes to benefits which critics say will leave hundreds of thousands of vulnerable people and families worse off, exposed, homeless, jobless and feeling betrayed.

'Financial privilege' asserts that only the Commons had the right to make decisions on bills that have large financial implications. It is also likely to be used to stifle dissent on massive legal aid cuts effecting the poorest, and on an NHS bill for England which has been opposed in whole or part by the majority of health professionals.

Legal challenges at domestic and European level are now being discussed, and disabled and sick activists vowed to fight on to expose what they called the government's "callous" and "manipulative" stance on welfare.

Some also believe that cuts which will hit disabled children, abused mothers, cancer patients, the terminally ill, carers, the old, people with multiple disabilities and the vulnerable and many others, breach United Nations standards for the protection of people with disabilities and for children.

Lord Bassam, Labour's chief whip in the House of Lords, said the 'financial privilege' move "fundamentally undermines the constitutional role of the Lords as a revising chamber".

Lord Mackay of Clashfern, a former Lord Chancellor under PM Margaret Thatcher, commented: "The time we have spent coming here and taking part seem to be somewhat of a waste of taxpayers' money at a time of considerable austerity if the whole procedure is useless."

In the voting, only a handful of Liberal Democrats, who could have made a significant difference, rebelled against their Conservative government partners.

The House of Lords defeat over plans to cut payments to disabled children was overturned by 324 votes to 255 – a government majority of 69.

The peers' attempt to prevent the so-called "bedroom tax" on homes was thrown out by 310 to 268 – a government majority of 42.

The Child Support charge amendment, put forward by Lord Mackay and backed by many Conservative peers, was overturned by 318 votes to 257 – a government majority of 61.

An amendment backed by Church of England bishops saying that child benefit should not count towards the £500-a-week benefit ceiling was defeated by 334 to 251 – a government majority of 83.

MPs also voted by 328 to 265, a majority of 63, to require terminally ill cancer sufferers on chemotherapy to undergo assessments to see if they were fit for work.

Huge cuts to Disability Living Allowance (DLA) and the transition to ill-specified Personal Independence Payments (PIPs), which removes a lifeline for around half a million disabled people, were also voted through.

In a passionate speech, Anne McGuire, shadow work and pensions minister, accused the government of talking about "social tenants as a breed apart" and of "attempting to disadvantage those who are already disadvantaged."

She disputed the Department of Work and Pensions classification of 'under occupied homes' and said the new housing benefit policy put people in an "unbelievable bind" because it was "ill-thought-out, it won't achieve its aims... and it will push the poorest people, including those who are working... into even greater disadvantage".

Ms McGuire said it was doubtful whether social housing tenants could legally take in lodgers to make up the £12-14 reduction in housing benefit, as Lord David Freud had suggested, and if they did whether that income would then affect their benefits.

On the CSA charge, she welcomed a reduced fee, but said it was a "ridiculous policy".

Likewise, the cut in support for disabled children would affect 170,000 families and could cost parents £1,400 a year, the shadow minister said. Disabled children would lose £22,000 over the course of their childhood, including those who were profoundly deaf and had Down's syndrome or cerebral palsy.

"In order to pay the most severely disabled children an extra £1.75 a week, children who are not as disabled - and I use the words advisedly - are going to lose their benefits," she declared.

The Welfare Reform Bill now goes back to the House of Lords again, but with little scope for further changes. But the campaign to challenge the legality and morality of what the government is doing will continue, vowed campaigners last night.

* Welfare politics: A 'morally disabled' government, by Simon Barrow - http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/16221

More reaction and commentary to follow.

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Jersey Chief Minister Ian Gorst is proposing legislation to limit vulture funds profiteering on debt claims from some of the world’s poorest countries. Vulture funds buy up debt cheaply then hold out for huge profits from the countries concerned.

US vulture fund FG Hemisphere is currently suing the Democratic Republic of Congo for $100 million in the Jersey courts on a debt it bought for just $3 million.

The final appeal in the case is expected to be heard in the next few months. The debt originally comes from loans to Congolese dictator General Mobutu during the Cold War.

Jubilee Debt Campaign report that the proposed legislation will follow a UK Act of Parliament introduced in 2010, which limits debt claims against forty impoverished countries in line with internationally agreed debt relief. However, it only applies to debts which originate prior to 2004, and does not cover all low-income countries.

The UK Treasury estimates the UK Debt Relief (Developing Countries) Act passed in 2010 will save some of the most impoverished countries £145 million over six years.

"This is an important step," said the Jubilee Debt Campaign's Tim Jones, "But the States of Jersey need to implement the bill urgently to prevent a vulture fund claiming $100 million from the Democratic Republic of Congo, one of the most impoverished countries in the world".

He added, "Jersey should act to stop vultures funds profiteering from all countries for good".

Traditionally, vulture funds have preyed on countries in the global South, although they are beginning to target indebted Western countries such as Greece.

There is evidence that vulture fund speculators have been buying up Greek debt at a low price, and are refusing to take part in write-downs of the debt, holding out for large profits. Recent estimates have suggested that speculators could account for as much as €50 billion of Greek debt, and that companies have bought debt at a price suggesting a 75 per cent chance of default.

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Britain's four Children's Commissioners say the government's Welfare Reform Bill will cause significant harm young people.

In a joint statement, they explained why they were concerned at the "serious negative impact" the bill could have on children.

The Commisioners declared: "We urge the UK Government to reconsider its plans, specifically the £26,000 benefit cap to be imposed on families each year."

They pointed out that the cap is likely to lead to more families becoming homeless and breach UN child rights rules. Their statement also warned of the knock-on effect the changes are likely to have on council and charity services.

The statement continued: "We are concerned that many more families and their children will be pushed into absolute poverty over the coming years if these proposed changes go ahead."

The Commissioners also said that children have rights independent of their parents, and under the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, children's rights must be considered in the drafting of legislation that affects them.

Scottish Commissioner Tom Baillie told The Herald newspaper in Glasgow that children with disabilities were already three times more likely to be living in poverty and were just one of the groups likely to be further impoverished by measures in the bill.

He added: "What the Government doesn't recognise is that a modest loss of income for a family already living in difficult circumstances can have a significant impact, quite disproportionate to the actual amounts involved. This is absolutely unacceptable and it also sets the Government way back in terms of the target of eradicating child poverty by 2020 – which may become impossible."

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