Issue 22-10-2010
Featured story
Editorial
Refugees queue up for clean water in the Dadaab refugee camp in northern Kenya. The Dadaab camps were originally built to fit 90,000 people. Today the number of refugees living there is around 370,000. In 2010 the three camps in Dadaab received around forty new child refugees a month. Now 800 are coming...
Top stories
The fate of our veterans
The growing controversy over the fate of thousands of ex-servicemen and women in prison after serving in Iraq and Afghanistan is to be highlighted in a series of reports by the Howard League to be released over the next six months. An inquiry under John Nutting, QC, due to...
‘I believe that the UK authorities could be in PTSD denial’
PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) A psychological and physical condition caused by frightening or distressing events. It occurs in up to thirty per cent of people who experience traumatic events. (from the NHS Choices website) Recently I travelled to the United States as part of a delegation sponsored by...
When violence comes home
The Ministry of Defence (MoD) is under fire from a former government advisor who accuses its senior officials of failing to tackle domestic violence in the armed forces. Davina James-Hanman said that the ‘upper echelons of the MoD’ are not taking the problem seriously.
‘We train them to kill but we expect them to be normal’
In 1981 consultant psychiatrist Dafydd Alun Jones had a referral from a GP to his clinic in Dolgellau, Wales. The patient had been pensioned out of his family firm suffering from depression and alcoholism. The story that emerged was one of trauma lasting decades. The man had been shot down over...
The forgotten army
Tony White is company secretary and a former chief executive of the drug and alcohol charity CAIS in north Wales. He is a more outspoken critic of government funding than his colleague and friend Dafydd Jones, who founded CAIS.
All articles
Pride versus prejudice
The picture stood in a slim silver frame: My grandfather, the one I had loved most, in uniform, next to his horse, a beautiful sorrel called Roland. Thinking back, that one picture was it as far as uniforms and the army was concerned. Years later, during my last year at...
Students protest over arms dealers at recruitment fairs
One recent event in Edinburgh was closed after students lay down in front of a stall run by BAE Systems. Graduate recruitment has long been a priority for arms firms, particularly among engineering and management students. But protests are on the increase and the Campaign Against Arms Trade (CAAT)...
Forgiveness and sustainability
In a recent discussion of sustainability a Friend suggested that she needed forgiveness and not sustainability in her life – which provoked the following thoughts. This seemed odd!
The ministry of discomfort
Last year I deliberately displaced myself from my own culture, my own country, my own style of living and worshipping. It was a year that challenged me and brought me to a new understanding of the benefits of being made uncomfortable.
Things are getting worse, please send chocolate…
The weather couldn’t have been worse as I drove towards Birmingham. Heavy grey clouds added to the gloom and the windscreen wipers were struggling. I was struggling to remain positive, too. ‘Why am I doing this?’ I thought. The title of the Woodbrooke course didn’t lift me. ‘Inspiring...
Short prison sentences don’t work
Short prison sentences neither reform individuals nor cut crime. That is the conclusion of a major survey of prison governors.
Quakers thanked
An MP at the forefront of the campaign to raise the military recruitment age has thanked Quakers for drawing his attention to the issue. Julian Huppert, Liberal Democrat MP for Cambridge, last week tabled an Early Day Motion (EDM) – a petition of MPs – calling for the age to be...