Kester Brewin

Been following with interest the US Supreme Court deliberations on the right to gay marriage – a debate that has been going on in various other parts of the world too. What’s interesting is the vociferous nature of the opposition from religious groups on the right. I mean, they really hate this. Which is odd… [...]

Was reading a piece in The Guardian today outlining just how wide the recent sex abuse scandals have been. This is a very difficult area to write about as one can neither diminish any abuse victim’s own suffering, nor accept that work-based prejudice or sexist comments and the fumbled approaches of someone like Lord Rennard [...]

It’s been a very very busy 10 days since the NicsFight campaign kicked off. For those of you who don’t know, my very good friend Nic died in October from cancer; his insurance company (Friends Life) have been refusing to pay out on a critical illness policy which would transform the lives of the widow [...]

One of the things I try to do on this site is draw together different strands of things that I come across. One strand… interesting… 2 or 3 covering the same issue in different ways… suggests there’s something deeper to look at. Towards the end of last week, Tony Jones posted what might have been [...]

It’s Anti-Bullying Week here in school. In the assembly we had on it yesterday it struck me that what Israel is doing follows the archetypal bullying cycle almost perfectly. And it seems, as a ceasefire is thrashed out, that it will continue to do so. Bullies are clever. They pick on those who are weaker [...]

In a previous post examining some of the its psychodynamic roots, I suggested that the current tragedy in Gaza is, in fact a religious conflict. But not because three faiths are somehow at war over doctrine. This is not a war between religions, but a war created by religion. I want to expand on that slightly. [...]

With the recent flaring up of hostilities between Israel and the Palestinian territory in Gaza the question has again been raised ‘will there ever be peace?’ My view, having visited the region a number of times, is that the leadership of Israel simply do not (yet) want peace. How can this be? How could a [...]

In what could amount to one of the most significant announcements regarding education in England (and perhaps Wales) in many years, yesterday Michael Gove set out his vision for the English Baccalaureate. I’ve got a number of concerns about this, including the huge expense that this is going to incur, much of which will fall [...]

I very much enjoyed watching the first part of ’56 Up‘ last night – a programme that I’ve been aware of since… probably 21 up. What was particularly interesting about this episode – for those who don’t know it, the last one was 7 years ago – was that it was the first one to [...]

Interesting debate going on about charitable giving in the UK. The recent coalition government’s budget set a cap on the amount of money that people can give and get tax relief for…and charities have responded with concerns that this will reduce the amount of money they receive. In a weird parallel story, a supermarket have [...]