These items appeared in the September issue of the Prophetic Expositor:

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 468 of July 12 - 18, 2000:
"Trader's imperial scales seized" - By Paul Stokes - A GREENGROCER has had three sets of weighing scales impounded by trading standards officers because they gave imperial measures. Steven Thoburn, 36, sold fruit and veg from his market stall in pounds and ounces instead of EU-approved metric weights. His stall was crowded with shoppers when two officials backed by two policemen swooped. They picked up the three offending sets of scales and carried them out of Southwick Market, Sunderland. When Mr. Thoburn objected he was warned that he could be arrested for a breach of the peace during an operation that he described as "frightening and heavy-handed." Mr. Thoburn, whose father ran the stall before him, said: "I was treated like a criminal. I don't know what this country is coming to when this can happen because you refuse to give up British weights and measures. "The stall was packed because the ladies had just turned out from the bingo hall and came to get their groceries. "Someone said it looked like a dawn raid on criminals. The officers told me the scales were being seized as evidence and walked away with them, leaving me with one set of metric scales. "I shout my prices and it would sound ridiculous if I started shouting about grams and kilos and people don't respond to it."

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 467 of July 5 - 11, 2000:
Two Obituaries reflecting amazing polarisation in the spectrum of British devotion to the well-being of the nation appeared on facing pages of this issue.
1. Vera Atkins, who has died aged 93, was the brilliant assistant to Colonel Maurice Buckmaster at the French section of the Special Operations Executive during the Second World War. She was born Vera Maria Rosenberg in Romania on June 15, 1907, and came with her parents to London in 1933, subsequently changing her surname. At the outbreak of the Second World war she joined the WAAF and soon went to work as a secretary at F Section, set up in 1940 to run covert operations and help the Resistance in German-occupied France. Buckmaster, the head of the section, soon spotted her flair and made her his deputy. More than 100 of their agents never returned. A few were known to have have (sic) been killed in action but most were reported to have been arrested and some to have disappeared into concentration camps. After the war Vera Atkins determined to find out what happened to each one. "I could not just abandon their memory," she recalled. Her project led her into immediate confrontation with the military establishment, but she used a personal contact to gain a semi-official attachment to MI6. The confessions she obtained from Rudolf Hoess, former commandant of Auschwitz, were later used as evidence during the Nuremberg trials. The results of her investigations later formed the basis of the roll of honour to the 104 dead, 91 men and 13 women, of F Section on the memorial at Valencay in the Loire valley. In later life Vera Atkins was much involved in fostering Anglo-French relations. In 1987 she was appointed a commandant of the Legion d'honneur. [Her Obituary in The Toronto Globe and Mail of June 28, 2000 adds: "Although Ian Fleming never identified her, Ms. Atkins was widely believed to have inspired the character of Moneypenny in the James Bond series."]

2. The Dowager Lady Birdwood who has died aged 87, was a prominent proponent of racist ideas. Her prejudice was not selective; she disliked all foreigners equally. She believed Indians to be inherently corrupt, Chinese unfriendly and Sikhs simply "too tough". although her husband, the 2nd Lord Birdwood, whom she married in 1954, had been chairman of the Anglo-German Society, she opposed any such accommodation with continental Europe. She favoured repatriation under a scheme beguilingly entitled "Homeward Bound". Her beliefs did not surface until after Lord Birdwood's death in 1962. Lady Birdwood claimed later that her political instincts were awakened by her involvement with the League for European Freedom, an organisation aiding exiles from Central Europe. She drew from the fate of these refugees a parallel with the consequences to Britain of immigration from Commonwealth countries. For her, this influx represented a dilution of Britain's Anglo-Saxon culture. Her opposition to this took several forms. She first came to notice in the late 1960s with a campaign against permissiveness, including the "blasphemy and filth" shown on BBC television. This culminated in her noisy exit in 1970 from a performance of the nude revue Oh! Calcutta and her subsequent bombardment of MPs with petitions for its closure. In the early 1970s, Lady Birdwood tried to mobilise public opinion against the unions, then at the height of their power. She helped to form the Citizens Mutual Protection Society, but it attracted little support. In the mid-1970s she was connected with the National Front. She helped Ross McWhirter run the far-Right magazine Majority, until his murder by the IRA in 1975. Jane Birdwood was a regular presence on the hustings. She had her own party, British Solidarity, and also stood as an Independent Patriot at Bermondsey in 1983 and for the British National Party at Dewsbury in 1992. As she aged, however, she concentrated her efforts into an occasional magazine, Choice, and pamphlets which warned of world domination by an alliance of Communism and Jewish financiers and denounced the Holocaust, ascribing the death toll to typhoid. It was her flagrant anti-Semitism that led to her convictions in 1991 and 1994 for distributing racist literature. On the latter occasion, she had posted to every MP her thoughts on the Jewish predilection for drinking the blood of gentile children. She received a two-year conditional discharge. In 1998, the Attorney-General stayed proceedings against Lady Birdwood on similar charges after evidence that she lacked the mental capacity to stand trial.

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 466 of June 28 - July 4, 2000:
Scots repeal Section 28: THE SCOTTISH Executive has repealed Section 28 which bans the promotion of homosexuality in schools. But it conceded last week that statutory guidance to councils on sex education should include the promotion of 'an awareness of the importance of stable family life and relationships; including the responsibilities of parenthood and marriage.'

From The Toronto Globe and Mail of June 19, 2000: A front page item is headed "Canada welcomes first gay Scout troop. History is made by adult Rovers", followed on an inside page by "Scouts to march in pride parade."

From The Toronto Globe and Mail of June 29, 2000: Boy Scouts of America can exclude gays, court rules - Landmark decision a major loss for rights activists; homosexuals can now be kept from troop leadership and even, perhaps, membership.

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 467 of July 5 - 11, 2000: Gay ban in Boy Scouts ruling upheld - "... Overturning a state decision, the Supreme Court ruled that James Dale, a former Eagle Scout in New Jersey and a homosexual, was not unfairly dismissed as a Scout leader. Chief Justice William Rehnquist said: 'The Boy Scouts asserts that homosexual conduct is inconsistent with the values it seeks to instil.' Requiring them to accept a homosexual scoutmaster 'would significantly burden the organisation's right to oppose or disfavour homosexual conduct.' This would have violated the organisations rights of free expression and free association under the first Amendment of the constitution. Conservative groups said the narrowly passed decision would free many private organisations to set rules for conduct and membership.. ."
COMMENT: Our own view must adhere to, and accord with, Scriptural injunctions, and these would, as we understand them, clearly favour the American model.

From The Weekly Telegraph No. 474, August 23-29, 2000: Obituary - "Oppenheimer dies at 91. HARRY OPPENHEIMER, the South African who presided over the world's largest gold and diamond mining companies for more than a quarter of a century, has died at the age of 91. Mr. Oppenheimer; reputed to be among the 10 richest men in the world, stepped down as chairman of AngloAmerican gold mining company in 1982 and as chairman of the De Beers diamond empire two years later. He was admitted to hospital in Johannesburg last Friday suffering from abdominal pains and a headache and died the following day. Obituary next week "

Also from the same Weekly Telegraph issue:
1. SIR 'Union' Jack's £1m gift rescues Empire museum - by York Membery - SIR Jack Hayward, the property tycoon nicknamed "Union Jack" because of his passionate support of all things British, has come to the rescue of a museum devoted to the achievements of the British Empire. He has made a £1 million donation which will enable the £5 million British Empire and Commonwealth Museum to open next month as scheduled at Temple Meads, Brunel's Grade I listed 1842 Great Western Railway station in Bristol. Plans for the projecty were announced 10 years ago but, despite the support of high profile figures such as Sir Jack and Lord Baker, the former Conservative Home Secretary, it has had endless funding difficulties. Its supporters say it is hampered because its subject matter is unfashionable. The government is keen to embrace Europe and to distance itself from Britain's imperial past. Critics of the museum claimed the scheme was "out-dated and of limited interest to modern Britain", and it was refused funding by the Heritage Lottery Fund... . (The article contains more details.)
COMMENT: We are not surprised at the financial stringency for anything British, but the day will come... !

2. Tsar's murdered family canonised: THE last Tsar and his family were among hundreds of Christians murdered by the Bolsheviks to be canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church. The Council of Bishops, held in Moscow, praised Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their five chilldren for their "meekness, patience and humility" and hailed "the light of all-conquering Christian faith" manifest in their 1918 execution. Church hierarchs stressed that the Tsar was being honoured for his conduct after giving up the throne and the way he met his death, not for his rule while emperor. Nicholas II and his family, plus four servants, were murdered in the cellar of a house in Yekaterinburg.