Blogs

I was born in Exeter in 1955. In the next bed to my mother was a Sikh woman who had also given birth to a son. Her family had come to Exeter in 1947, mine probably in the 1500’s. Both of us male babies were native Exonians.

In reality, we are all either migrants or the descendants of migrants. Many of us have ancestors who fled places of oppression, or violence or death. The only difference is that some of us arrived in the UK at an earlier time. and in smaller or greater numbers than others. Otherwise we are all human beings and our history should not give us preference or...

Yesterday (Tuesday 19 January) I spent a couple of hours meeting members of the public in Honiton at one of my regular Meet Your PCC events.

This is our first such event since the Christmas period and the second since my team was successful in highlighting issues with the Government’s flawed review into the police funding formula.

This kind of face to face engagement, allied to the work we do to keep in touch with our digital communities, is both rewarding and vital and we had a steady stream of people coming to talk to us and I was very happy that many were aware of the...

While the Christmas consumption orgy fades as the New Year progresses, maybe it is time to remind ourselves of William Blake’s comment ‘we never know what is enough unless we know what is more than enough’. How do we ever become satisfied in a culture of more and more?

In order to better understand our faith’s scriptures we need to appreciate the context in which they were written. We sometimes misunderstand or fail to comprehend verses because we are insufficiently aware of the intention of the original writer, usually writing in a totally different language, in a different...

Millions of us will take to the roads, seas and skies over the next few days to try and get home to be with loved ones over Christmas. It can be a lengthy and stressful experience with crowded trains, coaches and airports to contend with.

Of course, we aren’t the only ones journeying. Tens of thousands of others aren’t travelling home this Christmas, but are treading perilous paths to find somewhere safe, a sanctuary for their families. Harrowing pictures of the plight of refugees have filled our television screens: the toddler washed up on a beach in Turkey or the father whose...