Issue 16-08-2013
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Thought for the Week: Love is the answer
Claridge House is a Quaker centre for rest, renewal and retreat near East Grinstead. I have been serving there as resident Friend since 15 May. Before I came I stayed for a while at the Quaker community at Bamford in Derbyshire. The members of the community, and any guests present, gather...
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The Fox Report: The lone parent trap
Lone parents are obliged to seek work as soon as their youngest child turns five. The government says work is the best route out of poverty and that most lone parents want to work. So, what is it like to be a single parent on Jobseeker’s Allowance?
Why food banks?
In New Milton, our Quaker Meeting has offered practical support to a local initiative where young people have started a food bank for the needy. Tom Butler, former bishop of Southwark, in a ‘Thought for the Day’ on BBC Radio Four said that the number of food bank users...
From Beatrice to Beatrix
I recently came into Quaker membership and my Area Meeting clerk asked if I would like Quaker faith & practice as a gift. It was lovely to know that my becoming a Quaker would be marked in this way, but I already had a copy and, so, proposed an alternative:...
Quaker worship at fracking protest
Quakers have held a Meeting for Worship as part of a protest outside a proposed fracking site at Balcombe. The village in West Sussex has been at the centre of a protest campaign since the start of August when energy company Cuadrilla Resources began exploratory drilling.
Tax protesters target Cadbury
Tax justice campaigners recently demonstrated against Cadbury at the company’s famous Bournville factory in Birmingham. The ecumenical protest was organised by the Methodist Tax Justice Network (MTJN) and Methodists, Anglicans and Quakers took part. Campaigners claim that Cadbury used aggressive tax avoidance schemes from 2000 to 2010.
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QPSW call for action on tar sand
Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW) is asking Friends to call on their MP to back EU legislation to keep tar sands fuel out of Europe. Environmental groups argue that tar sands oil produces twenty-three per cent more carbon emissions from extraction to consumption than conventional oil.
Eid peace greetings
Quakers in Britain joined other Christian faith groups to send symbolic greetings of peace and prayers to the Muslim community this Eid.
Eye - 16 August 2013
Discovering Friends Whilst she lay in an alpine meadow, Lyn Wilson, of Cambridge Hartington Grove Meeting, made an intriguing discovery. She writes: ‘I was browsing some of Wordsworth’s poems and discovered two published in The Friend in 1809… ‘“The French Revolution” and “The Influence of Natural Objects”; both became part...
Letters - 16 August 2013
Consensus voting Most people, like Philip Pestelman (2 August), assume that any discussion of voting procedures must be about elections, but ‘Consensus voting’ (14 June) was primarily about decision-making. Herein lies the difference. Compromise in elections – establishing a win-win formula – is best achieved with preference voting in a proportional system; in decision-making,...