November 12th summary of the discussion. Covid was still top of the news “agenda” with the promise of vaccines soon to be available. The costs of some (eg Pfizer) are likely to be high (Astra Zeneca is likely to be cheaper and does not need minus 80 degrees Celsius for storage). Drug companies may reap…
Author: The Meeting Place
Brexit Debate
Wednesday 21st October: Notes on “The Future of Brexit Britain” With Jonathan Chaplain and Andrew Bradstock, the joint editors. The initiative for the book was the strange silence from the Church of England about the Brexit Referendum- any personal statements made (eg from Bishops) were for Remain, but it was clear that many Anglicans were…
October 2020 First Thursday
Summary of our discussion: We noted that the “R” (reproduction) rate for Covid had recently fallen from 1.7 down to 1.1 [how long ago does that month seem now!!] The UK Agriculture Bill is going through Parliament at the moment (with a debate today). This has resulted from the UK leaving the EU, and therefore…
First Thursday, September 2020
Summary of the discussion: The election campaigning of US President Donald Trump appears to promote division, rather than healing. Law and Order is his message, rather than any attempt to deal with the issues that have caused anger and the protests. In some ways, this is similar to Richard Nixon’s campaign in 1968, which stressed…
First Thursday, August 2020
The Beirut explosion happened two days before- a shipload of ammonium nitrate en route in 2013 from Georgia for fertilizer in Mozambique, and abandoned after the Russian cargo ship developed mechanical problems near Cyprus, appears to have been triggered by a nearby fire. If stored for long periods ammonium nitrate solidifies and becomes dangerous. Poor…
Black Lives Matter (2)
From “BLACK AND BRITISH: A FORGOTTEN HISTORY” BY DAVID OLUSOGA, (pages 491-6) In June 1946 the British Cabinet Manpower Working Party determined that in order to meet her post war target, Britain would need 940,000 additional workers. By the end of the year they had raised their estimate to 1,346,000. To help fill this enormous…
Black Lives Matter
…. “and so do white lives”, someone will instantly reply. Of course they do, but the point is that when some lives have been valued less, justice demands action to redress that inequality. We may applaud the present government’s intention to “level up” the North (even if we question its analysis and proposals), and no-one…
July 2020 First Thursday
Two matters in the news occupied most of our discussion: The impact of the Beijing Government’s actions on Hong Kong. Is it that Beijing is determined to subvert the 1997 One Country, Two Systems agreement with Britain and control Hong Kong- or is it a difference of interpretation of what that agreement meant? Since Deng…
Piketty’s proposals
The last mailing summarised Thomas Piketty’s account of how we got into our present position. This looks at his final chapter, where he puts forward proposals for a better economy and society in the future. He says: “New forms of social ownership will need to be developed, along with new ways of apportioning voting rights…
Thomas Piketty: Capital and Ideology
My Lent reading this year has been nothing explicitly “religious”: it was Thomas Piketty’s new book “Capitalism and Ideology”, published in French last Autumn and translated into English earlier this year. Though not religious or “spiritual” I would argue that it is at least as theological as some other books I was urged to read….