Three days till Christmas! No snow forecast until Boxing Day, so we should be able to get out and about. But it’s so cold here in Belfast, that I’m pretty content to relax in the relative warmth inside. The neighbours upstairs have frozen pipes, but we seem to have been spared; for now anyway. All this time indoors means a chance to read, watch films, and listen to some music.

Speaking of music, because I’m writing this from east Belfast, it seems appropriate here to recommend the new Christmas album by local lad Brian Houston. “Joy to the World” is brilliant. A reworking of classic Christmas hymns in his distinctive folksy-Americana style. It’s upbeat, soulful (backing vocals by the Belfast Community Gospel Choir), and really captures a sense of joy. Highly recommended.


You can buy / download the album via these links:

http://www.brianhouston.com/site/merchandise/albums.asp
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Joy-To-The-World/dp/B004F9W03W

Some other Christmas albums we’re enjoying:
So Elated (Ben Thomas) “The Bewildering Light” – this weaves together traditional hymns with imaginative new songs, progressively telling the Christmas story with imaginative insights.

If you are in the UK and you missed the Channel 4 Dispatches programme on Monday night, it is definitely worth watching:

Click here


When someone flees their homeland in search of safety in another country, bringing evidence of the danger they faced is rarely at the forefront of their minds. Even if circumstances do allow the gathering of some documentation, it is often lost along the way; taken by the traffickers they are forced to pay, destroyed when the boat they use to cross from Turkey to Greece sinks.
Yet those making decisions on asylum claims here continue to insist on an extremely high evidentiary burden. Some people carry the evidence on their bodies, and still, as the Channel 4 Dispatches programme showed on Monday evening, the Home Office says its not enough to show they face a threat if returned to their own country. Time after time I have seen strong documentary and physical evidence dismissed by the Home Office far too easily. At times, the asylum seekers have put their families and friends back home at risk by getting them to send evidence, only for the Home Office to say they have no way of verifying its authenticity therefore it cannot be relied upon. When we are dealing with torture, deprivation of liberty, disappearance and possible death, shouldn’t it be rather a case of them being required to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the document is inauthentic?.
Generally speaking, the UKBA are in a fairly good position to be able to investigate the veracity of claims such as “my father is the governor of a jail, built by UK forces, housing Taliban combatants” and it should be down to them to disprove that fact especially when accompanied by strong prima facie evidence such as a letter from the British ambassador in Kabul. So why are they allowed to continue to just say "we don't trust the evidence you have submitted". There is something very wrong with the unequal burden of proof that has developed in the asylum process and it needs to be addressed.