News updates - from the web

Our regular round up of relevant news items, selected by ARMS' Steve Ion.

Older adults are good Samaritans to strangers - here.

Triple lock to stay - here.

Voting patterns between young and old - here.

A useful explanation of what the dementia tax actually is - here.

A useful explanation of what would happen if the triple lock was scrapped - here.

Free Gardening Guide - here.

General election - older age issues not being mentioned - here.

Charities gagged by law - here.

Labour's pledge for pensioners - here.

Election manifestos on social care - here.

The latest terrorist atrocity

A personal view.

There's politics, and there's fanaticism. I want the world to be a better place for the majority, which is why - one way or another - I've been politically active in my own very small way for most of my adult life.

I cannot understand driving vehicles into strangers, or stabbing people you do not know. I do not see how anyone can be brought to believe these are justifiable actions.

There are terrible injustices in the world that should be rectified, but killing random strangers will not do anything for them. We must not be selective in our condemnation: far more innocent civilians have died in attacks in the Middle East in recent weeks: for instance, at the same time as the latest attack in London, dozens of civilians were killed in Mosul while fleeing a district held by Da'esh. Their lives are not worth less than our own fellow citizens.

These fanatics want the majority in the UK to revile the Muslim people who have chosen to make this country their home - not forgetting that some Muslims in this country are second generation or more: this is the land of their birth just as much as it is mine. The killers are deliberately trying to stoke Islamophobia. They want us to stop living alongside the Muslims in our midst and instead turn against and revile them. They hope that our Muslim neighbours will then be provoked into joining Jihad. They are deluded, but that alone won't stop them. The sight of a bishop, a rabbi and a Muslim cleric standing side by side after the Manchester killings will not make them think twice.

The correct response is obvious: we do not rise to the bait. We stand by all members of our communities who share our abhorrence of such directionless violence - regardless of faith or ethnic origin. It won't be easy, and our own white fanatics will be making racist capital out of what has just happened. It is the duty of all decent people not to let them dictate our responses to these atrocities.

Neville Grundy

ARMS