Issue 26-11-2021
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Robert Ashton’s happiness hit list
I recently came into contact with an academic called Jules Pretty. He is a professor of Environment and Society at Essex University, and has more than a passing interest in the climate crisis. He talks about the need to unpick the interlocking effects of consumption, biodiversity loss, inequality and what...
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Protest prompts Scottish Ballet to review BP sponsorship
Friends welcomed the news that Scottish Ballet is reviewing its sponsorship policy after climate activists staged a protest during the last days of COP26.
Just looking: Hugh McMichael presents some of the statistics behind imprisonment
My interest in criminal justice goes back to my teens. Back then I aspired to become a probation officer, to support those who felt unfairly blamed. Instead I became a hospital and hospice doctor, but ten years ago I started going into prisons. For the last four of those years...
Is truth as simple as we imagine? Keith Archer investigates by way of the Taliban and the Trinity
A short time ago I wrote to an international group of friends bemoaning something I think has a negative cultural effect on the English. It is the fact that our language has become the world’s lingua franca. It saps our will to speak other languages, and perpetuates atavistic ideas...
Going concern: Simon Watkins says farewell to Airton
After five years as the resident Friend, I will be leaving Airton this month – leaving the premises and the village that is, but not the Meeting.
Moving in the right circles: Ruth Garnault-Harding reports from Meeting of Friends in Wales
There have been many benefits for Friends in connecting digitally. We have reduced our travelling, released more time, and enabled people with limited mobility to contribute equally. So why spend time and money gathering in person?
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Friends welcome Alternative Security Review
Quakers are supporting an Alternative Security Review that aims to encompass a broader and more ecological perspective.
QCEA issues statement on general secretary row
Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) has spoken further on the decision to terminate the contract of its general secretary, Timmon Wallis.
Two Meeting Houses awarded Historic England grants
Two historic Meeting houses have been awarded grants from the National Churches Trust. Kendal Meeting in Cumbria, which houses the Quaker Tapestry, has been awarded a grant of £132,337, while Marazion Meeting House in Cornwall has received £31,904.
Quaker speaks on Greenham for Chichester peace lecture
A Quaker who is writing a novel about the Greenham Common Peace Camp gave the Chichester Friends’ Annual Peace Lecture to coincide with Remembrance Day.
Between Living and Dying: Reflections from the edge of experience, by Ruth Scott
I bought this book because I wanted to compare the author’s experience of lymphoma with my own. Ruth Scott was diagnosed with an aggressive form of Non Hodgkin’s in 2017, and I was told in 2004 that I have an indolent, slow-growing one. We both had a stem cell transplant:...
A golden light
The following was submitted to Airton Meeting’s ‘Year in poems’ for 2020. All Friends, visitors and Malhamdale residents were invited to send original work to be shown on the Meeting website, one per month for the year. Sometimes a golden light falls across the door to a place made...
Letters - 26 November 2021
The things of heaven Roger Plenty (12 November) is disappointed that, in Voirrey Faragher’s fine summary (28 October) of my Adderbury Lecture, I suggest that consumption is now the more concerning of the twin drivers of greenhouse gas emissions: namely, population multiplied by consumption. The lecture was about my book,...