Issue 28-06-2013
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Thought for the Week: The Fox Report - Borrowing
The fear of being accused of bringing vermin into new houses seems to be sufficiently strong to make some housewives undertake instalments on new beds for the whole family – from a 1939 survey of a Birmingham municipal estate
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The Fox Report: The turning point?
In the last five years conventional wisdom regarding the UK economy has been turned on its head. The claim that the government had abolished ‘boom and bust’ was exploded in spectacular fashion by the crash of 2008 and the near-collapse of the financial system and subsequent bailouts. The assumption that families...
The Fox Report: Student debt
While most Britons have cooled their credit habits since the financial crisis, students stand out as having done the reverse. It’s hardly their fault – with higher tuition fees, benefits cuts and poor job prospects in a struggling economy racking up the debts for eighteen- to thirty-year-olds generally.
The Fox Report: Payback time
If Naomi is the face of Britain’s new wariness towards debt since the financial crisis, no one’s told her friends yet. They just think she’s strange. Yet the Slough support worker’s caution about money has become less outlandish in the last couple of years, with total...
Responding to inequality
And never heed the tempests nor the storms… - George Fox There’s a lot of despair about. It’s high time I shared the sticky notes. That’s not as daft as it sounds. This is a very special set of post-it notes. At Yearly Meeting last...
Travelling in ministry: Lift up your gifts
In the small groups that I work with helping Friends see their Spirit given gifts, I have found that British Friends are reluctant to own their own goodness and gifts. In a recent article in The Daily Telegraph, a headline proclaimed: ‘Boasting lessons for girls shy of success.’ It revealed...
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Top marks for Quaker school
Breckenbrough, a Quaker school for boys with learning and behavioural difficulties, was rated ‘outstanding’ in two of four areas in a recent Ofsted inspection. The North Yorkshire school was rated ‘good’ overall and ‘outstanding’ on ‘outcomes for residential pupils’ and ‘quality of residential provision and care’.
Cumbrian Friends highlight educational concerns
Quakers in Cumbria are highlighting concerns about aspects of educational policy in England. Members of West Cumbria Area Meeting recently wrote a letter to publicise their concerns and circulated it to Friends in the region. There have been strong responses so far from more than twenty Area Meetings.
Pilgrimage reaches York
Pilgrims on the Pilgrimage for Peace and Economic Justice, who are walking from Iona to London, have left Scotland and are now in the north of England. A visit to the crypt of historic Hexham Abbey in Northumberland was a recent highlight. They also took part in a service...
Sudbury re-opens after renovation
The historic Meeting house at Sudbury in Suffolk has re-opened after a long-delayed renovation. The Grade-II listed building was officially opened again on Saturday 15 June by Adrian Osborne, mayor of Sudbury, and Betty Scrivener, clerk of the Meeting. It now has an eye-catching new porch.
Origami pieces for peace
One thousand paper cranes have been made by Friends from Pickering and Hull Area Meeting to coincide with the centenary of the Northern Friends Peace Board. The crane (or tsuru) is a national symbol of longevity and luck in Japan. Legend promises that anyone who makes one thousand paper...
Eye - 28 June 2013
A ‘potty’ Meeting Creative juices were flowing during Wilmslow Meeting’s recent trip to a potter’s barn. Friends fondled clay into intriguing keepsakes, one of which Andrew Backhouse wanted to share with Eye readers. He writes: ‘Wilmslow [Meeting] felt we should do more fun things together, and so this...
Letters - 28 June 2013
‘What is truth?’ Harvey Gillman (21 June) doesn’t want to define himself by any ‘ist’. Nor should any of us. Narrowing ourselves down to a single reductionist definition is not what it’s about. I’m happy to describe myself as a nontheist (and for that matter a socialist, a...