Creative Commons licensed photo courtesy of Flickr user John Perivolaris.
One may take Job to task on life being ‘full of misery’, but some day we shall all be ‘cut down like a flower’ and ‘flee’th as it were a shadow’. Death has been in the news a lot lately. It is never a comfortable subject. [...]

Filed under: abortion, afghanistan, arabisraeliconflict, jadegoody on March 29th, 2009 | No Comments »

Two signs of the times this week. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt comes out in favour of assisted suicide; and a seriously ill baby, “Baby OT”, dies after the High Court orders an end to its assisted breathing. Behind both developments, an underlying intuition that death is preferable to a painful life.
I worry where this utilitarian [...]

Filed under: ideas, jonathanbirch, religion on March 21st, 2009 | No Comments »

Creative Commons licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user jgraham.
Even after eleven years, there’s still something a bit shocking about tuition fees. If the vice-chancellors get their way, fees will rise to at least £5000 per student per year. It’s a policy that flaunts its pragmatism on its sleeve. I still think fees defy any principled [...]

Filed under: barackobama, education, jonathanbirch, labour, religion, ukpolitics on March 17th, 2009 | No Comments »

‘I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the colour of their skin but by the content of their character.’
— Martin Luther King 28th August 1963
‘We must recognise that we can’t solve our problem now until there is a radical [...]

Filed under: barackobama, education, poverty, racism on March 1st, 2009 | 1 Comment »