Featuring the Archbishop of York, Dr John Sentamu, as keynote speaker and an audience of Parliamentarians, ambassadors and luminaries from the peace field, the event drew attention to the paltry sums spent on conflict prevention around the world compared to military expenditure and called on the G20 to redress the balance

For every £1 spent on conflict prevention and peacebuilding £1885 is spent on arms and military resources!

Read Dr Sentamu's speech here and an account of the event here.

Picture: imediate

For thousand of years we thought the Earth was the centre of everything. Then science came along and told us a different story.

In cosmic terms the human being is probably no bigger than a quark. Yet his brain (the size of a cantaloup melon and wrinkled like a walnut) is the most complex object in the known Universe. As Stephan Hawking said, 'We are just an advanced breed of monkeys on a minor planet of a very average star. But we can understand the Universe and that make us something special.'

There's scale and there's scale - and even our wondrous grey matter is mind-boggled trying to wrap itself round this!

Well, it's shit ... that's right, shit!
Shit may just be the most functional word in the English language.

You can smoke shit, buy shit, sell shit, lose shit, find shit, forget shit, and tell others to eat shit. Some people know their shit, while others can't tell the difference between shit and shineola. There are lucky shits, dumb shits, and crazy shits. There is bull shit, horse shit, and chicken shit. You can throw shit, sling shit, catch shit, shoot the shit, or duck when the shit hits the fan. You can give a shit or serve shit on a shingle. You can find yourself in deep shit or be happier than a pig in shit.

James Lovelock, environmentalist and award winning NASA scientist, insists that unless we drastically reduce our carbon emissions and control population we will end up with a hot world, where billions will starve and whole ecosystems collapse.

I recently went to a beautifully organised funeral of an elderly acquaintance and it got me ruminating about my own writes Julia Stephenson

I’d like it to be natural affair, which is why I shall follow the example of popular actress, Wendy Richard, who was recently buried in a simple bamboo coffin.

Demand for natural funerals is rocketing, but permission to set up green burial grounds can be tricky. Rosie Inman-Cook from the Natural Death Centre explains that`neighbours can oppose such a move by insisting they don’t want a load of dead people in a field next to them. Of course, the advantage is they are very quiet neighbours’.

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Psychologist Aric Sigman is advising social networkers to ‘get off Facebook and get a life.’

The physical isolation involved in communicating via the computer could have damaging consequences in the longer term because hormones such as the ‘cuddle chemical’ Oxytocin, which promotes bonding and ensures emotional and psychological well-being, is produced by human proximity.  

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