awareness acknowledgement acceptance action
Build back better Greener Fairer you choose…
How Quakers are joining the dots to help society to build back better from the pandemic video 2.47 mins December 2020
climate crisis
defence and security
education
criminal justice
immigration
charities
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90% of nurses and healthcare workers are women
77% of the entire NHS workforce are women
‘ you have to question the Govt when they pay Boston Consultants £6000 p/day for the track and trace. When it was the expertise skills and knowledge of day to day NHS workers that put this together. We are not just angels we are a highly skilled critical workforce. There are now 40 thousand less nurses. We need to pay them adequately to attract and retain them. It’s a political choice.’
Donna Kinnair Chief Executive of Royal College of Nursing R4 11 March 2021
video 4 mins
In 1948 the British government carried out an ambitious shake-up of post war society, establishing the foundations of a welfare state. A cornerstone of this new vision was the creation of the National Health Service, the NHS, providing free universal health care for everyone in the UK. Olive Belfield was a young nurse and health visitor in the 1940s. She tells Witness about her memories of before and after the birth of the NHS.
The Tredegar-born health minister had called on a local scheme set up by the mining community as the inspiration for the new post-war national health service.
video 3 mins
The core military budget in 2020-21 £41.2bn. This jump is the highest percentage increase in military spending since UK involvement in the Korean War 70 years ago. The main elements of the military equipment budget include: submarines and nuclear weapons, combat aircraft, warships, armoured vehicles, IT and weapons.
Newer areas of spending include: armed drones, military artificial intelligence, cyber warfare, military space technologies and directed energy weapons e.g. lasers. The spending increase is based on a premise that a highly militarised response to international security problems based on global deployment of offensive weapons technologies should remain at the heart of the UK foreign and security policy.
The core military budget does not include about £6bn per year of additional spending which the UK reports to NATO. This includes military pensions and some peace keeping activity.
March 2021 GDAMSUK
The UK government has announced that it will increase the number of warheads in the UK’s nuclear arsenal by 40%. The UK’s nuclear arsenal is already big enough to kill hundreds of millions of people. We don’t need more nuclear weapons…when communities across the UK are suffering from insufficient government funding in health, housing and proper support for vital public sector jobs – it is unbelievable that our government is spending money on more weapons of mass destruction.
cnd March 2021
claps don’t pay the bills
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‘HMRC plans to provide a personalised service to offshore tax cheats to avoid having to name them as the criminals they are’
March 26 2021
So, at the time the government is doing all it can to sanction those on benefits who arrive a few minutes late for an interview it wants to provide a personalised support service to offshore tax cheats to avoid, to the greatest degree possible, having to treat them as the tax cheats that they are.read more
Council tax increasingly resembles poll tax hitting the poor and Londoners hardest it must be reformed, a think-tank has said.
The research showed that a household living in the lowest council tax property band (band A) in London would on average pay five times what a band H household would as proportion of property value. read more 17 May 2019
Why are small businesses struggling to compete with transnational corporations, how does the tax system and government policy create that?
Small businesses do not typically have the ability to flee to tax havens or lobby for government subsidies and therefore cannot compete with multinational big business.
Lobbyists for big business ask for government subsidies, usually justified by their contribution to society – but end up finding loopholes that stop them giving back as much as they take in the first place.
They have influence over the government, and make weak justifications on their benefit to the economy due to how many jobs they provide, and how much money they bring through tax.
However, often these companies are only profitable, e.g. oil giants, because of the tax subsidies they are awarded.
These also create monopolies and further pool the market share towards biggest companies, as they are given an extreme competitive advantage over small businesses, who cannot politically manoeuvre to get such relief.
Transnational corporations and larger businesses can have more complex relationships with domestic tax in any operating country. They can afford to open accounts in tax havens and siphon away profits without accountability because their teams of lawyers and accountants, alongside government influence if they do get caught out, mean that they find routes to do so legally.
The world’s platform for change
In this movement, we are always going to be the optimists, but we are also the doers committed to ending the nuclear world order. We just want to achieve this through collaboration, not domination.
Beatrice Fihn (ICAN) 2018 Nuclear BAn Treaty 2021
Nuclear ban
‘Instead of leaving life-and-death decisions to a few men this movement allows us all to have a say in our future.
‘Instead of leaving life-and-death decisions to a few men this movement allows us all to have a say in our future. To achieve a world free of nuclear weapons, we must all educate, motivate, and activate. In order to educate others, learn how your community, your bank and the services you use are complicit in developing nuclear weapons, and share that information. Don’t let people forget that these weapons exist and that there’s something they can do to stop them.
To motivate, tell people about the treaty and the support behind it. Most people have no idea that this treaty was adopted and that another way is possible. The nuclear-ban treaty presents a chance for us to correct the course of history. We have pried open the door to the halls of power, and we have rooted our progress in international law. It is time to counter the old vision of the world with a new one based on reason and cooperation.’ Beatrice Fihn (ICAN)
Alongside other faith bodies and anti-nuclear campaigners, Quakers in Britain have denounced the UK government’s intention to hugely increase their stockpile of nuclear weapons. March 2021
An interactive short on line course from remembering resistance
Many are ordinary people propelled by injustice to do extraordinary things. It may well be helpful for lawmakers to be able to see this reality before they vote on these measures
Meeting for Sufferings the standing representative body of Quakers in Britain, noted a decade ago, there are three ways of influencing the state: reforming what exists, creating alternatives, and focusing dissent where opposition is needed
#KillTheBill #RightToProtest #WeWontBeSilenced
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Quaker faith is not just about coming together to worship. Quakers have a long tradition of putting faith into action for peace equality justice and more recently sustainability. The pandemic has exposed all of these issues starkly.
Quake March 2021
read December 2020
December 2020
ONE STEP IN TACKLING RACISM
In a step towards becoming an actively anti-racist church, Quakers will cease to name a room in their London offices after William Penn.
Quakers were totally immersed in the slave trade – both as owners and abolitionists and we are working today to understand how early Quakers like Penn reconciled their values with benefitting from the barbaric trade… read the article here
We connect with Quakers and civil society networks and organisations to create positive change through imaginative, active nonviolence and civil resistance.
We work alongside people who want to find their own courage and power to take collective action to build peace through resisting and transforming violence.
We facilitate and support ‘angelic troublemakers’.
video 5.22 mins
Having left behind the Anglican roots of her childhood, Jennifer Kavanagh discovered the Society of Friends – better known as Quakerism – as an adult. We spoke to her about how to be a practical mystic, how to subvert hierarchies by being silent, how to be part of a Christian religion without being a Christian, how to have a church without a leader, and what not to call the Queen.
actual interview starts at 13m 24s – ends 48-36 mins
…We welcome visitors from other meetings, whether casual or regular, and look upon them as a source of enrichment. We understand that we in turn can give from our quietly gathered meeting.
There are many reasons why Friends might not be able to get to a Church, meeting or worship group in person, but it should not stop you from feeling part of the Quaker community.
Advice and queries Quaker Faith and Practice
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Refuse to be constrained by the ruling order’s lack of vision and belief in humanity. When you’re called crazy, keep going and when you’re told it doesn’t matter, know that it does.
Beatrice Fihn (ICAN)
