Issue 10-07-2009
Featured story
Jacob Bell: pharmacist, MP and patron of the arts
One hundred and fifty years ago, at Holy Trinity Cemetery in Tunbridge Wells, Timothy Hickmott, a parish clerk, accosted a gentleman who was apparently looking for something and asked if he could help. ‘Yes, you can; in fact I am looking for a nice sunny place for my grave. I...
Top stories
Daddy, what did you do about climate change?
Last weekend, a thousand people formed a human chain around Kingsnorth coal power station to say ‘no’ to the new coal power plants proposed under the dubious justification of carbon capture and storage. The demonstration was organised by a coalition of groups including the Women’s Institute and Oxfam. What...
Kurdistan: peace work
Last December I was reading the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) website and spotted the name of an old Quaker friend. I emailed to ask if he was the same John Lynes that we’d known many years ago, when my husband and I were actively involved in nonviolent direct action.
Disaster in India
We heard virtually nothing about it at the time as we were in the UK immersed in MPs’ expenses scandals, but the reality here is that about a million people have lost their homes and livelihoods as the Sunderbans, low-lying delta lands stretching over hundreds of kilometres, are now a...
Friends continue to highlight G20 policing concerns
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee argued that overall the policing of the protests was ‘remarkably successful’ and warned that incidents of violence ‘have the potential to seriously damage the public’s faith in the police’. It also expressed concerns that ‘untrained and inexperienced officers’ were deployed on the...
All articles
Q-eye: a Quaker look at the world
Disaster in India
We heard virtually nothing about it at the time as we were in the UK immersed in MPs’ expenses scandals, but the reality here is that about a million people have lost their homes and livelihoods as the Sunderbans, low-lying delta lands stretching over hundreds of kilometres, are now a...
Kurdistan: peace work
Last December I was reading the Christian Peacemaker Teams (CPT) website and spotted the name of an old Quaker friend. I emailed to ask if he was the same John Lynes that we’d known many years ago, when my husband and I were actively involved in nonviolent direct action.
More than just the news
We love our bimonthly newsletter at Bakewell Meeting. We think it’s special and we want to tell you about it – not in order to brag, but because we hope to inspire you.
Quiet sensibility and unobtrusive skill
The Cinder Path by Andrew Motion. Faber and Faber. ISBN: 978 057124 492 8. £12.99.
Jacob Bell: pharmacist, MP and patron of the arts
One hundred and fifty years ago, at Holy Trinity Cemetery in Tunbridge Wells, Timothy Hickmott, a parish clerk, accosted a gentleman who was apparently looking for something and asked if he could help. ‘Yes, you can; in fact I am looking for a nice sunny place for my grave. I...
Letters - 10th July 2009
Daddy, what did you do about climate change?
Last weekend, a thousand people formed a human chain around Kingsnorth coal power station to say ‘no’ to the new coal power plants proposed under the dubious justification of carbon capture and storage. The demonstration was organised by a coalition of groups including the Women’s Institute and Oxfam. What...
Marriage and gender
Here’s my view: the key difference between marriage today and in Biblical times is that we can now demonstrate that ‘female’ and ‘male’ are not fixed binary categories.
Debate opened, not dogma pronounced
If Yearly Meeting Gathering (YMG) was discussing climate change, nuclear weapons or the ecumenical movement, the pages of the Friend would be full of articles, setting out people’s hopes, fears and leadings. It would be seen as part of coming to YMG with heart and mind prepared. Do any...
Waging nonviolence website launched
Waging nonviolence highlights news stories and people’s personal reports of marches, sit-ins, strikes and other ways of responding to perceived injustice without resorting to violence. In little over a month of operation, it has received reports of actions in seventy-six countries, including conflict zones like the Democratic Republic of...
UK prisons must be guided by ‘penal moderation’
In its final report, published at the end of a two-year investigation in the UK and abroad, the Commission on English Prisons Today recommended that prison policy be guided by a new underlying principle of ‘penal moderation’. This would place ‘the humanity of victims and prisoners at centre stage’ and...
Beyond defence: towards conflict prevention
Although the report, by influential think tank the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), stops short of calling for the UK to abandon its Trident nuclear weapons, it calls on the government to consider – in the context of a full ‘strategic review of security’ – whether the UK needs to maintain...
Taking courage in challenging times
‘Is the Society in rude health?’, asked Gillian Ashmore, when she spent the afternoon with General Meeting for Scotland last month. Her natural inclination is to give optimistic answers to this big question, but she confessed that finding hard evidence to support her optimism is not always easy.
Friends continue to highlight G20 policing concerns
The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee argued that overall the policing of the protests was ‘remarkably successful’ and warned that incidents of violence ‘have the potential to seriously damage the public’s faith in the police’. It also expressed concerns that ‘untrained and inexperienced officers’ were deployed on the...