Letters - 19 November 2021
From Brummana’s supporters to Population concern
Brummana’s supporters
The dramatic plight of Lebanon continues to be headline news and so it should be. In a country disintegrating, just where Brummana High School (BHS) would be without its Quaker supporters conjures a terrible image: one of students, staff and families at breaking point and a country and region without its educational beacon for 150 years.
Predicted by the World Bank (in June) to be in the top three worst financial crises since 1850, the country is perilously close to disaster. The crumbling economy, political and social upheaval, the explosion, pandemic and geopolitical challenges have put individuals, families and communities on the brink. Without international support the country once revered for banking, medicine, entertainment, nature and education may be little more than a forgotten speck.
BHS now suffers at the hands of the devaluation of the local currency and rampant inflation. Community members are struggling on with over ninety per cent of the value of their incomes scrapped. Still teachers give 100 per cent to their charges. Still parents desperately try to ensure their children’s education does not waver. Yet how much harder it could possibly get is frankly difficult to imagine.
Since 1873 the school has found great support through the international Quaker community. Founded by a member of the Religious Society of Friends, the school received support from the UK and US to develop and prosper. It is that same base of Friends who continue to support now. The Quaker International Educational Trust and the Friends of Brummana group are among them. Without their support, along with old scholars worldwide, the community would be on its knees.
In a country with such a sparse state education system, the non-profit BHS has filled the gap for many over generations. Thanks to the Quaker supporters of the present, the school continues to teach individuality, service, tolerance, respect, peaceful resolution and environmental stewardship.
A quality education provides three elements: the relief of poverty; the conferring of human dignity; and the basis of democracy. All three elements are needed in Lebanon right now and all three are in a Brummana education.
The support the school is receiving comes in many different formats yet the most pressing is financial: to provide a living wage to teachers (staff hardship), and to ensure no student is left behind by the crisis (bursaries). If you wish to support one of the last Quaker institutions in the region at its most desperate time of need, please do consider joining for BHS Gives, the school’s giving day campaign.
This year BHS Gives is scheduled for 2/3 December and supporters will be able to donate online at www.justgiving.com/q-u-i-e-t.
Please contact me directly if you wish to receive updates for the event at principal@bhs.edu.lb. In giving you will help guarantee the education and lives of hundreds, and hope and optimism for thousands.
Thank you to all BHS supporters past, present and future.
David Gray
Principal, Brummana High School
All talk?
I found the interview with Anne-Marie Trevelyan (5 November) troubling as she clearly has not had the damascene moment she claims and is a cynical appointment to forestall change.
Her superficial approach was exemplified by everything moving ‘at pace’ (which she said ten times) and the journey that is ‘a marathon not a sprint’. But I don’t want to focus on the fairly contentless interview but rather on her record, as she talks about moral leadership.
She talks about being shocked by the floods of 2012 and changing her mind from being a denier. She had tweeted in the summer of 2012 ‘[there is] clear evidence that the ice caps aren’t melting after all’ and ‘global warming isn’t actually happening’. Prior to being appointed our UK champion for adaptation and resilience for COP26 she voted to support fracking and has consistently voted against measures to prevent climate change.
For the first nine months of this year she was the minister for Business, Energy and Clean Growth! Is this the best person we have for the job? With people like this at the helm we are in real trouble.
In January 2016, the Labour Party unsuccessfully proposed an amendment in parliament that would have required private landlords to make their homes ‘fit for human habitation’. Trevelyan was one of seventy-two Conservative MPs who voted against the amendment who personally derived an income from renting out property. This is one of the reasons we will not see any real help for youngsters struggling to buy property.
She was the secretary of state for International Trade and, prior to her appointment, Trevelyan expressed apparent scepticism about the value of foreign aid on a number of occasions. We know what Boris has said about foreigners so she is just the right person for the job.
Nick Davis
Climate Income
May I reply to the letter from Judy Hindley (22 October), which says that my article ‘Green in judgment’ (3 September) ‘contains errors’, and that I ‘could not be more wrong’?
My article concerned the ‘Climate Income’ proposal in which a tax on fossil fuel consumption is imposed and the proceeds distributed to citizens. I argued that this proposal was flawed since citizens may well choose to spend their bounty in a way that does not decrease overall fossil fuel consumption. I also argued that government should undertake a big programme of investment in non-fossil energy production.
Judy does not engage with my criticism of Climate Income; instead she argues by authority, citing various economists who approve of Climate Income. But wait a minute: is not this the same economics profession that completely failed to foresee the financial crash of 2008?
Judy also cites empirical evidence from British Columbia (BC), which adopted a Climate Income scheme in 2008, with a reduction of nearly fifteen per cent in greenhouse gas emissions from 2008 to 2010. But in the succeeding years BC’s emissions per capita ceased to fall; they remained approximately constant until at least 2018 (the last date with available data).
Judy says my ‘biggest mistake’ is to present Climate Income as competing with government investment in non-fossil energy generation. I am glad we agree such investment is necessary, but I did not say the two were in competition or incompatible; what I argued was that the Climate Income scheme won’t work. Let’s concentrate instead on something that will.
Oliver Penrose
Population concern
I have read the interview in the Friend (5 November) that Rosemary Hartill conducted with MP Anne-Marie Trevelyan, with interest as well as with persistence to read all six pages.
I was surprised that a question on population was not asked, as it is so obvious that an ever-growing global population is unsustainable for the planet and puts a heavy burden on all environmental problems. During the COP26 conference alone approximately 2.8 million people were added to our planet.
The slashing of overseas aid by a third was questioned but I did not think answered satisfactorily. Overseas aid could help to fund family planning for the 270 million women in developing countries, who want to reduce the number of children they have, but have no access to family planning. I have a sad TV image imprinted on my mind of a mother in Madagascar with four small hungry children crawling all over her.
But obviously family size is not only important in developing countries. Here in the West we need to also make important choices on this, because a child’s footprint here is so much greater than in developing countries.
As David Attenborough said: ‘All our environmental problems become easier to solve with fewer people, and harder – and ultimately impossible – to solve with ever more people’.
Maria Grace
