Bill Carmichael: Vital mission for Archbishop

Dr Williams presented the Marxist dictator with a dossier detailing appalling levels of abuse, and demanded the authorities intervene to stop the attacks on innocent worshippers and clergy.

I’ve been sharply critical of Dr Williams in this column before – not least over his frankly barking suggestion to see barbaric Sharia law introduced in the UK. So I’m happy to give credit where it is due; Dr Williams showed just the right balance of steel and calmness, and had the moral authority to make even an unrepentant murderer like Mugabe sit up and take notice.

And I couldn’t help thinking that perhaps the Archbishop has found his true vocation – as a defender of the human rights and freedom of worship of Christians around the world, whether Anglican or not.

Christians certainly need a champion to speak on their behalf, for in many parts of the world they are subject to brutal repression and violence simply for following their faith. Just this week in Egypt, 24 Coptic Christians were killed and more than 200 injured after the army, egged on by Islamic extremists, attacked a peaceful demonstration. Copts, who make up about 15 per cent of Egypt’s 82 million population, face routine discrimination – but since the “Arab Spring” sectarian attacks have intensified.

In Iran a Christian pastor, Yusef Nadarkhani, is facing the death penalty for refusing to convert to Islam – a story that has been entirely ignored by the BBC.

In Pakistan a 12-year-old Christian girl was kidnapped and gang raped before being forced to marry one of her attackers, according to a report this week from the Asian Human Rights Commission.

In Iraq, more than half the Christian population – some 400,000 people – were forced to flee the country in the face of Islamist pogroms, and in the West Bank Palestinian gangs connected to terrorist groups have ethnically cleansed many towns and villages of their Arab Christian inhabitants.

Wherever you look it is much the same story. In Nigeria, Sudan, Somalia, Eritrea, Indonesia – Christian minorities face pitiless persecution and violent attacks.

They desperately need support from the West, and leaders of unflinching bravery and determination to speak on their behalf.

Who better than Dr Williams? And perhaps then he will belatedly come to understand that Sharia law, far from being a solution, is actually part of the problem.

Waste of energy

Families are facing the biggest drop in household incomes since the 1970s, according to report by the Institute of Fiscal Studies published this week. A separate report from Deutsche Bank says green taxes will drive one in four households into fuel poverty over the next four years.

I wonder if these two facts may in some way be related.

The truth is that soaring fuel bills, driven partly by the fashionable obsession with green taxes, are hitting ordinary people hard, and the poor especially so.

According to Ofgem, green taxes add at least four per cent to gas bills and 10 per cent to electricity costs. What do we get for this vast amount of money? Not a lot is the answer. Green taxes certainly won’t save the planet. They are instead just a way of taking money from the poor and giving it to the rich. In other words, green taxes pour subsidies into the pockets of large landowners so they can build inefficient and unreliable wind turbines.

If the Government is looking for a quick way of easing the pain for struggling families, the answer is simple. End the subsidies and scrap the green taxes.