If two people get married it's not got to be for any specific reason - how can vicar Alex Brown be given 4 years for conducting "sham" marriages? Either they get married or they don't. Are we now policing why?

Yes, what about all the showbiz/royal/political 'lavender' marriages out there?

I mean - is an arranged marriage a sham marriage? We can't understand them in our culture but I have many Asian friends in very happy arranged marriages, on both sides.

JK2006 wrote:
If two people get married it's not got to be for any specific reason

The resons here were monetary gain (from benefits) and rights of residency.

It is illegal to marry for these purposes - but what is more worrying is the 'prize(s)' for the non-national.

The risk is worth it - a vist to your local A&E department will give you an idea!

And in the past most royal marriages have been 'arranged' (with non-hilarious results!). There's a thin line between love and fake. Or at least when it comes to public opinion!

Ah; so if people get married for financial reasons, the vicar gets 4 years in jail.
Jane Austen would have never penned a word.

JK2006 wrote:
so if people get married for financial reasons, the vicar gets 4 years in jail

The vicar was a main player in these shams/scams - which we are all paying for, tax-wise.

Ah, all explained in The Times; some of these "sham" marriages had "increasingly bizarre" aspects like wedding rings not fitting properly and the groom wearing jeans.
Thank God this has been cleared up. It's good to know our Great British Legal Code specifies that getting married in the wrong clothes must mean 4 years in prison.
I was starting to feel this was all silly.
Now I know it is a deeply significant fashion law.

I need something to restore my faith in the romantic ideal.



That's better.

Leslie wrote:
The resons here were monetary gain (from benefits) and rights of residency.

It is illegal to marry for these purposes - but what is more worrying is the 'prize(s)' for the non-national.

The risk is worth it - a vist to your local A&E department will give you an idea!

So normal vicars and priests don't get paid a fee ?
The people who work in civil register offices do it for free do they ?

Don't understand your A&E comment (unless you are pointing out that they would shut-down if we did not have "foreign" people working in them ?)

In The Know wrote:

So normal vicars and priests don't get paid a fee ?
The people who work in civil register offices do it for free do they ?



Of course, they are paid!?

But not bribed!

In The Know wrote:


Don't understand your A&E comment

I do.

Your A&E department has a significant element of 'sham marriage scammers' taking advantage of the NHS, at our expense.

Moving to the NHS itself (which has 1.7m employees and a budget of £100b+); this is completely unsustainable - even for us legitimate claimants.

It has absolutely no bearing on vicars being sent to prison for marrying people without first checking their credentials - if the system allows abuse, change the system, don't jail the vicars.

As a non believer I think all religions are barmy anyway and making laws to fit religious convention is madder still.

I'm not a fan of gay marriage either - how and why gay people, often branded as sinners and lepers by religion, wish the convention of their ceremony is beyond me; well, it's not, I understand the tax benefits - which brings me back to the insanity of basing laws on religious lunacy.

"Dear Pope, please let me marry Fred; I don't mind that you think he and I are vile perverts; we want to be part of stupid Catholic convention".

Mad.

Patsy wrote:
Your A&E department has a significant element of 'sham marriage scammers' taking advantage of the NHS, at our expense.

Eh ? I thought they had broken arms or had been binge drinking !

When you consider violent drug dealing criminals seem to walk out of our courts every day with no jail time to serve - the whole thing is crazy.

The Vicar should have been fined - made to do community service and de-frocked.

Our society honours money above anything - but if he had been a rich vicar then he would not have been put on trial.

Someone should start a new Church which has as part of its mantra doing marriages for ANYONE. I dont remember JESUS suggesting that you needed some sort of state paperwork to validate something which GOD had created.

Our "leaders of state" will be appearing in the HIGHEST COURT of God at the end of their life and then they will find out that their meddling with creation was possibly a mistake. The New Covenant was meant to take away the "Law" and replace it with God's only commandment - to love one another.

The Church and the State have dismantled Chist's message to the point where today's churches which believe in LAW above LOVE are basically ignoring the Gospel/