If conscience is to be your guide, is it actually possible to live in the world? If you put every action, every dependency, to intense moral questioning, how can you act at all? In today’s secular world that’s a question with which many individuals wrestle, and it is one that Quakers, and religious groups that like them put the focus on a guiding inner light, have been grappling for centuries.

These are the questions facing the two central characters in Elizabeth Kuti’s The Sugar Wife, which has just transferred from Dublin, the setting of the play, to the Soho Theatre in London. But this is the 1840s Irish city, in a nation already on the edge of economic and social collapse.

Hannah Tewkley (Jane Brennan), an intense, mid-30s, childless Quaker wife almost consumed by a career in “good works”, has an uneasy relationship with her own body, but an even more uncomfortable relationship with her husband Samuel (Barry Barnes). He is a tea, coffee and sugar merchant who plans to branch out into oriental tea-houses. He squares his own rather flexible conscience in using America – slave-grown – sugar, amidst other moral “crimes”, by funding his wife’s philanthropy and pointing to the likely fate of his employees were he to go out of business.

Into this volatile, uncomfortable house are invited – at the insistence of Hannah – two visiting anti-slavery campaigners, the former slave Sarah Worth (Susan Salmon) and the man who bought her out of slavery, the rich-boy turned rebel Alfred Darby (Robert Price). The latter has apparently solved the problem of conscience by living entirely by his principles – to the point, it emerges, of living on Sarah’s earnings so he can devote himself to his “work” and to “art” (producing daguerreotypes). READ MORE

“House of Commons] On Saturday the 12th day of December [43 Eliz., 1601]. . . . An Act for redress of certain abuses used in Painting was read the third time.”

Mr Heyward Townsend … shewed, that in the statute of 25 Ed. 3 Cap. 3 Plaisterers were not then so called but Dawbers and Mudwall-Makers, who had for their Wages by the day three pence, and their Knave three half-pence (for so was his Labourer called) they so continued till King Henry the Sevenths time, who brought into England with him out of France certain men that used Plaister of Paris about the Kings Sieling and Walls, whose Statute Labourers these Dawbers were. These Statute Labourers learned in short time the use of Plaister of Paris, and did it for the King …

… They renewed their Patent in King Henry the Eighths time, and called themselves Plaisterers aliàs Morter-Makers, for the use of Loam and Lyme.

… In all their Corporations at no time had they the word Colours, nor yet in their Ordinances. … The Plaisterers never laid any Colour upon any of the Kings Houses, nor in the Sheriffs of London, but this Year. … They have been suffered to lay Alehouse Colours as red Lead and Oaker with such like and now intrude themselves to all Colours; Thus they take not only their own work but Painting also, and leave nothing to do for the Painter.”

Reading between the lines, it seems the debate in the lower house lapsed without agreement, the subject went to the Lords, who appointed a few members to try to mediate in the dispute. And people complain about modern-day regulation!

From Tudor Economic Documents: Being Select Documents Illustrating the Economic and Social History of Tudor England by (eds) Eileen Power, R. H. Tawney; Longmans, Green and Co., 1924, p. 136-39.

While you still have the occasional dinosaur judge making stupid comments in rape cases, increasingly in Britain we have cause to thank them for defending civil liberties, and even women’s rights. The latest today is a ruling that parents do not have a “right to know” if their under-16 daughter has an abortion.

Mr Justice Silber ruled that Ms Axon, who has five children – or any other parent – had no right to know unless the child decided otherwise.
He said he would not change the law as Ms Axon’s lawyers had requested. Lawyers for the health secretary, Patricia Hewitt, had fought the legal challenge.
The judge added that to force a girl to tell her parents “may lead her to make a decision that she later regrets or seek the assistance of an unofficial abortionist”.

Obviously it is preferable for girls to be supported by their families if they are considering an abortion, but those reluctant to do so may well have VERY good reasons for their choice.
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Then a gimmick, yes, but I’d go to garage with an all female-staff for preference, even though my upbringing means I can talk “mechanic”, even if I’m only talking the talk. (I once had a 45-minute discussion with a mini-cab driver about whether the problems he had with third and fourth gear were the clutch or the gearbox. I then regretted being able to talk the talk.)
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Turning serious again, micro-loan schemes for women have proved enormously popular and effective, but, perhaps unsurprisingly, the mother of them all SEWA, has run into political problems in Gujarat. Empowering women, and women from disadvantaged communities, is always likely to stir up those who’d like to keep them poor and vulnerable.
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And I get the impression often from talking to Britons that they think Australia is some sort of natural paradise – well no, the cities are often a traffic-packed hell. The calculation for Sydney:

ROAD transport is costing Sydney $1.4 billion a year in greenhouse gas and other air pollution, with the city’s heavy congestion exacerbating ill health and climate change.
That is the conclusion of a report by the Centre for International Economics, which also found that over the next 15 years the annual cost of greenhouse gas emissions would rise by almost a third, to $187 million.

Another calculation: “commuters are wasting more than three days of their lives every year stuck in traffic”.

Despite all of the hysteria about the “sexualisation of society”, and you wouldn’t think it when you read the Daily Mail, but it seems that in Britain a significant number of teenagers are waiting longer to have sex. Perhaps sex education is working?

The poll reveals that the number of people having sex before 16 years old has fallen from 32 per cent in 2002 to 20 per cent now.
The age at which the typical Briton loses their virginity has increased since they were last asked in 2002, when the figure was 17.13 years. Young women generally have sex younger than their male counterparts – at the age of 17.44 years, compared with 18.06 for men.

And sanity is striking in terms of long-term relationships: “The number of people who believe that monogamy is natural, from 74 per cent to 67, showed that with Britons living longer and healthier lives, the idea of lifetime fidelity is in decline.”

The figures on homosexuality are also interesting, with “those admitting to having had sexual contact with someone of the same sex” rising from 11 per cent to 15. Does that mean more sex, or just more openness? Pretty hard to tell.

There’s more analysis of the survey here.

Although of course some things never change, with the News of the World salivating today over the resignation of the Liberal Democrat Home Affairs spokesman, Mark Oaten, after it revealed his relationship with a rent boy. (He is supposed to be, and who knows, maybe even is, “happily married”, with two children.) Now that’s traditional Britishy sexuality …

We’d better watch out, however, since American missionaries will probably be over here soon, trying to reverse the trends, as they are elsewhere.

From Peru to the Philippines to Poland, U.S.-based conservative groups are increasingly engaged in abortion and family-planning debates overseas, emboldened by their ties with the Bush administration and eager to compete with more liberal rivals.
The result is that U.S. advocacy groups are now waging their culture war skirmishes worldwide as they try to influence other countries’ laws and wrangle over how U.S. aid money should be spent.

On a cold January Saturday in London, 140-odd people turned out tonight for a public meeting. The subject: climate change, and specifically Friends of the Earth’s The Big Ask. What struck me was the number of people who said, during the question time and afterwards: “I’ve going just got involved in this.” “I just realised this is really important.”

There were people fitting the usual stereotypes of environmental campaigners in the audience, but there were plenty who didn’t, among whom I’d include myself. It was only on January 1 that I joined the Green Party, and I’ll be heading out tomorrow for my third Sunday of canvassing for it for local government elections coming up in May.

What FoE is asking for is legislation committing the British government to step-by-step, year-by-year reductions in carbon emissions, up to the target of a 60 per cent reduction by 2050. This move apparently has the backing of a majority of MPs, but that in no way, of course, guarantees that it will become law. It has to be their priority, and almost certainly, the government has to be forced to support it.

And at present, the UK is heading in the wrong direction, with emissions rising, and this matters because while the long-term target is needed – and has been calculated on a worldwide basis that should produce only a two-degree rise in worldwide temperatures. This will be hugely damaging but hopefully not totally destructive. However, that is a calculation based on a gradual fall in emissions. A sudden fall in the last decade will result in an overshoot, because – I was told tonight – every molecule of carbon dioxide emitted today will go on heating the world for a century.

Two MPs were present last night – both from the Labour Left and central London, Frank Dobson and Emily Thornberry. Both did the usual political things, shying away from criticising the government and mouthing slogans, although the latter’s “the biggest challenge for our generation is to ensure that is not our generation that kills the planet” certainly got to the heart of the manner.

Frank Dobson sounded as though he thought the government’s energy review was definitely going to come down on the side of nuclear power, and he set out some nice details about the industry propaganda – the “proven technology” the AP1000 reactor did not in fact exist – the proven claim applied only to various bits of which, some being in civilian use, some military. Much was also being made of “passive safety” features – basically it would be supposed to shut itself down if things went horribly wrong – but every system had that, including Chernobyl. Nuclear power was neither a quick, nor a cheap solution, he said, although he wouldn’t altogether rule out the possibility that it might become necessary.

The Green Party is running its own campaign in relations to the energy review. Unfortunately I couldn’t make it earlier this week, but there was also a launch of its campaign for practical steps to green energy. I’m particularly taken with microgeneration schemes – particularly wind and solar. I look around the estate on which I live – flat-roofed buildings, some of them very tall, and wonder how much of its own energy it could actually generate, with a bit of imagination and effort.

I caught the fossil-hunting bug during a visit to Lyme Regis a couple of years ago. My table is now decorated with quite a few ammonites, what might (or might not) be a dinosaur coprolite, and fistfulls of belemnites. (Their fossils are casts of their internal cavity, so the are simply a narrowing rod of stone. I think everyone gets bored with picking them up eventually, they are so plentiful).

But I guess I’ll have to go back now, since a new cliff-slip has exposed what is expected to be a rich new field. Someone in the “how to collect fossils” group I went out with found an icthyosaur vertebrae – now I really would like one of those.

Elsewhere, in the “it was bound to happen” category, Jane Austen is to be repackaged as “chick-lit”; and an American woman soldier’s account of Iraq is also being sold by the sex, although it appears to be about a lot more.

And, surprise, surprise, Western science has found evidence that acupuncture works.

Researchers found that an acupuncture technique using deep needling led to the deactivaton of part of the brain’s limbic system, which helps the body to be conscious of pain.
Neuroscientists believe that the findings show that acupuncture has a measurable effect on the brain and that the study could provide a possible mechanism to explain how acupuncture can relieve pain.
The research was carried out on a set of volunteers by scientists at Hull York Medical School as part of a new BBC TV series called Alternative Medicine: The Evidence, to be broadcast on Tuesday evening on BBC2.

It would be kind of odd if the Chinese had been using it for thousands of years and it didn’t have some effect …

And finally, the only real story in the UK this weekend is the whale in the Thames. Whether it makes it or not (and the radio news is not very positive just now), while some might say this is a disproprotionate response, I still think it is a positive aspect of human nature that such efforts should be made to save another creature, and such interest be shown in those efforts.