Warnings earlier this year from the NSPCC about the dangers of children being targeted by paedophiles on social media websites have been confirmed by the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre, CEOP.

According to CEOP, an international squad of police officers with special experience of tracking and prosecuting sex offenders, a fast-growing trend is for paedophiles, hiding behind easily set up false social media identities, to pressurise children as young as eight into posting compromising pictures of themselves. The victims are then threatened with exposure to their family if they don’t agree to be filmed writing degrading statements on their bodies, or self-harming. Continue reading →

British Airways are facing an enormously damaging lawsuit from victims of a BA pilot who used the cover of charity work for the airline to abuse children, mainly in Africa which was on one of his regular routes.

First Officer Simon Wood, 54, threw himself under a train at Potters Bar on August 18th, two days after being charged with indecent assault of an 8 year-old schoolgirl and possessing indecent images of children. Evidence was obtained to show that he had visited a number of paedophile websites and school uniforms were found in his car. Continue reading →

Nearly half (47%) of couples having children now have them before getting married, according to Relate, compared with just 4% when the charity started 75 years ago, in 1938.

Other changes noted by Relate are:

o The number of divorces was 6250 in 1938 and more than 152,000 in 1988, fifty years later. Since then the number has dropped steadily, to 117,000 in 2011.

o Age at first marriage has changed over the years, being 26.5 for men and 24.3 for women in 1938. This dropped slowly over the forty years to 1978, to 23.8 for men and 21.6 for women. Since then the figure has climbed to reach, in 2010, 30.8 for men and 29 for women.

o The average age of couples when they have their first child has risen a little – 25.9 in 1938, 26.3 in 1998 and 27.9 in 2011.

Comments by Sir David Attenborough that sending food to famine-hit countries was “barmy” has angered charities that help the starving.

In an interview published in the Daily Telegraph the well-fed Attenborough commented: “What are all these famines in Ethiopia? What are they about? They’re about too many people for too little land. That’s what it’s about. And we are blinding ourselves. We say, get the United Nations to send them bags of flour. That’s barmy”. Continue reading →

An attractive offer made by the National Trust on the internet for its equally attractive Anglesea Abbey, Gardens and Lode Mill property in Cambridgeshire was promoted as an opportunity to tour the luxurious former home of American oil magnate, Lord Fairhaven, free of charge for one day in August, in exchange for staying a while with researchers and giving feedback for marketing purposes.

What wasn’t made clear was that although entry to the house was free that day, visitors had to enter the very impressive garden to get to the house, this for a mandatory entry fee of £8 per adult, and this conveyed by all the nice staff on the ticket desk with completely straight faces. Continue reading →

Some supporters of catholic charity Cafod are calling for the head of its 7-strong PR team, Damien McBride to be sacked.

McBride, who joined Cafod in April 2011, was previously Gordon Brown’s charisma consultant and has recently had a book about his time in the grubby world of political PR, Power Trip, published. In this McBride, unfairly dubbed McPoison, reveals tactics he used on behalf of his employer to rout the upright Mr Brown’s enemies, including smear campaigns. Continue reading →

A school in Wales that barred a pupil from normal lessons because he’d had his head shaved for a cancer charity has allowed him back into classes, but only after more than 250 pupils walked out in protest.

The management of the Milford Haven School in West Wales said the extreme haircut was against its rules on appearance. The boy, 14 year old Rhys Johnson, whose aunt is battling cancer, was shaved at a Macmillan coffee morning, along with a 14 year old girl pal, Tesni Doherty-Bowen, who goes to a different school a few miles away and who was praised by her teachers for her fund-raising efforts for the charity. Continue reading →