Issue 15-04-2011

Featured story

Life in Bethany

14 Apr 2011 | by Marigold Bentley

If you failed the 11+ in the area of Dorset in which I was born, school life ended for you at sixteen. Farming, apprenticeships, the army or early marriage were the options presented. I was interested in child-care, so I went to technical college to do a mainly placement-based course in...

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Top stories

York Quaker speaks truth to power

FREE 14 Apr 2011 | by Symon Hill

A York Quaker has turned the tables on her local council to defend disabled people. City of York Council was obliged to debate the impact of its cuts programme last week after Ceri Owen gathered enough signatures to trigger a special discussion.

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Meeting for Sufferings report

14 Apr 2011 | by Ian Kirk-Smith

James Turrell’s Skyspace at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park. | Photo: Barkaw/flickr CC

Quakers at the arboretum  The prospect of a Quaker presence in the National Memorial Arboretum in Staffordshire is moving closer to reality.  A working party, joined by representatives from Quaker Peace & Social Witness (QPSW), has met several times in the past months to develop ideas. The working...

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Karen Chouhan: economic equality for black communities in Britain

14 Apr 2011 | by Rosemary Hartill

Karen | Photo: Photo courtesy Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust.

It was a visionary vision. ‘And I really believed it was achievable,’ says Karen Chouhan. ‘I’d been working in race equality for twenty-five or more years, there was still a pretty good swing going on race equality, and I had a whole range of contacts over the UK. So...

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Gaddafi and Quaker faith & practice?

14 Apr 2011 | by Alexander Macpherson-Glasgow

Roadsign at crossroads in Derj 2009. A rough translation of the Arabic: ‘For the Knight of the African Union, with love from the Popular Assembly’ | Photo: Photo © Carsten ten Brink.

Muammar al-Gaddafi promotes his preferred model of governance through the ‘Green Book’. In Islam and the Third Universal Theory: religious thought of Muammar Al-Qadhafi (1991), the academic Mahmoud Ayoub states that it arose in part his from knowledge of the Quaker Business Method!

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The Coalition, the cuts and the costs

FREE 14 Apr 2011 | by Tom Jackson

It is just nine months since the coalition government assumed power. Even before the election, it was well known that the country’s finances were in a parlous state.  The new government inherited a desperate financial situation, with a budget deficit of £150 billion and a national debt of over £1,000...

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All articles

Walk the walk

FREE 14 Apr 2011 | by Leo Vincent

Are Quakers all talk and no actual action? In the past week I have seen two statements from Quakers that have both fallen way short of anything concrete and constructive.

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April in Paris

14 Apr 2011 | by Anthony Boulton

It is a sunny spring late afternoon and a young American, attached to his nation’s embassy, saunters back to his apartment in a quiet part of Paris. As a foreign diplomat he is a rare phenomenon in the Paris of 1794, every other embassy having closed its doors and deserted...

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All truth is a shadow except the last

14 Apr 2011 | by Jan Arriens

David Boulton inspiringly describes (25 March) how three Quaker groups coming from different angles – including humanists, agnostics and atheists – found common ground at Woodbrooke.

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Eye - 15 April 2011

14 Apr 2011 | by Eye

A two wheel trend? Eye has heard of two Friends taking to the roads of Europe this spring to travel to various Meetings on the continent by motorcycle. Kimmett Edgar, who works for the Prison Reform Trust, has begun a five-day trip to Vienna for the UN Crime Commission, while...

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Letters - 15 April 2011

14 Apr 2011 | by Friend Web

Boycott, divestment and sanctions We rejoiced hearing the reports from so many sources that you have decided to join others who boycott goods from the illegal settlements according to International law. Your letter [informing of the boycott decision] is very moving and inspiring, and a sign of hope. In our...

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