Kester Brewin

With the recent victory we had over Friends Life, it’s been a busy time talking about the campaign and thinking through more deeply what lessons can be learned from it. I’ve got a blog piece up over at the Huffington Post talking about the story behind the campaign, but I wanted to highlight one key [...]

Tad Delay has written a great couple of punchy paragraphs thinking about Boston, radicalised youth and the problem of religion within empires. What town in America goes a single year without producing young men who – amidst the college-aged angst of life directions, relationships, or career fears – turn to religious fundamentalism and/or militant violence? [...]

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 [...]

As I build up to coming over the US to speak about Mutiny in about a month’s time – details to follow soon – I’m going to be blogging a bit more about the book, and the wide themes that it covers. Reading Tad Delay’s blog today though, inspired me to mention a perspective on [...]

Been meaning to write something on Pussy Riot for a while now. I’ve been reflecting on how their protest resonates with the ancient practice of ‘beating the bounds.’ Traditionally, each year, members of a parish would march around the parish boundary, often singing hymns and songs. The ritual served two purposes. Firstly, it passed on [...]

  One of the things I liked about Tom Wolfe’s novel I Am Charlotte Simmons is the journey that one of the main characters, Jojo, takes, from ‘dumb college jock’ to athletic student of philosophy. It’s an arc that’s not that uncommon: the pursuit of excellence in sport requires careful reflection on the self; top [...]