Category Archives: Uncategorized

Seeing the world through new eyes?

About 1 person in 3 in the UK lives with a long-term condition. From asthma to diabetes, Crohn’s to bi-polar, an increasing number of us are having to face life radically altered by the limitations our failing bodies throw at … Continue reading

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Leaders, managers, yogis and a film crew. Changing the world one step at a time?

‘Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has’ (Margaret Meed).  A colleague recently shared this quote with me in relation to some filming we were doing … Continue reading

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>Riots, looting and the search for an alternative

> During the election campaign of 2010 David Cameron was pictured astride a Quattro with the slogan ‘It’s time for change’, with Labour’s comeback replacing the slogan with: ‘Don’t let him take Britain back to the 1980s’. The ad of … Continue reading

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>Medium Madness on the BBC?

>Broadcaster Rosie Millard had a right bee in her bonnet this weekend, over the question ‘should money making mediums be banned?’ discussed on this week’s Sunday Morning Live. She had a double pronged attack: firstly, that charging by these ‘con-artists’ … Continue reading

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>Grave stones and kipper ties

> At The Open University we pride ourselves on being at the forefront of developments in distance learning. In the early days, this meant late night television programmes with mad scientists wearing kipper ties – the hallmark of what our … Continue reading

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>Is there anybody there…?

> ‘In a secularised Protestant society such as Britain, the living and the dead are separated not only physically, but also conceptually, with transgressors across the boundary (ghosts, prayers for the dead, appearances of the dead to the bereaved, spiritualist … Continue reading

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>Harvest Festivals: What does it all mean?

> The Corn King gives his life for the land We toast his sacrifice with ale in our hand, And eat the bread, from the harvest made, As sheaves of corn to the earth are laid. — It’s the harvest … Continue reading

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>ME Awareness Day: All in the mind?

> Today is ME Awareness Day and people with ME everywhere (myself included!) are fighting to get wider recognition and understanding of this debilitating and often devastating condition. As a strange coincidence I am also writing a chapter on ME … Continue reading

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>Psychic Beliefs: do you share yours?

>Let me introduce to you my great grandmother – who was a practicing spiritualist medium at a time when she could still have been convicted under the 1735 Witchcraft Act. Police officers would regularly attend her seances undercover, trying to … Continue reading

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>Divine guidance? Angels, tooth fairies and what we can ‘know’

> “Do we really know anything and, if so, what? And how do we know it? And how do we know that we know it? And how do we know that we know that we know it?” (Jones and Wilson … Continue reading

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