Shame and embarrassment

A Day of shame and embarrassment for the Catholic Church in Ireland. That’s how Roy Jenkins described the impact of stories about Roman Catholic run institutions who failed the children and young people in their care. A day of pain and anger for survivors too, who recounted nightmarish, horrific stories of how they were treated- [...]

Our Muslim neighbours, our friends, our shared hope for community

In this morning’s  BBC Radio4 Thought for the Day  Abdal Hakim Murad shared that a new survey by the Gallup organisation has revealed that Muslims are much more likely than the general population to have confidence in British institutions such as the judiciary, the political process, the media and the police. 77% seven percent of UK [...]

Values buried under bullshit?

It’s one hundred days today since January 20th when Barack Obama was inaugurated as the world’s most powerful man-the President of the United States of America. Millions of words will be written today assessing how well he has done at this most inconsequential of milestones after just three  months. He seems to have been a busy [...]

Hillsborough

At 3.06pm today, silence will be kept in the cities of Nottingham, Sheffield and Liverpool to mark the twentieth anniversary of the Hillsborough Disaster where 96 Liverpool supporters lost their lives for simply going to watch a football match. For a preview of the day  from the BBC news pages see http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/7999279.stm. On this morning’s Thought for the [...]

Whose thought is it anyway?

BBC Radio 4’s Thought for the Day remains closed to secularists and some non-religious figures are getting a bit hot under the collar. Today’s Guardian newspaper and website has the secularist case put by author and broadcaster Claire Rayner with Giles Fraser arguing that the current slot should be left as it is.
Over the last [...]