Meeting for Sufferings: Area Meeting concerns heard
Minutes form Area Meetings were heard by Meeting for Sufferings
Minutes from four Area Meetings (AMs) were brought to Sufferings for consideration.
Brighouse West Yorkshire AM raised the Ammerdown Invitation and Friends’ responses to it. The Invitation was written by a group of UK peacebuilding professionals and seeks to prompt a conversation about alternatives to the current approach to national security.
The AM minute highlighted that ‘as Quakers we need to look at this locally and understand what is being done centrally’. Sufferings encouraged Friends to learn more about the Ammerdown Group’s work and forwarded the minute to Quaker Peace & Social Witness Central Committee (QPSWCC) for information.
Supporting refugees, locally and in Calais and Dunkirk, has been formally adopted as a concern by East Kent AM. The minute was forwarded to QPSWCC, in light of ongoing work on forced migration.
Friends in Central Yorkshire AM raised questions about the clarity of Yearly Meeting accounts, particularly the reporting of expenditure by Friends House Hospitality Company. The minute has been forwarded to Britain Yearly Meeting trustees.
General Meeting for Scotland minuted their concern over the proposed introduction of cadet forces to Scottish state schools, to be financed by the UK government, via the Ministry of Defence, from fines levied on banks. Friends at Sufferings spoke of the ‘deeply concerning’ implications of the government in Westminster bypassing the Scottish government and of the lack of democratic conversation these moves had had in parliament. In addition to work being undertaken by General Meeting for Scotland’s Parliamentary Liaison Function Group, the minute was forwarded to QPSWCC for advice.
Comments
At the Conservative Party Conference this week , Michael Fallon, Defence Secretary,
announced that cadet forces would be introduced into state school, no doubt in England as well as Scotland.
By TWJ 123 on 6th October 2016 - 22:04
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