Express & Star

Cathy Dobbs: When living on a prayer is a crime

Interesting to hear we now have ‘thought police’ that can arrest you for what you are thinking.

Published

Isabel Vaughan-Spruce was arrested for silently praying outside an abortion facility in Birmingham. West Midlands Police have now said she can be “permitted within the area” around the facility after three months of bail conditions.

Because she was honest and said she was praying silently in her own head she was arrested. If she’d said she was silently trying to remember her shopping list or memorising a few lines for her part in an am dram production she’d have been left alone. When did someone standing still and silent become intimidating?

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We pay MPs to make decisions that will make us healthier, happier and richer. We don’t pay them to squabble amongst themselves and behave like a group of nasty schoolgirls.

It’s become embarrassing to watch. If I hired cleaners that stood around backstabbing and griping while the dust in my house built up I’d fire them. MPs need to grow up, roll up their sleeves and start doing their job – working for us and quit squabbling like a bunch of bored teenagers.

I suppose we shouldn’t expect a slick operation from a group that, comparatively speaking, is on a fairly low wage. MPs earn around £86,500 with generous bonuses. This may sound enticing, but not when you compare it with jobs with much less flack and online abuse. Their mates in London will easily be earning tens of thousands more and be able to take luxurious holidays, buy sports cars and live in the lap of luxury without being criticised. Who’d be an MP? Only argumentative control freaks by the looks of it.

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A domestic abuse survivor from Shropshire has said she was terrified after checking into a female-only hostel only to find out one of the ‘women’ in her dormitory was sprawled out on the bed, half naked with ‘her’ male anatomy on display.

Sue Boardman, 55, had travelled to London to attend the Let Women Speak event, where one of the issues being discussed was safe spaces for females. It seems the trans woman had checked in under the name Alison and had immediately been booked into the female-only dorm.

We know there is a London bubble, where they feel and think differently to the majority of the country – electing Sadiqu Khan as mayor twice is a prime example. But I’m starting to wonder what the London bubble is filled with. Laughing gas?