Issue 31-08-2012
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Thought for the Week: Religion and spirituality
In the introduction to Advices & queries there is the following: ‘There will be a diversity of experience of belief and language. Friends maintain that expressions of faith must be related to personal experience. Some find traditional Christian language full of meaning; some do not.’
Top stories
The Fox Report: Beyond the G4S Olympic fiasco
Earlier this summer, G4S, the world’s leading security company, famously failed to provide a workforce fit to guard the London Olympics, prompting the unexpected deployment of thousands of troops and police officers. The eleventh hour unravelling of security for the world’s biggest sporting event provoked intense media...
Arms link to university funding
In the past three years leading British universities have received at least £83 million of funding from UK arms companies and government military agencies. The funding has been for research, courses and other activities.
Young people and alcohol
Drinking and getting drunk is not an automatic rite of passage for young people in the UK. This is the key finding of a recent research study undertaken by academics at Middlesex University and published by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation.
Ruling on Rachel Corrie case
A ruling earlier this week that the state of Israel was not to blame for the death of US activist Rachel Corrie has been met with disappointment by leading Quakers involved in nonviolent peaceful protest.
Challenge to Stock Exchange
A leading British charity has challenged the London Stock Exchange to ban multinational companies that operate in unethical ways. On Tuesday the anti-poverty charity War on Want took part in a protest with other campaigning groups outside the London annual meeting of the mining company Vedanta.
All articles
Encountering God
Seven or eight years ago I discovered an exhibit in the Smithsonian Museum in Washington that comprised an aerial view of a small family group in the yard of their home. At the press of a button the view shifted to an elevation of one mile. Each successive press of...
London 2012
So, the Olympics came, we saw them, and they utterly conquered me, and many, many others. I was, I confess, sceptical of the commitment of the nation to the event. I was utterly wrong.
Walking a tightrope
Diana was first appointed clerk soon after she became a member of Bewdley Meeting in 1960. The Meeting was on the point of being laid down at the time. With the guidance of birthright Quakers, she served several three-year terms as clerk until she left in 1976. She went on to serve...
Eye - 31 August 2012
Flower patch tales Following their time at The Boy’s Own Paper and The Girl’s Own Paper respectively (24 August), Eb and Flo’s tale continued at ‘The Flower Patch’, a cottage in the Wye Valley. Here Flora penned ‘The Flower Patch’ novels. Jill Allum says: ‘Although novels, these were...
Letters - 31 August 2012
Unity, liberty and charity I was delighted to see the recent inclusion on the letters page of the well-loved phrase: ‘In essentials unity, in non-essentials liberty, in all things charity’. I have long regretted its omission from the front cover and it is well placed with our letters – a timely...