Meeting for Sufferings: Area Meeting Concerns
From the Probation Service to topics for Yearly Meeting 2014
Probation Service Meeting for Sufferings (MfS) has requested advice from Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) following receipt of a minute that set out a concern over changes to the probation service. The concern was raised at Telford Meeting and supported by Worcestershire and Shropshire Area Meeting (AM). It highlights the government’s new policy ‘to put seventy per cent of probation work out to competitive tender to private companies’.
A Friend feared that ‘this will lead to increasing centralisation and a dilution of accountability, whereas the reality is that it is the work carried out by the probation service locally which is most effective’. The AM asked MfS ‘whether representation can be made to government at a national level’.
Drones
MfS also received a minute from Bournemouth Coastal AM about the Meeting’s recent discussions on drones. Amongst other things, it states that ‘the United Nations is setting up an enquiry… into the legality of the use of unmanned drones for military purposes’.
MfS sent the minute to QPSW for information.
Topics for Yearly Meeting 2014
Mental health and alcohol and drug abuse have been suggested as topics for Yearly Meeting in 2014 or 2015.
The suggestions were made by Northamptonshire AM.
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