Issue 17-08-2013
Featured story
Thought for the Week: Stopping
There are phrases that jump off the page at a particular period in one’s life and make a huge impact. Two such phrases were in some notes I took from the Pendle Hill pamphlet Living from the Center by Valerie Brown: ‘stopping is a radical spiritual act and the...
Top stories
The Fox Report: Democracy unmasked - ‘Some reporters bark, very few ever bite’
In his book Fraudcast News – How bad journalism supports our bogus democracies, Patrick Chalmers, a former Reuters financial reporter, contends that conventional journalists are incomplete public guardians. The workings of governance are lost to ordinary people in a tangle of institutions and regulatory bodies operating in obscurity and immune to...
The Fox Report: Democracy unmasked - Inspiring new visions
When Enric Duran stole nearly half a million euros from Spanish banks in 2008, it wasn’t really about the money. His act was more a two-fingered salute to global capitalism and its capture of representative democracy. Despite the Robin Hood comparisons, the bearded Catalan didn’t hand the cash...
The Fox Report: Democracy unmasked - United Kingdom – but for how long?
Public trust in British politicians and the institutions they inhabit is in tatters – with more than half the electorate wondering whether to bother turning out to vote. Yet, despite public disdain for those thrown up by the Westminster version of representative democracy, many Britons are far from apathetic about politics...
A new face in Brussels
The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) has appointed Andrew Lane as the deputy representative focusing on QCEA programmes in criminal justice and peace. He joined the staff in Brussels earlier this month.
Grant given to Bath Meeting House
Bath Meeting House has been awarded a £10,000 grant in the latest round of funding from the National Churches Trust. The grant is part of a £645,000 package that will benefit forty-five churches, chapels and Meeting houses in the United Kingdom and will help the Meeting house replace a cramped tea-bar,...
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Stretford student wins peace essay competition
Bulak Dale from Stretford is the winner of the Dorothy Trippier Peace Essay 2013 competition. The competition was organised by Southport Friends in memory of local Quaker and artist Dorothy Trippier. A first prize of £100 and two prizes of £50 were offered to young people studying at Key Stage 4 or 5 for...
New edition of Quaker faith & practice
The decision to recognise same and opposite sex marriage as equal, made at Yearly Meeting in 2009, has been included in amendments to chapter sixteen in the fifth edition of Quaker faith & practice, which has just been published.
Zero Carbon Britain
The Centre for Alternative Technology (CAT) has released a summary of the key findings of a significant report: Zero Carbon Britain. CAT has been working on this for some years, and the report was launched at parliament last summer, hosted by the All Party Parliamentary Climate Change Group. The summary...
Using language
British Quakers in the early twenty-first century seem to be a very articulate bunch. You only have to look at a typical edition of the Friend, the Friends Quarterly or Quaker Voices to realise this. For a Society that places such importance upon silent waiting we use a lot of...
Quaker Meeting
Facing shafts of light without, within a brighter place we begin, to whisper then to shout fractures of the outer core dropping of the daily mask, conversations deep and raw… are offered to thee, yet…
Eye - 17 January 2014
Colourful prayer Creatively-inclined Friends gathered together for a Quaker Arts Network (QAN) day at Woodbrooke last autumn, entitled ‘Colour Our Prayers’. Jane Garbett took part in the group: ‘The focus for our workshop was exploring prayer through the arts… we used the ancient practice of pattern making to express our...
Letters - 17 January 2014
Afterwords In our Meeting we give Friends the opportunity of offering what we call ‘Afterthoughts’ before the notices are given. I cannot recall any occasion when the ministry offered during the Meeting for Worship has ever been deprecated or criticised in the unfortunate way described by Simon Western (3 January). There...