Mediums, spiritualists and clairvoyants forced to clean up their act.

[BasilRathbon]

Given that the future is pretty much infinite, surely any medium being sued can simply defend themselves by saying that their predictions weren't wrong, they just haven't come true yet?

[jobee]

From next month mediums, spiritualists, clairvoyants and other such sundry cheats will have to follow the law.

 

I personally hope that this is the start of the road to preventing these charletans / deluded individuals from heaping misery on ordinary folk.

 

From the BBC

 

 

I look forward the the first prosecutions. Here's a provoking column from The Times on the subject.

 

The EU is very busy

 

STRASBOURG, France (Reuters) - Europe's main human rights body voted on Thursday to urge schools across the continent to firmly oppose the teaching of creationist and "intelligent design" views in their science classes.

 

The Council of Europe's Parliamentary Assembly approved a resolution saying attacks on the theory of evolution were rooted "in forms of religious extremism" and amounted to a dangerous assault on science and human rights.

 

The text said European schools should "resist presentation of creationist ideas in any discipline. It said the "intelligent design" view defended by some United States conservatives was an updated version of creationism.

 

Creationism says God made the world in six days as depicted in the Bible. Intelligent design argues some life forms are too complex to have evolved according to Charles Darwin's theory and needed an unnamed higher intelligence to develop as they have.

 

Anne Brasseur, an Assembly member from Luxembourg who updated an earlier draft resolution, said the report showed how creationists -- most recently a shadowy Turkish Muslim writer Harun Yahya -- were trying to infiltrate European schools.

 

"The purpose of this report is to warn against the attempt to pass off a belief -- creationism -- as a science and to teach the theses of this belief in science classes," she said. "Its purpose is not to fight any belief."

 

The vote was due in June but was postponed because some members felt the original text amounted to an attack on religious belief. A few changes were made to spell out that it was not directed against religion.

 

The Council, based in the eastern French city of Strasbourg, oversees human rights standards in member states and enforces decisions of the European Court of Human Rights. Continued...

[Tony]

Has anyone heard of any prosecutions yet?

 

What would happen if an advertised meeting or service was reported to the authorities?

 

Would the police be obliged to turn up to check if the medium was indeed communicating with the dead?

[Karis]

I hope mediums and psychics do get their movements restricted. My friend goes all the time, and she is continually basing her life on what these people say, and it gets her, and many many others, into all kinds of difficulties.

 

People shake their heads at con men builders, or fake sales websites online, but few people see the same thing with psychics.

[salsafan]

I take these things with a pinch of salt. As I know that my intuition is not strong. I do think that many people are quite genuine with this. Not everybody accepts these ideas. So I would say that, "so be it". Just as those who do not believe in Religion, does not mean that it does not play a role in society. I read about the Sally Anne story. I hope that someone goes and find this park, and dig out those items.

 

For a supposed tolerance society, it isn't so tolerant at all. New Age concept and spirituality existed in the UK for a very long time. It may have fallen out of fashion now. Though I applaud the fact that there are associations like British Humanist Association and The Spiritual Workers' Association to protect these genuine individuals who do have a gift.

 

I would hate to see the UK like the US and have all these fancy ideas of how the world is, and continually get rid of history, heritage, for new supposed "concepts" and ideas. Which then allows other people like these http://thesecret.tv/stories/stories-recent.html to repackage simple and basic spiritual or religious ideas which existed for generations in the past in modern terms.

 

Yeh, we are in a capitalistic society.

[Norbert]

For a supposed tolerance society, it isn't so tolerant at all. New Age concept and spirituality existed in the UK for a very long time. It may have fallen out of fashion now. Though I applaud the fact that there are associations like British Humanist Association and The Spiritual Workers' Association to protect these genuine individuals who do have a gift.

 

If the British Humanist Association are advocates for spiritualists then I'm a chicken pie.