The Druid Network first pagan group recognized under UK's 2006 Charities Act

The Druid Network this week became the first pagan religion in the United Kingdom recogized under the 2006 British Charities Act.

Their announcement says:

The Druid Network received notification yesterday (24th September) that our application to be registered as a charity furthering the religion of Druidry has been finally accepted. This has been a long hard struggle taking over five years to complete. Greater detail shortly and a big thank-you to all who helped make this important recognition possible.

Brynneth writes at The Pagan & The Pen

The Druid Network has charity status – not registered yet, but rubber stamped as fulfilling the requirements for registration, so pretty much there. This is very big news. It makes tdn the first recognised Druid charity in the UK and the first pagan group to be registered under the 2006 Act. It’s taken years and a lot of very wonderful people have fought very hard to make this possible – dealing with a system that had been set up to handle religions shaped more like Christianity than not.

The Druid Network having achieved charitable status will bring all kinds of benefits to the organisation, enhancing credibility and creating opportunities to promote and support Druidry. This is all good. It also means that any other pagan charity is going to have a much better chance of getting charitable status. No other Druid group is going to have to prove that Druidry is a valid religion. Other pagan groups will be able to use the tdn case to help express their own. The process that has got tdn charitable status has helped create understanding of nature based religion, modern polytheism, and things that are not remotely like Christianity. As this is a legal definition of tdn as a religious charity, it will have all kinds of wider legal implications too.

Jason Pitzl-Waters, who writes about modern pagan faiths, explains:

The 2006 act that Brynneth mentions is the Charities Act of 2006, which made it easier for smaller charities to become registered, and to appeal decisions of the Charity Commission. In Britain, there’s a marked difference between a charity and a nonprofit. While The Pagan Federation is a nonprofit organization, it is not a charity, and as such doesn’t receive the same tax privileges.

UK 'Tough Love' for NHS & U.S. right

The British have one message for their National Health Service, and another messaged for American conservatives in general and perhaps for the Christian Right drive to stop health reform in this country.

British journalist Claire Rayner wrote for the Guardian about National Health Service problems:

There has been an absolutely astounding response to the report the Patients Association released yesterday, detailing examples of neglect of elderly and vulnerable patients. While I was as ever hopeful that the people who so bravely volunteered to take part in this work would feel it had been worthwhile, the response has been staggering. I was shocked and touched reading the stories of patients' families who have suffered and it seems the rest of the country has been as well.

She outlined a plan of correction and then turned to the awful things being said in the U.S. about the NHS and how "they don't want a similar system of their own:"

Much as I would like to respond to their ill-informed opinions with a crisp "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn what you think," let me instead point out that any intelligent American Republican should be able to see clearly that the anger we are expressing shows just how good the NHS normally is. And exposing the fact that we have a few rotten apples (so rare in the US, according to the self-aggrandising politicians I have heard slagging off our system) and are determined to seek them out and deal with them shows how much we care about our vulnerable, frail, and helpless elders.
I have no doubt that eventually this uproar will lead to the finding and application of the necessary remedies and ensure that future care for them will be what it should be – that is, gentle, dignity-protecting and life-extending as far as possible. If the national anger we are hearing in this country, where we love and value our NHS, doesn't prove to you that we don't have so-called "death panels" nothing will.

British Journalist Frances Beckett writes:

Anton Chaitkin is just the latest rightwing American commentator to claim that Barack Obama's healthcare proposals are Nazi. The history editor of the Executive Intelligence Review called them "a revival of Hitler's euthanasia killing programme".
. . .
That's how much the extreme right and the vested interests like the pharmaceutical companies hate healthcare schemes that give security to the poor. Attlee and Bevan, fortified by a large parliamentary majority and strong public support as well as their own courage and political will, pressed on regardless. It instantly transformed the lives of millions of Britons – not just the poorest, but those on moderate fixed incomes too.

Marjorie Ellis Thompson in a column calling for conservative reform of the NHS writes:

It is sad that the scaremongers appear to be winning the war of words in the US and that they have misrepresented the NHS, using both British patients and doctors who had thought they were appearing in a documentary, not an attack-dog ad.

The British are quite clear about having been misled by American conservatives into appearing in attack ads. The London Daily Mail reports"

Furious Kate Spall and Katie Brickell claim that their views on the NHS have been misrepresented by a free market campaign group opposed to Mr Obama's reforms in a bid to discredit the UK system.
. . .
Ms Spall, whose mother died of kidney cancer while waiting for treatment in the UK, told The Times: "It has been a bit of a nightmare.
"It was a real test of my naivety. I am a very trusting person and for me it has been a big lesson. I feel like I was duped."

British Conservative Party leader David Cameron is also quite clear about his support of the NHS. He rebuked a party member "who went on US television to attack the NHS, dismissing his views as 'eccentric.' " In an email to the members of his own party, Cameron he wrote:

One of the wonderful things about living in this country is that the moment you're injured or fall ill - no matter who you are, where you are from, or how much money you've got - you know that the NHS will look after you.

Yesterday the Religion News Service summarized the Christian Right argument against health reform:

Although an estimated 45 million Americans lack health insurance, federation backers said they support the current system. “There may be problems,” said Bishop Harry Jackson, pastor of Hope Christian Church in suburban Maryland and chairman of the High Impact Leadership Coalition, “but it is working.”

As opposed to a system more like the British system which, as Conservative Party leader Cameron explained, covers everyone?