Issue 02-12-2011
Featured story
Gambling: time for real change
This timely Fox report addresses many of the reasons that gambling has been such a significant part of Quaker Action on Alcohol and Drugs (QAAD) work. At its heart is the human experience of the problem gambler and those close to them – and their losses in the widest sense.
Top stories
The spoils of addiction
To what extent is the gambling industry reliant on just a few heavy gamblers for its revenues rather than collecting a more balanced set of revenues from a larger pool of people? Finding this out is not straightforward – leisure industry companies do not publish their annual reports in forms that...
The gambler’s tale
I kissed my fiancée goodbye, but this wasn’t going to be a normal working day. I had left a note on the bed and, as I walked through the park on my way to the police station, I couldn’t believe what gambling had done to me. I...
Salter statue stolen
A statue of one of the twentieth century’s most prominent Quakers has been stolen from a park in Bermondsey. The bronze statue of Alfred Salter, a doctor, politician and social reformer, disappeared on 18 November.
Still waiting for a law
Many heads turned to read the banners. The sight of a group of the over-sixties demanding justice for how they lived was unusual. I was in Whitehall to support the third annual lobby presentation in parliament by the Park Home Owners’ Justice Campaign on 12 October 2011. People came from Yorkshire, Derbyshire,...
Love is God
As a child I was sent to the Church of England Sunday School and to the Baptist Church and I fidgeted my time away through compulsory school assemblies. I came away with not very much in terms of religion but a love of hymns, a visceral rejection of sermons, particularly...
All articles
‘Occupy’ beyond London
Quakers are offering practical help and political support to ‘Occupy’ protest camps throughout the UK. Since the launch of Occupy London in October, the movement has spread to most major British cities and a number of smaller towns. There are thought to be occupations in over eighty countries worldwide.
Dress doctor wins award
A Quaker whose business is informed by her faith has been named one of the UK’s top young social entrepreneurs. Jo Poole, of Jesus Lane Meeting in Cambridge, has won a Future 100 award for entrepreneurial flair that combines commercial, environmental and social goals.
Michael Lyons released
British conscientious objector Michael Lyons has been released from military prison in Colchester. He was sentenced to nine months’ detention for ‘wilful disobedience’ after he refused to register for a rifle. His views on war had changed but his application for discharge due to conscientious objection was rejected (see â€...
Quakers assist election in Congo
Quakers from Kinshasa Monthly Meeting have acted as election observers in the presidential election, held on November 28, in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Cathedrals, tents and boardrooms
In Bath this week I saw a small park with fifteen tents in it and notices declaring: ‘We are the 99%’. Such camps are in cities around the globe. The Occupy London camp at St Paul’s is, for us, the best known and most controversial. It has forced the...
Quakerism versus chaos
Darwin misjudged it – it’s not so much survival of the fittest, it’s survival. In the Arctic, the woolly mammoth grew fur, which its African cousins didn’t; bats can’t see at night, so hunt by sonar; deserts are dry, but camels don’t die of thirst, they...
Vocable (for John)
Ninety now, you’re adrift on the vowel-stream, the crisp edge of all your five languages gone and we’re back to the least of language. It’s all one, your, his or my slight modulations of the bare vowel of animal need… though even there how they give us...
Eye - 02 December 2011
Cast in stone Friends have written to Eye, following the story on habitats, of the rich wildlife and plants to be found in their Meeting house grounds. Birds and bees are one thing – but what about art? Win Sutton, convenor of the premises committee of Wolverhampton Local Meeting, has...
Letters - 02 December 2011
Sharing spiritual experience Helen Meads writes (18 November) of a Quaker culture where personal accounts of certain spiritual experiences are devalued and demeaned, perhaps because they are outside the norms of the group and so are possibly disturbing to hear. Such a lack of understanding and appreciation is not uncommon (see...