CCTV cameras are to be installed in all slaughterhouses, to ensure that animals to be killed are treated with compassion.

The move has been welcomed by Animal Aid following the horrific cruelty at the Dunnocdkshire Farm halal slaughterhouse near Burnley, Lancs, one of Britain’s largest.

Stan Kroenke, the American billionaire who owns 67% of Arsenal Football club has swiftly shelved plans to run a subscription bloodsports channel after sick footage showing trophy hunters killing lions for entertainment emerged to widespread public repugnance.

The League Against Cruel Sports described trophy hunting as “brutal and shameful” and Kroenke’s TV channel as “sick”.

Could it be that the mighty Mr Kroenke was alarmed by thoughts that the nickname “Sicko Stan” might just catch on with cruel football crowds and affect his financial health?

We’ll never know.

A manager at the Simon Community charity for the homeless has been spared jail after stealing nearly £10,000 from his employer.

Jamie Nailton, 41, raided petty cash and had invoices altered to divert money to his own account to feed a serious gambling habit. He received a nine month suspended sentence and has been ordered to pay £2,400 compensation to the charity within two years.

The first convictions for breaching fox hunting laws in Scotland have been handed down to a father and son team.

John Clive Richardson, 67, and his son Johnny Riley, 24, both from the Jedforest Hunt have been fined a total of £650 after a video filmed by investigators from the League Against Cruel Sports in 2016 showed a fox being dug out of a hole and then chased by a pack of hounds.

The head of the National Trust, Dame Helen Ghosh, 51, is leaving the UK’s biggest charity after a controversial five year tenure to become master of Balliol College, Oxford.

Under Ghosh the popular annual Easter Egg Trail became the very much more commercial Cadbury Egg Hunt, with very strong Cadbury branding in the posters and printed material. It is not known whether any extra money was paid by Cadbury for the very obvious, and naff, branding which many feel took the Trust downmarket.

Could we ever see a situation where those who hunt, and/or support the hunts are placed on a special animal cruelty register, flagging them up as possible people abusers too?

We ask this noting the findings of the Centre for Crime Prevention which advises of the strong links between those who abuse animals and those who carry out violent acts on people. Apparently in the decade 2005-2015 a total of 1421 violent crimes, 17 murders, and 175 sex attacks plus 19 rapes of adults and eight of children were carried out by those who had a conviction or caution for animal cruelty. Nearly 100 child cruelty offenders had previously tortured animals.

The Centre has called for an animal cruelty register, similar to the sex offenders register, on which those convicted could be placed and monitored, and an increase in maximum jail terms, from six months to five years.

“Charity begins at home” runs the saying, and no better example of this in action can be found than the speedy actions of hundreds of local people who donated food and drink, clothes, toiletries, money, blankets, sleeping bags, shelter and accommodation and their time for survivors of the tragic Grenfell Tower blaze last week that took at least 50 lives and injured hundreds, with the number of dead still rising.

This “Blitz Spirit” was provided by ordinary people of all ages, genders colours and creeds who just wanted to help those in their community who had not lost their lives but everything else, and who were not celebrities looking for any personal or corporate publicity for their efforts.

There’s another saying, “Virtue is its own reward” that also seems appropriate here.

According to the Charity Fraud Line the number of frauds perpetrated on charities has increased by 30% in three years, with analysts claiming that more than £2 billion a year is stolen from the sector.

Favourite scams include conning volunteer charity treasurers into believing they were paying for building work done by someone else, and getting them to move monies via online banking, into fraudulent bank accounts run by the scammers. Four children’s football clubs lost nearly £80,000, and Chester Zoo lost £1.26million in 2013 in this way. In the case of the zoo the money was transferred to a bank account in Weston-super-Mare owned by restaurateur Ashid Ali, 40, who then redistributed the money to 28 different accounts owned by three accomplices. All four men received suspended sentences, on the basis that the court heard that they were not the organisers of the scam but some of the implementers. Continue reading →

Claims that refugee charities are paying criminal gangs of people traffickers to ferry desperate migrants to their rescue boats moored off Libya have been made by a senior Libyan coastguard official.

According to the Mail on Sunday the official, Colonel Tarek Shamboor, has documentary evidence that charities pay the gangs, which charge up to £450 per migrant, and which are responsible for thousands of deaths by drowning as their unsafe and overcrowded vessels sink.

The accusations have been denied by the charities.