Issue 24-11-2017
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Thought for the Week: Money
We have worn out the arguments for a fairer distribution of wealth. They just end up with everyone competing for more. This is because we believe that money is a good thing and the more you have the better it gets. How about looking at economics from a different angle?
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Time for change?
In Manchester Quaker Meeting House, which was the venue recently for Meeting for Sufferings, there is a striking image: a tapestry panel that depicts a major event in the history of nineteenth century Quakerism. The panel celebrates the Manchester Conference held in 1895 when some thousand Friends gathered in the city. ...
Interview: Sally Nicholls
‘Kids love death and killing! They like the edges,’ says Sally Nicholls, the award-winning children’s author who is now based in Oxford. Born into a Quaker family in Stockton-on-Tees, she has been a lifelong storyteller. Her life connects the wider world with Quakerism: after Great Ayton School she attended...
Images of Christ: Strength in weakness
Elisabeth Frink never employed any help modelling her characteristically vigorous sculptures of men, dogs, birds and horses. When asked why she rarely worked with the female form, she replied: ‘I have focused on the male because to me he is a subtle combination of sensuality and strength with vulnerability.’
Alternative Remembrance Day events held in the UK
An Alternative Remembrance Sunday ceremony, organised by the Peace Pledge Union, was held in Tavistock Square in London. Speakers at the ceremony included Sam Walton, the Quaker activist who was recently found not guilty of criminal damage after attempting to disarm warplanes bound for Saudi use in Yemen. He criticised...
Coventry peace trail launched
Two Coventry Quakers, Carol Rank and Andrew Rigby, have written a booklet to guide visitors on the Coventry ‘peace trail’ and on 11 November they took twenty visitors on the first peace trail walk.
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From the archive: The fortunes of war
In November 1917 the Friends’ Ambulance Unit (FAU) celebrated its third anniversary at Dunkirk. The First British Ambulance Unit for Italy, meanwhile, having completed its second year of service in August, was caught up in the Italian offensive. Two members of the Unit, Geoffrey Young and William Sessions, were wounded and...
Seeking unity
Are Friends ready to share our experience outside Friends? Since the 1990s, the best-led organisations in Europe and North America have invested time, resources and imagination in developing their abilities to manage and lead. Efforts have focused on developing the individual capability of senior managers, and those being developed to...
UN call to end Yemen blockade
Three UN agencies (the World Health Organisation, UNICEF and the World Food Programme) have called on the Saudi-led coalition to end the blockade on Yemen that has stopped vital humanitarian supplies from entering the country.
QCEA presentation in Strasbourg
The Quaker Council for European Affairs (QCEA) made a presentation on refugees and migration to the Committee of Ministers (the body representing the forty-seven national governments of the Council of Europe) in Strasbourg on November 7.
Nuclear disarmament
Beatrice Fihn, director of the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN – the 2017 Nobel peace prizewinner), was among 400 clergy, diplomats, campaigners and Nobel laureates gathered in the Vatican on 10 and 11 November for a conference that explored integral nuclear disarmament together with solutions and prospects for a world free of nuclear...
Unlocking detention
The Quaker Asylum and Refugee Network (QARN) is urging Friends to support Unlocking Detention – ‘a virtual tour’ of the UK’s detention centres that is currently offering a spotlight on the hidden world of immigration detention.
High sales of white poppies
2017 has been another year for high sales of white poppies, the Peace Pledge Union has reported. Almost 100,000 had been sold as of 8 November. This is the fourth year running in which sales have been around the 100,000 mark.
Letters - 24 November 2017
What can we do about Brexit? With our departure from the EU less than two years away, Janet Kreysa’s question (3 November) should be taken literally and not as merely rhetorical. Simply spending time in lamentation or celebration, depending upon one’s point of view, is time wasted. Here are...