What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
The thread running through all your strongly held opinions is this: a pathological eagerness to interfere in the lives of others. you are not a Scot, an unwantedly pregnant female nor the parent of a disabled child. Why do you make it your life's work to dictate to those who are while resolutely ignoring their opinions, indeed their right to have opinions, in the matter?
As I am a conservative, including a social conservative when needed and a patriot and supporter of our United Kingdom not a liberal libertarian. The unborn also have a right to be heard too
O/T Liz Truss is unhinged. Nothing more, nothing less.
The right wing nutters who live on this blog seem to think she is something special. She is no Thatcher. She is likely to give Cameron and Johnson a good run for the worst PM ever.
Johnson I’ll give you but Cameron? Formed a coalition that worked well for 5 years then won a majority. Gave the nation a chance to vote on its political future over Europe, something all others denied since the 70’s. A decent man, and a decent PM. Your countrymen and women are the ones to blame for Brexit, not Cameron.
He didn’t think through the referendum. He was lazy and arrogant.
I really just do not understand this attitude
The question was put to the people who voted in a referendum the result of which you have not come to terms with along with many others
The remain supporters failed to win a very winnable case and seem to want to blame everyone but themselves
Furthermore, Starmer is not offering to re-join, indeed neither are the lib dems implicitly promising to do so, so little will change in the foreseeable though a better relationship with the EU while remaining outside would be welcome
The Remain campaign was shockingly poor and Cameron made it as difficult to win as he possibly could because he fully expected to walk it. Osborne told him it was an outrageous risk.
Yes Corbyn, and the entire Labour Party are probably even more culpable for their utter ineptitude than Cameron. I blame them, particularly Corbyn wholeheartedly. The LibDems on the other hand were superb, it's just they didn't have the networks to win over enough doubters.
Crucially no one had the vaguest idea of what they were voting for Leave and Remain, and both sides lied. Leave lied better and Boris was sublime, however like Cameron he expected Remain to win and like Cameron didn't know what to do when they didn't.
Still it's done now and it's going great ...maybe!
When I voted to Leave the European Union, my assumption was that I was voting to leave the European Union. Equally, when quite a lot of people voted to Remain in the European Union, I think they expected that meant we would remain in the European Union.
The problem was that leaving meant a lot of different things to different people, there was not a clear leave choice, plenty of people who voted to leave the European Union still wanted to stay in much of the economic agreements, including people like Dan Hannan who campaigned by saying that leaving the EU did not mean that we had to leave the single market.
A very commonly expressed view was we should leave the political and keep the economic. I disagreed, but I did accept that there was a case.
However, what has happened is a complete break down of all legal links between Britain and the EU, and that was the choice only of a small, extremist, faction. The small minority that still argues that hard Brexit was the only solution that counted as Leave, is either ignorant or dishonest. The compromise was obvious, but after May´s citizen of nowhere speech it was not taken, and the damage has already been immense.
Had that been made clear at the vote, that Leave would mean that there would be a complete end of all legal and economic ties Remain would probably have won and that is why a clear majority now believes that leaving was a bad idea. It is the failure to establish any compromise, and indeed to attempt to detach Britain even further from the EU, that will ultimately cause the end of the Conservatives. It is economically very damaging and in the end will be politically toxic.
The fact that the leadership of the Conservatives is utter abysmal is just a side show in the growing anger at the Tories.
It's either ignorant or dishonest to claim that there has been a "complete end of all legal and economic ties" with the EU. We have a trade agreement that delivers a far closer relationship than most other FTAs.
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
She is a vapid, posturing windbag and as big a threat to world peace and stability as Putin. did George Bush get an Official Photographer to tag along everywhere he went and take those photos? Do you realise that the Truss photos are carefully curated (dread word) and posted on instagram by or on behalf of her, not her enemies?
Taking photos doesn't mean you're trying to be Thatcher, unless she curated the lookalikes and posted them side-by-side herself just as moonshine just did with Starmer and Boris.
see the footage of her landing? the 3 bods from the embassy, 2 women and a wallace-grade baldy, are HATLESS, it's only uniform guy wearing one cos he has to.
She was dressing up.
She wore a hat while visiting a notoriously cold country?
Oh well that changes everything, she must be only the second person in history to wear a hat while visiting Russia.
Although on your link there's 2 other people wearing hats. They're not women though, so I guess they don't count.
The particularly charming poster Ismael also misunderstands something. I don’t think there’s anyone here who is giving full throttled support to Truss. I’m certainly not, I have little idea whether she’ll be any good and I suspect neither does she until she starts the job. Big step up even from Foreign Sec.
But the reflexive hate for her before she’s even got going strikes me as quite bizarre, when there’s nothing obvious in her track record to justify it. Perhaps she’ll do enough for the Tories to earn my vote for the first time in 4 elections, perhaps not. But it would be good to see a more serious critique of her abilities and plans, rather than “oh look she’s wearing a blue jacket and a hat. What a f**** b***ch! Who does she think she is!”.
What? You can't claim the moral high ground on charm, and start making blanket accusations of "reflexive hate." One or the other.
And "before she's even got going." Many of us here have an informed and detailed knowledge of UK politics, and thanks for confirming you are not among us. She is Foreign Sec FFS. This is not an Emma Raducanu situation. She is also a terrible and deeply unserious person, despite your elderly penchant for her disciplinary reputation.
Her most telling contribution as Foreign Secretary, has been to firmly elucidate the position that “Russia must lose” and that that means their troops “leaving the whole of Ukraine including Crimea”. At the time I remember quite a lot of bed wetters in the guardian and elsewhere saying she was recklessly endangering the whole world for personal ambition. These days, it’s a pretty median position. Backed this week by Putin’s erstwhile ally Erdogan no less. Now it’s an exaggeration to say she has personally driven that narrative shift. She hasn’t. But she did play her part in driving it towards broad international acceptance.
Not that she drove the formation of Aukus, her appointment aligned with the announcement. But her department saw it over the line. As for her time as Trade Sec, sure there are those who moan about us getting cheaper food products from strategic allies. I’m not one of them but I am disappointed no progress was made with the US on a financial sector accord that would become the global standard.
I don’t know really what to do with her being a “terrible and deeply unserious person”. And I’m not elderly or into that particular niche. I just think that at a time of national peril, she deserves a chance and the nation’s goodwill. If she’s no good, she’ll be booted out!
Pushing the line that the war is not over until Crimea returns to Ukraine, by any assessment, prolongs the conflict, and prolongs UK involvement in it. If you hold the somewhat quaint view that foreign policy is a tool to promote the security and prosperity of the UK, that is taking a 12 boar and emptying both barrels into your own size 9s.
However, I give a pass to Truss for anything she says on Ukraine. Our foreign policy on this is decided by America. It will be a bold leader indeed who departs from the US line on anything. If she starts to forge the beginnings an independent foreign and defence policy, it will be a pleasant surprise.
Ensuring Ukraine's territory is returned to Ukraine ends the war, it doesn't prolong it.
If you want the war over, you should be pushing to do everything we can to ensure Russia leaves the entirety of Ukraine, which of course includes Crimea. If Vlad leaves Ukraine, the war is over, until he does, it isn't.
No, the war is over when the two sides stop fighting, not when an arbitrary set of preferred conditions transpire.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
I think that is fair comment
Question is what happens when the government does whatever it ends up doing.
The optimistic take for the government is that, provided their scheme is good enough, they will be able to blow Labour's plans out of the water.
The pessimistic take is that, whatever the government do, however good it is, they will look like they are hanging on to Starmer's coattails. That's death for a government.
The key is Starmer's is only 6 months with no idea what follows so if a scheme is put in place for the next year or two then that could work but to be honest I am not confident at this stage but only a couple of weeks to find out
I am not confident any of Johnson, Truss or Sunak can overcome the demand for change after 14 years of conservative - coalition governments
Furthermore I am not that bothered by a Labour government in 2024 in view of the magnitude of problems it would face
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
That isn't what disinterested means. The word you're looking for it uninterested.
Incompetent pedantry, the very worst kind. Boswell used disinterested to mean bored with, in the greatest prose work blah blah blah
I don't give a shit about Boswell. Disinterested has an important and useful meaning that shouldn't be lost from the language.
Shame, he speaks highly of you.
How do you get by with "interested" not being subdivided into say Yesinterested vs OKinterested? I get on fine with general intelligence and understanding of context, but I am guessing you must have something else up your sleeve.
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
2007 IHT proposals were an 'utter game changer'? How many voters were actually or potentially impacted by the IHT changes? A small minority, I'd guess.
How many voters would be impacted by freezing the energy price cap? Just about every one.
It turned double digit Labour leads into double digit Tory leads.
Labour MPs were publicly writing 'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.
That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
Did it bollocks. Brown had a short flurry of double digit leads around the Lab conference, this was replaced by a series of single digit leads . Then the Tory conference and IHT announcement saw the Tories edge into a single digit lead and Brown 'bottled it' which cemented the small lead. The first double digit lead was nearly 2 months later and regular double digit leads 6 months away.
O/T Liz Truss is unhinged. Nothing more, nothing less.
The right wing nutters who live on this blog seem to think she is something special. She is no Thatcher. She is likely to give Cameron and Johnson a good run for the worst PM ever.
Johnson I’ll give you but Cameron? Formed a coalition that worked well for 5 years then won a majority. Gave the nation a chance to vote on its political future over Europe, something all others denied since the 70’s. A decent man, and a decent PM. Your countrymen and women are the ones to blame for Brexit, not Cameron.
He didn’t think through the referendum. He was lazy and arrogant.
I really just do not understand this attitude
The question was put to the people who voted in a referendum the result of which you have not come to terms with along with many others
The remain supporters failed to win a very winnable case and seem to want to blame everyone but themselves
Furthermore, Starmer is not offering to re-join, indeed neither are the lib dems implicitly promising to do so, so little will change in the foreseeable though a better relationship with the EU while remaining outside would be welcome
The Remain campaign was shockingly poor and Cameron made it as difficult to win as he possibly could because he fully expected to walk it. Osborne told him it was an outrageous risk.
Yes Corbyn, and the entire Labour Party are probably even more culpable for their utter ineptitude than Cameron. I blame them, particularly Corbyn wholeheartedly. The LibDems on the other hand were superb, it's just they didn't have the networks to win over enough doubters.
Crucially no one had the vaguest idea of what they were voting for Leave and Remain, and both sides lied. Leave lied better and Boris was sublime, however like Cameron he expected Remain to win and like Cameron didn't know what to do when they didn't.
Still it's done now and it's going great ...maybe!
When I voted to Leave the European Union, my assumption was that I was voting to leave the European Union. Equally, when quite a lot of people voted to Remain in the European Union, I think they expected that meant we would remain in the European Union.
The problem was that leaving meant a lot of different things to different people, there was not a clear leave choice, plenty of people who voted to leave the European Union still wanted to stay in much of the economic agreements, including people like Dan Hannan who campaigned by saying that leaving the EU did not mean that we had to leave the single market.
A very commonly expressed view was we should leave the political and keep the economic. I disagreed, but I did accept that there was a case.
However, what has happened is a complete break down of all legal links between Britain and the EU, and that was the choice only of a small, extremist, faction. The small minority that still argues that hard Brexit was the only solution that counted as Leave, is either ignorant or dishonest. The compromise was obvious, but after May´s citizen of nowhere speech it was not taken, and the damage has already been immense.
Had that been made clear at the vote, that Leave would mean that there would be a complete end of all legal and economic ties Remain would probably have won and that is why a clear majority now believes that leaving was a bad idea. It is the failure to establish any compromise, and indeed to attempt to detach Britain even further from the EU, that will ultimately cause the end of the Conservatives. It is economically very damaging and in the end will be politically toxic.
The fact that the leadership of the Conservatives is utter abysmal is just a side show in the growing anger at the Tories.
During the referendum it was determined by Vote Leave that Leaving the UK meant Leaving the Single Market.
Yes people like Dan Hannan and Richard Tyndall prior to the Referendum campaign had advocated a Single Market solution, but nobody official did so during the Referendum itself. Vote Leave were utterly explicit that we'd leave the Single Market and get a trade agreement instead. It was made clear at the vote. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove both explicitly said Leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market, as too did Clegg, Cameron, Osborne and more.
As for a breakdown of relations with the EU, that takes 2 to tango. If EU bods stop trying to interfere in NI, which is a part of the UK, then relations would be better. Just but not as serious as if Putin stops trying to interfere in Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine, then relations would be better.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
On Truss I have no idea how she will govern but if she does not come up with a viable plan on energy then it is over for the conservatives
I thought Barty was already lauding her game-changing plans yesterday?
"Truss may have played a blinder here. After people have been ramping up talk of £3k, £4k or £6k bills or higher, if this suggested proposal goes ahead and bills are frozen then that's possibly going to seek quite a significant step taken."
Mind you, I'm still struggling to find out what the Truss proposal is.
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
She is a vapid, posturing windbag and as big a threat to world peace and stability as Putin. did George Bush get an Official Photographer to tag along everywhere he went and take those photos? Do you realise that the Truss photos are carefully curated (dread word) and posted on instagram by or on behalf of her, not her enemies?
Taking photos doesn't mean you're trying to be Thatcher, unless she curated the lookalikes and posted them side-by-side herself just as moonshine just did with Starmer and Boris.
see the footage of her landing? the 3 bods from the embassy, 2 women and a wallace-grade baldy, are HATLESS, it's only uniform guy wearing one cos he has to.
She was dressing up.
She wore a hat while visiting a notoriously cold country?
Oh well that changes everything, she must be only the second person in history to wear a hat while visiting Russia.
Although on your link there's 2 other people wearing hats. They're not women though, so I guess they don't count.
The particularly charming poster Ismael also misunderstands something. I don’t think there’s anyone here who is giving full throttled support to Truss. I’m certainly not, I have little idea whether she’ll be any good and I suspect neither does she until she starts the job. Big step up even from Foreign Sec.
But the reflexive hate for her before she’s even got going strikes me as quite bizarre, when there’s nothing obvious in her track record to justify it. Perhaps she’ll do enough for the Tories to earn my vote for the first time in 4 elections, perhaps not. But it would be good to see a more serious critique of her abilities and plans, rather than “oh look she’s wearing a blue jacket and a hat. What a f**** b***ch! Who does she think she is!”.
What? You can't claim the moral high ground on charm, and start making blanket accusations of "reflexive hate." One or the other.
And "before she's even got going." Many of us here have an informed and detailed knowledge of UK politics, and thanks for confirming you are not among us. She is Foreign Sec FFS. This is not an Emma Raducanu situation. She is also a terrible and deeply unserious person, despite your elderly penchant for her disciplinary reputation.
Her most telling contribution as Foreign Secretary, has been to firmly elucidate the position that “Russia must lose” and that that means their troops “leaving the whole of Ukraine including Crimea”. At the time I remember quite a lot of bed wetters in the guardian and elsewhere saying she was recklessly endangering the whole world for personal ambition. These days, it’s a pretty median position. Backed this week by Putin’s erstwhile ally Erdogan no less. Now it’s an exaggeration to say she has personally driven that narrative shift. She hasn’t. But she did play her part in driving it towards broad international acceptance.
Not that she drove the formation of Aukus, her appointment aligned with the announcement. But her department saw it over the line. As for her time as Trade Sec, sure there are those who moan about us getting cheaper food products from strategic allies. I’m not one of them but I am disappointed no progress was made with the US on a financial sector accord that would become the global standard.
I don’t know really what to do with her being a “terrible and deeply unserious person”. And I’m not elderly or into that particular niche. I just think that at a time of national peril, she deserves a chance and the nation’s goodwill. If she’s no good, she’ll be booted out!
Pushing the line that the war is not over until Crimea returns to Ukraine, by any assessment, prolongs the conflict, and prolongs UK involvement in it. If you hold the somewhat quaint view that foreign policy is a tool to promote the security and prosperity of the UK, that is taking a 12 boar and emptying both barrels into your own size 9s.
However, I give a pass to Truss for anything she says on Ukraine. Our foreign policy on this is decided by America. It will be a bold leader indeed who departs from the US line on anything. If she starts to forge the beginnings an independent foreign and defence policy, it will be a pleasant surprise.
Ensuring Ukraine's territory is returned to Ukraine ends the war, it doesn't prolong it.
If you want the war over, you should be pushing to do everything we can to ensure Russia leaves the entirety of Ukraine, which of course includes Crimea. If Vlad leaves Ukraine, the war is over, until he does, it isn't.
No, the war is over when the two sides stop fighting, not when an arbitrary set of preferred conditions transpire.
The two sides stop fighting when the invader leaves the nation they've invaded.
That means Russia out of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
2007 IHT proposals were an 'utter game changer'? How many voters were actually or potentially impacted by the IHT changes? A small minority, I'd guess.
How many voters would be impacted by freezing the energy price cap? Just about every one.
It turned double digit Labour leads into double digit Tory leads.
Labour MPs were publicly writing 'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.
That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
But you're going to struggle to convince me that the change in polling fortunes was driven by Tory IHT proposals rather than Brown's election hesitancy.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Are you a male homosexual?
Actually, that's a minefield.
Do you recognise yourself as a male homosexual?
Is there anything in the NT which you would recognise as saying generally Mind your own fucking business and leave othe people alone?
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Most Conservative MPs != Most MPs and those that did were all a part of an extreme minority.
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
That isn't what disinterested means. The word you're looking for it uninterested.
Incompetent pedantry, the very worst kind. Boswell used disinterested to mean bored with, in the greatest prose work blah blah blah
I don't give a shit about Boswell. Disinterested has an important and useful meaning that shouldn't be lost from the language.
Shame, he speaks highly of you.
How do you get by with "interested" not being subdivided into say Yesinterested vs OKinterested? I get on fine with general intelligence and understanding of context, but I am guessing you must have something else up your sleeve.
I enjoy the richness of our language (the work of Boswell excepted obviously) and its ability to convey such a number of concepts with elegance and precision.
Anyhoo it is official, my firm will largely be closing down the office during late autumn and winter and giving staff a four figure salary bump some to contribute to their utility bills because they are WFH.
Since about 2005, and in almost every Western economy, something historically unprecedented and extremely alarming has been happening to energy consumption: it’s either flatlining or in decline. This remarkable but little discussed fact is jeopardising almost every aspect of our public policy, from climate change mitigation, through national security to societal progression itself. President Biden’s plans to vastly increase spending on renewables such as wind and solar through the Inflation Reduction Act are grabbing the headlines, and it’s not hard to see why, but they may actually be counterproductive, and in any case are overshadowed by the sweeping macroscopic trend of falling Western demand for energy.
According to data collected by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, total energy consumption in the UK, for example, is back at levels not seen since the 1950s; there has been a 30 percent decline from its peak in 2003, which is astonishing given that the population has increased by 12.5 percent, to 67 million, over the same period."
O/T Liz Truss is unhinged. Nothing more, nothing less.
The right wing nutters who live on this blog seem to think she is something special. She is no Thatcher. She is likely to give Cameron and Johnson a good run for the worst PM ever.
Johnson I’ll give you but Cameron? Formed a coalition that worked well for 5 years then won a majority. Gave the nation a chance to vote on its political future over Europe, something all others denied since the 70’s. A decent man, and a decent PM. Your countrymen and women are the ones to blame for Brexit, not Cameron.
He didn’t think through the referendum. He was lazy and arrogant.
I really just do not understand this attitude
The question was put to the people who voted in a referendum the result of which you have not come to terms with along with many others
The remain supporters failed to win a very winnable case and seem to want to blame everyone but themselves
Furthermore, Starmer is not offering to re-join, indeed neither are the lib dems implicitly promising to do so, so little will change in the foreseeable though a better relationship with the EU while remaining outside would be welcome
The Remain campaign was shockingly poor and Cameron made it as difficult to win as he possibly could because he fully expected to walk it. Osborne told him it was an outrageous risk.
Yes Corbyn, and the entire Labour Party are probably even more culpable for their utter ineptitude than Cameron. I blame them, particularly Corbyn wholeheartedly. The LibDems on the other hand were superb, it's just they didn't have the networks to win over enough doubters.
Crucially no one had the vaguest idea of what they were voting for Leave and Remain, and both sides lied. Leave lied better and Boris was sublime, however like Cameron he expected Remain to win and like Cameron didn't know what to do when they didn't.
Still it's done now and it's going great ...maybe!
When I voted to Leave the European Union, my assumption was that I was voting to leave the European Union. Equally, when quite a lot of people voted to Remain in the European Union, I think they expected that meant we would remain in the European Union.
The problem was that leaving meant a lot of different things to different people, there was not a clear leave choice, plenty of people who voted to leave the European Union still wanted to stay in much of the economic agreements, including people like Dan Hannan who campaigned by saying that leaving the EU did not mean that we had to leave the single market.
A very commonly expressed view was we should leave the political and keep the economic. I disagreed, but I did accept that there was a case.
However, what has happened is a complete break down of all legal links between Britain and the EU, and that was the choice only of a small, extremist, faction. The small minority that still argues that hard Brexit was the only solution that counted as Leave, is either ignorant or dishonest. The compromise was obvious, but after May´s citizen of nowhere speech it was not taken, and the damage has already been immense.
Had that been made clear at the vote, that Leave would mean that there would be a complete end of all legal and economic ties Remain would probably have won and that is why a clear majority now believes that leaving was a bad idea. It is the failure to establish any compromise, and indeed to attempt to detach Britain even further from the EU, that will ultimately cause the end of the Conservatives. It is economically very damaging and in the end will be politically toxic.
The fact that the leadership of the Conservatives is utter abysmal is just a side show in the growing anger at the Tories.
During the referendum it was determined by Vote Leave that Leaving the UK meant Leaving the Single Market.
Yes people like Dan Hannan and Richard Tyndall prior to the Referendum campaign had advocated a Single Market solution, but nobody official did so during the Referendum itself. Vote Leave were utterly explicit that we'd leave the Single Market and get a trade agreement instead. It was made clear at the vote. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove both explicitly said Leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market, as too did Clegg, Cameron, Osborne and more.
As for a breakdown of relations with the EU, that takes 2 to tango. If EU bods stop trying to interfere in NI, which is a part of the UK, then relations would be better. Just but not as serious as if Putin stops trying to interfere in Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine, then relations would be better.
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
2007 IHT proposals were an 'utter game changer'? How many voters were actually or potentially impacted by the IHT changes? A small minority, I'd guess.
How many voters would be impacted by freezing the energy price cap? Just about every one.
It turned double digit Labour leads into double digit Tory leads.
Labour MPs were publicly writing 'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.
That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
But you're going to struggle to convince me that the change in polling fortunes was driven by Tory IHT proposals rather than Brown's election hesitancy.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Of course you don't think it is sacred as you take narcissistic libertarianism to the ultra extreme including abortion to birth and euthanasia on demand for the non terminally ill
What is so sacred about life that someone of sound mind who wishes to die should be denied that right to control their own life?
Is life so sacred that you're a vegan?
The government has no business killing anyone who is not severely terminally ill with no hope of recovery no, once you start to do so you are on a very tricky slope. No conservative could or should ever support such a proposition, though as you are no conservative hardly surprising you do.
Human life is entirely different to animal life, we are made to eat animals and God created animals in part for us to eat, as long as they are farmed humanely nothing wrong with that. We do not however eat or kill other humans
Euthanasia isn't "the government" killing anyone, its people choosing to end their own life. Absolutely the Government has no business deciding who should die, but people of sound mind should have control over their own life and death. That's not "the government".
Keep your "God" out of the discussion. He or She has no place in our conversation, that's between you and your Church not you and me.
Yes it is, it is the government killing someone, suicide should not be encouraged, most of all by a responsible government and certainly not for anyone but the most terminally ill. That is immoral and a total abdication of the role of a government.
God is eternal and as he created humanity we have no role interfering in that by killing our own intentionally before their time
Hang on.
Exodus 35:2 says "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death."
So, we do need to remember to execute people who work on Sundays.
Jesus overrode it in Mark 2:27: 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'
Anyhoo it is official, my firm will largely be closing down the office during late autumn and winter and giving staff a four figure some to contribute to their utility bills because they are WFH.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Of course you don't think it is sacred as you take narcissistic libertarianism to the ultra extreme including abortion to birth and euthanasia on demand for the non terminally ill
What is so sacred about life that someone of sound mind who wishes to die should be denied that right to control their own life?
Is life so sacred that you're a vegan?
The government has no business killing anyone who is not severely terminally ill with no hope of recovery no, once you start to do so you are on a very tricky slope. No conservative could or should ever support such a proposition, though as you are no conservative hardly surprising you do.
Human life is entirely different to animal life, we are made to eat animals and God created animals in part for us to eat, as long as they are farmed humanely nothing wrong with that. We do not however eat or kill other humans
Euthanasia isn't "the government" killing anyone, its people choosing to end their own life. Absolutely the Government has no business deciding who should die, but people of sound mind should have control over their own life and death. That's not "the government".
Keep your "God" out of the discussion. He or She has no place in our conversation, that's between you and your Church not you and me.
Yes it is, it is the government killing someone, suicide should not be encouraged, most of all by a responsible government and certainly not for anyone but the most terminally ill. That is immoral and a total abdication of the role of a government.
God is eternal and as he created humanity we have no role interfering in that by killing our own intentionally before their time
Hang on.
Exodus 35:2 says "Six days shall work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be to you an holy day, a sabbath of rest to the Lord: whosoever doeth work therein shall be put to death."
So, we do need to remember to execute people who work on Sundays.
Jesus overrode it in Mark 2:27: 'The Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.'
Newfangled wokery, even so.
The history of sabbatarianism and its collision with such things as working-class recreation (on the only free day of the week) and innocent activities such as musical concerts is one of the more intriguing tributaries of Victorian social history.
Anyhoo it is official, my firm will largely be closing down the office during late autumn and winter and giving staff a four figure some to contribute to their utility bills because they are WFH.
Will you give them a four figure others as well?
Leave me alone, I'm tired, I've just finished work and I've come here to share my wisdom.
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
That isn't what disinterested means. The word you're looking for it uninterested.
Incompetent pedantry, the very worst kind. Boswell used disinterested to mean bored with, in the greatest prose work blah blah blah
I don't give a shit about Boswell. Disinterested has an important and useful meaning that shouldn't be lost from the language.
Shame, he speaks highly of you.
How do you get by with "interested" not being subdivided into say Yesinterested vs OKinterested? I get on fine with general intelligence and understanding of context, but I am guessing you must have something else up your sleeve.
I enjoy the richness of our language (the work of Boswell excepted obviously) and its ability to convey such a number of concepts with elegance and precision.
Yeah, Boswell Schmozzwell. Toilet paper famines hold no terror for me while I have the 2 volume L o J, with appendices.
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
2007 IHT proposals were an 'utter game changer'? How many voters were actually or potentially impacted by the IHT changes? A small minority, I'd guess.
How many voters would be impacted by freezing the energy price cap? Just about every one.
It turned double digit Labour leads into double digit Tory leads.
Labour MPs were publicly writing 'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.
That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
But you're going to struggle to convince me that the change in polling fortunes was driven by Tory IHT proposals rather than Brown's election hesitancy.
Those proposals have a lot to answer for. IMHO. They spread the idea that only millionaires should pay any tax, not just IHT.
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
She is a vapid, posturing windbag and as big a threat to world peace and stability as Putin. did George Bush get an Official Photographer to tag along everywhere he went and take those photos? Do you realise that the Truss photos are carefully curated (dread word) and posted on instagram by or on behalf of her, not her enemies?
Taking photos doesn't mean you're trying to be Thatcher, unless she curated the lookalikes and posted them side-by-side herself just as moonshine just did with Starmer and Boris.
see the footage of her landing? the 3 bods from the embassy, 2 women and a wallace-grade baldy, are HATLESS, it's only uniform guy wearing one cos he has to.
She was dressing up.
She wore a hat while visiting a notoriously cold country?
Oh well that changes everything, she must be only the second person in history to wear a hat while visiting Russia.
Although on your link there's 2 other people wearing hats. They're not women though, so I guess they don't count.
The particularly charming poster Ismael also misunderstands something. I don’t think there’s anyone here who is giving full throttled support to Truss. I’m certainly not, I have little idea whether she’ll be any good and I suspect neither does she until she starts the job. Big step up even from Foreign Sec.
But the reflexive hate for her before she’s even got going strikes me as quite bizarre, when there’s nothing obvious in her track record to justify it. Perhaps she’ll do enough for the Tories to earn my vote for the first time in 4 elections, perhaps not. But it would be good to see a more serious critique of her abilities and plans, rather than “oh look she’s wearing a blue jacket and a hat. What a f**** b***ch! Who does she think she is!”.
What? You can't claim the moral high ground on charm, and start making blanket accusations of "reflexive hate." One or the other.
And "before she's even got going." Many of us here have an informed and detailed knowledge of UK politics, and thanks for confirming you are not among us. She is Foreign Sec FFS. This is not an Emma Raducanu situation. She is also a terrible and deeply unserious person, despite your elderly penchant for her disciplinary reputation.
Her most telling contribution as Foreign Secretary, has been to firmly elucidate the position that “Russia must lose” and that that means their troops “leaving the whole of Ukraine including Crimea”. At the time I remember quite a lot of bed wetters in the guardian and elsewhere saying she was recklessly endangering the whole world for personal ambition. These days, it’s a pretty median position. Backed this week by Putin’s erstwhile ally Erdogan no less. Now it’s an exaggeration to say she has personally driven that narrative shift. She hasn’t. But she did play her part in driving it towards broad international acceptance.
Not that she drove the formation of Aukus, her appointment aligned with the announcement. But her department saw it over the line. As for her time as Trade Sec, sure there are those who moan about us getting cheaper food products from strategic allies. I’m not one of them but I am disappointed no progress was made with the US on a financial sector accord that would become the global standard.
I don’t know really what to do with her being a “terrible and deeply unserious person”. And I’m not elderly or into that particular niche. I just think that at a time of national peril, she deserves a chance and the nation’s goodwill. If she’s no good, she’ll be booted out!
Pushing the line that the war is not over until Crimea returns to Ukraine, by any assessment, prolongs the conflict, and prolongs UK involvement in it. If you hold the somewhat quaint view that foreign policy is a tool to promote the security and prosperity of the UK, that is taking a 12 boar and emptying both barrels into your own size 9s.
However, I give a pass to Truss for anything she says on Ukraine. Our foreign policy on this is decided by America. It will be a bold leader indeed who departs from the US line on anything. If she starts to forge the beginnings an independent foreign and defence policy, it will be a pleasant surprise.
Ensuring Ukraine's territory is returned to Ukraine ends the war, it doesn't prolong it.
If you want the war over, you should be pushing to do everything we can to ensure Russia leaves the entirety of Ukraine, which of course includes Crimea. If Vlad leaves Ukraine, the war is over, until he does, it isn't.
No, the war is over when the two sides stop fighting, not when an arbitrary set of preferred conditions transpire.
The two sides stop fighting when the invader leaves the nation they've invaded.
That means Russia out of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Dribbling garbage. Most of the world's countries sit on bits of territory once forcibly removed from other nations. Including our own.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They became legal in civil law in England not religious law
Anyhoo it is official, my firm will largely be closing down the office during late autumn and winter and giving staff a four figure some to contribute to their utility bills because they are WFH.
Will you give them a four figure others as well?
The concept of a lottery just goes right over your head, obv
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
That isn't what disinterested means. The word you're looking for it uninterested.
Incompetent pedantry, the very worst kind. Boswell used disinterested to mean bored with, in the greatest prose work blah blah blah
I don't give a shit about Boswell. Disinterested has an important and useful meaning that shouldn't be lost from the language.
Shame, he speaks highly of you.
How do you get by with "interested" not being subdivided into say Yesinterested vs OKinterested? I get on fine with general intelligence and understanding of context, but I am guessing you must have something else up your sleeve.
I enjoy the richness of our language (the work of Boswell excepted obviously) and its ability to convey such a number of concepts with elegance and precision.
Yeah, Boswell Schmozzwell. Toilet paper famines hold no terror for me while I have the 2 volume L o J, with appendices.
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
So where are the photos of Bush in blue with a neck bow ? Driving a tank ? (his dad did.) etc
I can’t even find one of the well known cowboy with a calf; only fully grown animals.
Those who go along with Truss’s pathetic spin are insulting our intelligence.
A woman wore a bow?
Well that is unprecedented.
That there's more photos of Truss wearing women's clothing than GWB really shouldn't be a shock to anyone sane. I suppose you think if two male politicians both wore a tie that they're trying to look the same too, right?
On its own, you might have a case. Show me photos of any other female politician, apart from Thatcher and Truss, wearing a fur hat, sitting astride a motorbike, with a calf, sitting in a tank, wearing a blue outfit with white bow… etc, etc.
You can’t.
Don’t insult our intelligence.
No. Don’t be harsh on Bart on this one, it’s not Bart insulting our intelligence, it’s the next Prime Minister Liz Trust insulting our intelligence - Mike was right to put it up there.
The Truss supporters are merely saying that they believe the word of Liz Truss on this, not what their own eyes, ears, mouth, nose, shoulders knees and toes, smell, touch, taste, brain, second brain in gut, waters, bowels, nanny, granny, sky sports transfer show, Reginald Tindal Kennedy Bosanquet and their Alexa is actually telling them. Bart is a mere pawn or mug in this one.
But this isn’t a laughter thread, this is a serious political betting one. Truss is going to lose the electorate with a “I never planned to call an election” type moment in her first hours in the role, that’s what this thread is about.
Oh, agreed. I don’t mind for a moment Truss playing dress up - all politicians do. (Though as with others, her personal photographers come at our expense.)
To play the image game and expect us to believe that she isn’t, is something else again. It’s called taking the piss. And it’s sad to see posters like Bart defending it.
It’s not sad to see Bart defending it, it would be worrying times if he didn’t argue against bleeding obvious, we’d probably think he was hacked.
Far more interesting is Truss saying she didn’t. Someone on the team has finally convinced her it’s starting to come across somewhere between naff and deranged and lacking the gravitas of a head of state. But, just as interesting, they feel they can publicly deny the bleeding obvious without this also coming across somewhere between naff and deranged, lacking the necessary honesty with us - hence it’s a PB header.
That Gordon Brown “election, I wasn’t going to call an election” gaff keeps coming up as good reference exactly how NOT to do it.
Yet Team Truss keep doing it. Continuity Boris alright.
Except Boris would have made a joke of it and that would have changed the subject. Truss (so far) hasn't shown a capability of doing that.
I wonder if it's a school thing. In the way that Eton gave Cameron and Johnson an easy swagger, and Grammar School gave May (and in a different way, Thatcher) a belief that their hard work would solve all problems, some Comprehensives accidentally instilled a kind of cultural cringe... something about fitting in being an effortful thing and a dollop of imposter syndrome. (Mostly, they're better at it now.)
Truss's problem with following the Continuity Boris path, if that's what she tries to do, is that she won't be as good at it as Boris.
She would be downright rubbish at it. And that’s the big elephant in the Tory room isn’t it. And Since when did car crash Kwarteng have the skills for a great office of state like Chancellor? He is far too easy to pick apart in media interviews, at the dispatch box, he just doesn’t have the communication or media skills of Osborne and Sunak or even Hammond - if the Mail and Express hail him as a leading politician and chancellor, the voters will feel they are having the piss taken out of them.
You can see why a majority of members don’t want to lose Boris, why in the confidence vote so many MPs still backed him as best option for next election, when he spoke today, hearing him for the first time in a while, what a breath of fresh air after Sunak and Truss, straight away you can see how the electorate fell for the cad in the first place. The gravitas is there, the charisma is there, a certain chutzpah, courage even - that makes you believe what he is saying - it’s the complete opposite from how strained and false Sunak and Truss come across.
Look, they may all be dishonest and lying, but there’s good and bad at it.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Most Conservative MPs != Most MPs and those that did were all a part of an extreme minority.
They were a majority of my party's parliamentary party even if a non Conservative like you disagrees
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They become legal in civil law in England not religious law
C of S isn't an Established church. They are a private body. They can do what they like. And even being able to do it is a damn sight more than the C of E.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
The Bible is quite clear marriage is between a man and a woman that is not the same as hating homosexuals which is clearly not a message of Christ
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
It seems not outrageous for a traditionalist Christian to believe that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
The Bible is quite clear marriage is between a man and a woman that is not the same as hating homosexuality which is clearly not a message of Christ
You are still narrow minded and prejudiced no matter how you try to explain it
I know you don’t like me flagging up division and discontent in Labour Nick Palmer, but if I were to say here is yet another great example of a very disunited party, would you say I’m spinning it?
What sort of Leader happy to have you in Cabinet one minute, unnecessarily machinating to end your political career the next? Surely way over the top decision making from Team Starmer and his NEC?
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
So where are the photos of Bush in blue with a neck bow ? Driving a tank ? (his dad did.) etc
I can’t even find one of the well known cowboy with a calf; only fully grown animals.
Those who go along with Truss’s pathetic spin are insulting our intelligence.
A woman wore a bow?
Well that is unprecedented.
That there's more photos of Truss wearing women's clothing than GWB really shouldn't be a shock to anyone sane. I suppose you think if two male politicians both wore a tie that they're trying to look the same too, right?
On its own, you might have a case. Show me photos of any other female politician, apart from Thatcher and Truss, wearing a fur hat, sitting astride a motorbike, with a calf, sitting in a tank, wearing a blue outfit with white bow… etc, etc.
You can’t.
Don’t insult our intelligence.
No. Don’t be harsh on Bart on this one, it’s not Bart insulting our intelligence, it’s the next Prime Minister Liz Trust insulting our intelligence - Mike was right to put it up there.
The Truss supporters are merely saying that they believe the word of Liz Truss on this, not what their own eyes, ears, mouth, nose, shoulders knees and toes, smell, touch, taste, brain, second brain in gut, waters, bowels, nanny, granny, sky sports transfer show, Reginald Tindal Kennedy Bosanquet and their Alexa is actually telling them. Bart is a mere pawn or mug in this one.
But this isn’t a laughter thread, this is a serious political betting one. Truss is going to lose the electorate with a “I never planned to call an election” type moment in her first hours in the role, that’s what this thread is about.
Oh, agreed. I don’t mind for a moment Truss playing dress up - all politicians do. (Though as with others, her personal photographers come at our expense.)
To play the image game and expect us to believe that she isn’t, is something else again. It’s called taking the piss. And it’s sad to see posters like Bart defending it.
It’s not sad to see Bart defending it, it would be worrying times if he didn’t argue against bleeding obvious, we’d probably think he was hacked.
Far more interesting is Truss saying she didn’t. Someone on the team has finally convinced her it’s starting to come across somewhere between naff and deranged and lacking the gravitas of a head of state. But, just as interesting, they feel they can publicly deny the bleeding obvious without this also coming across somewhere between naff and deranged, lacking the necessary honesty with us - hence it’s a PB header.
That Gordon Brown “election, I wasn’t going to call an election” gaff keeps coming up as good reference exactly how NOT to do it.
Yet Team Truss keep doing it. Continuity Boris alright.
Except Boris would have made a joke of it and that would have changed the subject. Truss (so far) hasn't shown a capability of doing that.
I wonder if it's a school thing. In the way that Eton gave Cameron and Johnson an easy swagger, and Grammar School gave May (and in a different way, Thatcher) a belief that their hard work would solve all problems, some Comprehensives accidentally instilled a kind of cultural cringe... something about fitting in being an effortful thing and a dollop of imposter syndrome. (Mostly, they're better at it now.)
Truss's problem with following the Continuity Boris path, if that's what she tries to do, is that she won't be as good at it as Boris.
She would be downright rubbish at it. And that’s the big elephant in the Tory room isn’t it. And Since when did car crash Kwarteng have the skills for a great office of state like Chancellor? He is far too easy to pick apart in media interviews, at the dispatch box, he just doesn’t have the communication or media skills of Osborne and Sunak or even Hammond - if the Mail and Express hail him as a leading politician and chancellor, the voters will feel they are having the piss taken out of them.
You can see why a majority of members don’t want to lose Boris, why in the confidence vote so many MPs still backed him as best option for next election, when he spoke today, hearing him for the first time in a while, what a breath of fresh air after Sunak and Truss, straight away you can see how the electorate fell for the cad in the first place. The gravitas is there, the charisma is there, a certain chutzpah, courage even - that makes you believe what he is saying - it’s the complete opposite from how strained and false Sunak and Truss come across.
Look, they may all be dishonest and lying, but there’s good and bad at it.
There's a line Clive James used about Richard Nixon, "they were right to overthrow him, but they weren't totally wrong to raise him up in the first place".
As the Johnson era/error draws to an end, perhaps BoJo can be put in the same category.
O/T Liz Truss is unhinged. Nothing more, nothing less.
The right wing nutters who live on this blog seem to think she is something special. She is no Thatcher. She is likely to give Cameron and Johnson a good run for the worst PM ever.
Johnson I’ll give you but Cameron? Formed a coalition that worked well for 5 years then won a majority. Gave the nation a chance to vote on its political future over Europe, something all others denied since the 70’s. A decent man, and a decent PM. Your countrymen and women are the ones to blame for Brexit, not Cameron.
He didn’t think through the referendum. He was lazy and arrogant.
I really just do not understand this attitude
The question was put to the people who voted in a referendum the result of which you have not come to terms with along with many others
The remain supporters failed to win a very winnable case and seem to want to blame everyone but themselves
Furthermore, Starmer is not offering to re-join, indeed neither are the lib dems implicitly promising to do so, so little will change in the foreseeable though a better relationship with the EU while remaining outside would be welcome
The Remain campaign was shockingly poor and Cameron made it as difficult to win as he possibly could because he fully expected to walk it. Osborne told him it was an outrageous risk.
Yes Corbyn, and the entire Labour Party are probably even more culpable for their utter ineptitude than Cameron. I blame them, particularly Corbyn wholeheartedly. The LibDems on the other hand were superb, it's just they didn't have the networks to win over enough doubters.
Crucially no one had the vaguest idea of what they were voting for Leave and Remain, and both sides lied. Leave lied better and Boris was sublime, however like Cameron he expected Remain to win and like Cameron didn't know what to do when they didn't.
Still it's done now and it's going great ...maybe!
When I voted to Leave the European Union, my assumption was that I was voting to leave the European Union. Equally, when quite a lot of people voted to Remain in the European Union, I think they expected that meant we would remain in the European Union.
The problem was that leaving meant a lot of different things to different people, there was not a clear leave choice, plenty of people who voted to leave the European Union still wanted to stay in much of the economic agreements, including people like Dan Hannan who campaigned by saying that leaving the EU did not mean that we had to leave the single market.
A very commonly expressed view was we should leave the political and keep the economic. I disagreed, but I did accept that there was a case.
However, what has happened is a complete break down of all legal links between Britain and the EU, and that was the choice only of a small, extremist, faction. The small minority that still argues that hard Brexit was the only solution that counted as Leave, is either ignorant or dishonest. The compromise was obvious, but after May´s citizen of nowhere speech it was not taken, and the damage has already been immense.
Had that been made clear at the vote, that Leave would mean that there would be a complete end of all legal and economic ties Remain would probably have won and that is why a clear majority now believes that leaving was a bad idea. It is the failure to establish any compromise, and indeed to attempt to detach Britain even further from the EU, that will ultimately cause the end of the Conservatives. It is economically very damaging and in the end will be politically toxic.
The fact that the leadership of the Conservatives is utter abysmal is just a side show in the growing anger at the Tories.
During the referendum it was determined by Vote Leave that Leaving the UK meant Leaving the Single Market.
Yes people like Dan Hannan and Richard Tyndall prior to the Referendum campaign had advocated a Single Market solution, but nobody official did so during the Referendum itself. Vote Leave were utterly explicit that we'd leave the Single Market and get a trade agreement instead. It was made clear at the vote. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove both explicitly said Leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market, as too did Clegg, Cameron, Osborne and more.
As for a breakdown of relations with the EU, that takes 2 to tango. If EU bods stop trying to interfere in NI, which is a part of the UK, then relations would be better. Just but not as serious as if Putin stops trying to interfere in Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine, then relations would be better.
Eh? NI is also part of the EU.
No, its not.
If it is, then who are the MEPs that the voters in NI elected?
If it is, then who represents NI on the EU Commission?
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
The Bible is quite clear marriage is between a man and a woman that is not the same as hating homosexuals which is clearly not a message of Christ
You have to read the bible *really* carefully, and give more weight to an epileptic bully than to the Son of God, to get anywhere near that conclusion.
You think I am joking when I say that the evidence suggests that Christ was an active homosexual.
O/T Liz Truss is unhinged. Nothing more, nothing less.
The right wing nutters who live on this blog seem to think she is something special. She is no Thatcher. She is likely to give Cameron and Johnson a good run for the worst PM ever.
Johnson I’ll give you but Cameron? Formed a coalition that worked well for 5 years then won a majority. Gave the nation a chance to vote on its political future over Europe, something all others denied since the 70’s. A decent man, and a decent PM. Your countrymen and women are the ones to blame for Brexit, not Cameron.
He didn’t think through the referendum. He was lazy and arrogant.
I really just do not understand this attitude
The question was put to the people who voted in a referendum the result of which you have not come to terms with along with many others
The remain supporters failed to win a very winnable case and seem to want to blame everyone but themselves
Furthermore, Starmer is not offering to re-join, indeed neither are the lib dems implicitly promising to do so, so little will change in the foreseeable though a better relationship with the EU while remaining outside would be welcome
The Remain campaign was shockingly poor and Cameron made it as difficult to win as he possibly could because he fully expected to walk it. Osborne told him it was an outrageous risk.
Yes Corbyn, and the entire Labour Party are probably even more culpable for their utter ineptitude than Cameron. I blame them, particularly Corbyn wholeheartedly. The LibDems on the other hand were superb, it's just they didn't have the networks to win over enough doubters.
Crucially no one had the vaguest idea of what they were voting for Leave and Remain, and both sides lied. Leave lied better and Boris was sublime, however like Cameron he expected Remain to win and like Cameron didn't know what to do when they didn't.
Still it's done now and it's going great ...maybe!
When I voted to Leave the European Union, my assumption was that I was voting to leave the European Union. Equally, when quite a lot of people voted to Remain in the European Union, I think they expected that meant we would remain in the European Union.
The problem was that leaving meant a lot of different things to different people, there was not a clear leave choice, plenty of people who voted to leave the European Union still wanted to stay in much of the economic agreements, including people like Dan Hannan who campaigned by saying that leaving the EU did not mean that we had to leave the single market.
A very commonly expressed view was we should leave the political and keep the economic. I disagreed, but I did accept that there was a case.
However, what has happened is a complete break down of all legal links between Britain and the EU, and that was the choice only of a small, extremist, faction. The small minority that still argues that hard Brexit was the only solution that counted as Leave, is either ignorant or dishonest. The compromise was obvious, but after May´s citizen of nowhere speech it was not taken, and the damage has already been immense.
Had that been made clear at the vote, that Leave would mean that there would be a complete end of all legal and economic ties Remain would probably have won and that is why a clear majority now believes that leaving was a bad idea. It is the failure to establish any compromise, and indeed to attempt to detach Britain even further from the EU, that will ultimately cause the end of the Conservatives. It is economically very damaging and in the end will be politically toxic.
The fact that the leadership of the Conservatives is utter abysmal is just a side show in the growing anger at the Tories.
During the referendum it was determined by Vote Leave that Leaving the UK meant Leaving the Single Market.
Yes people like Dan Hannan and Richard Tyndall prior to the Referendum campaign had advocated a Single Market solution, but nobody official did so during the Referendum itself. Vote Leave were utterly explicit that we'd leave the Single Market and get a trade agreement instead. It was made clear at the vote. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove both explicitly said Leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market, as too did Clegg, Cameron, Osborne and more.
As for a breakdown of relations with the EU, that takes 2 to tango. If EU bods stop trying to interfere in NI, which is a part of the UK, then relations would be better. Just but not as serious as if Putin stops trying to interfere in Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine, then relations would be better.
Eh? NI is also part of the EU.
No, its not.
If it is, then who are the MEPs that the voters in NI elected?
If it is, then who represents NI on the EU Commission?
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
She is a vapid, posturing windbag and as big a threat to world peace and stability as Putin. did George Bush get an Official Photographer to tag along everywhere he went and take those photos? Do you realise that the Truss photos are carefully curated (dread word) and posted on instagram by or on behalf of her, not her enemies?
Taking photos doesn't mean you're trying to be Thatcher, unless she curated the lookalikes and posted them side-by-side herself just as moonshine just did with Starmer and Boris.
see the footage of her landing? the 3 bods from the embassy, 2 women and a wallace-grade baldy, are HATLESS, it's only uniform guy wearing one cos he has to.
She was dressing up.
She wore a hat while visiting a notoriously cold country?
Oh well that changes everything, she must be only the second person in history to wear a hat while visiting Russia.
Although on your link there's 2 other people wearing hats. They're not women though, so I guess they don't count.
The particularly charming poster Ismael also misunderstands something. I don’t think there’s anyone here who is giving full throttled support to Truss. I’m certainly not, I have little idea whether she’ll be any good and I suspect neither does she until she starts the job. Big step up even from Foreign Sec.
But the reflexive hate for her before she’s even got going strikes me as quite bizarre, when there’s nothing obvious in her track record to justify it. Perhaps she’ll do enough for the Tories to earn my vote for the first time in 4 elections, perhaps not. But it would be good to see a more serious critique of her abilities and plans, rather than “oh look she’s wearing a blue jacket and a hat. What a f**** b***ch! Who does she think she is!”.
What? You can't claim the moral high ground on charm, and start making blanket accusations of "reflexive hate." One or the other.
And "before she's even got going." Many of us here have an informed and detailed knowledge of UK politics, and thanks for confirming you are not among us. She is Foreign Sec FFS. This is not an Emma Raducanu situation. She is also a terrible and deeply unserious person, despite your elderly penchant for her disciplinary reputation.
Her most telling contribution as Foreign Secretary, has been to firmly elucidate the position that “Russia must lose” and that that means their troops “leaving the whole of Ukraine including Crimea”. At the time I remember quite a lot of bed wetters in the guardian and elsewhere saying she was recklessly endangering the whole world for personal ambition. These days, it’s a pretty median position. Backed this week by Putin’s erstwhile ally Erdogan no less. Now it’s an exaggeration to say she has personally driven that narrative shift. She hasn’t. But she did play her part in driving it towards broad international acceptance.
Not that she drove the formation of Aukus, her appointment aligned with the announcement. But her department saw it over the line. As for her time as Trade Sec, sure there are those who moan about us getting cheaper food products from strategic allies. I’m not one of them but I am disappointed no progress was made with the US on a financial sector accord that would become the global standard.
I don’t know really what to do with her being a “terrible and deeply unserious person”. And I’m not elderly or into that particular niche. I just think that at a time of national peril, she deserves a chance and the nation’s goodwill. If she’s no good, she’ll be booted out!
Pushing the line that the war is not over until Crimea returns to Ukraine, by any assessment, prolongs the conflict, and prolongs UK involvement in it. If you hold the somewhat quaint view that foreign policy is a tool to promote the security and prosperity of the UK, that is taking a 12 boar and emptying both barrels into your own size 9s.
However, I give a pass to Truss for anything she says on Ukraine. Our foreign policy on this is decided by America. It will be a bold leader indeed who departs from the US line on anything. If she starts to forge the beginnings an independent foreign and defence policy, it will be a pleasant surprise.
Ensuring Ukraine's territory is returned to Ukraine ends the war, it doesn't prolong it.
If you want the war over, you should be pushing to do everything we can to ensure Russia leaves the entirety of Ukraine, which of course includes Crimea. If Vlad leaves Ukraine, the war is over, until he does, it isn't.
No, the war is over when the two sides stop fighting, not when an arbitrary set of preferred conditions transpire.
The two sides stop fighting when the invader leaves the nation they've invaded.
That means Russia out of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Dribbling garbage. Most of the world's countries sit on bits of territory once forcibly removed from other nations. Including our own.
But most of us learn from our mistakes, and try not to repeat them.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
It seems not outrageous for a traditionalist Christian to believe that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman.
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
She is a vapid, posturing windbag and as big a threat to world peace and stability as Putin. did George Bush get an Official Photographer to tag along everywhere he went and take those photos? Do you realise that the Truss photos are carefully curated (dread word) and posted on instagram by or on behalf of her, not her enemies?
Taking photos doesn't mean you're trying to be Thatcher, unless she curated the lookalikes and posted them side-by-side herself just as moonshine just did with Starmer and Boris.
see the footage of her landing? the 3 bods from the embassy, 2 women and a wallace-grade baldy, are HATLESS, it's only uniform guy wearing one cos he has to.
She was dressing up.
She wore a hat while visiting a notoriously cold country?
Oh well that changes everything, she must be only the second person in history to wear a hat while visiting Russia.
Although on your link there's 2 other people wearing hats. They're not women though, so I guess they don't count.
The particularly charming poster Ismael also misunderstands something. I don’t think there’s anyone here who is giving full throttled support to Truss. I’m certainly not, I have little idea whether she’ll be any good and I suspect neither does she until she starts the job. Big step up even from Foreign Sec.
But the reflexive hate for her before she’s even got going strikes me as quite bizarre, when there’s nothing obvious in her track record to justify it. Perhaps she’ll do enough for the Tories to earn my vote for the first time in 4 elections, perhaps not. But it would be good to see a more serious critique of her abilities and plans, rather than “oh look she’s wearing a blue jacket and a hat. What a f**** b***ch! Who does she think she is!”.
What? You can't claim the moral high ground on charm, and start making blanket accusations of "reflexive hate." One or the other.
And "before she's even got going." Many of us here have an informed and detailed knowledge of UK politics, and thanks for confirming you are not among us. She is Foreign Sec FFS. This is not an Emma Raducanu situation. She is also a terrible and deeply unserious person, despite your elderly penchant for her disciplinary reputation.
Her most telling contribution as Foreign Secretary, has been to firmly elucidate the position that “Russia must lose” and that that means their troops “leaving the whole of Ukraine including Crimea”. At the time I remember quite a lot of bed wetters in the guardian and elsewhere saying she was recklessly endangering the whole world for personal ambition. These days, it’s a pretty median position. Backed this week by Putin’s erstwhile ally Erdogan no less. Now it’s an exaggeration to say she has personally driven that narrative shift. She hasn’t. But she did play her part in driving it towards broad international acceptance.
Not that she drove the formation of Aukus, her appointment aligned with the announcement. But her department saw it over the line. As for her time as Trade Sec, sure there are those who moan about us getting cheaper food products from strategic allies. I’m not one of them but I am disappointed no progress was made with the US on a financial sector accord that would become the global standard.
I don’t know really what to do with her being a “terrible and deeply unserious person”. And I’m not elderly or into that particular niche. I just think that at a time of national peril, she deserves a chance and the nation’s goodwill. If she’s no good, she’ll be booted out!
Pushing the line that the war is not over until Crimea returns to Ukraine, by any assessment, prolongs the conflict, and prolongs UK involvement in it. If you hold the somewhat quaint view that foreign policy is a tool to promote the security and prosperity of the UK, that is taking a 12 boar and emptying both barrels into your own size 9s.
However, I give a pass to Truss for anything she says on Ukraine. Our foreign policy on this is decided by America. It will be a bold leader indeed who departs from the US line on anything. If she starts to forge the beginnings an independent foreign and defence policy, it will be a pleasant surprise.
Ensuring Ukraine's territory is returned to Ukraine ends the war, it doesn't prolong it.
If you want the war over, you should be pushing to do everything we can to ensure Russia leaves the entirety of Ukraine, which of course includes Crimea. If Vlad leaves Ukraine, the war is over, until he does, it isn't.
No, the war is over when the two sides stop fighting, not when an arbitrary set of preferred conditions transpire.
The two sides stop fighting when the invader leaves the nation they've invaded.
That means Russia out of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Dribbling garbage. Most of the world's countries sit on bits of territory once forcibly removed from other nations. Including our own.
Not since WWII at least whereby nations agreed not to seize bits of territory by war. The UK hasn't seized any territory since then.
If you genuinely want the war over, why aren't you demanding Russia leaves Crimea? If you genuinely want the war over, why aren't you demanding the UK applies maximum pressure to ensure Russia leaves Crimea, thus ending the war?
Seems to me that you don't genuinely want the war over. Instead you simply want Russia to win the war, then be able to launch its next war.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They become legal in civil law in England not religious law
C of S isn't an Established church. They are a private body. They can do what they like. And even being able to do it is a damn sight more than the C of E.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
As an atheist, I'm all in favour of disestablishmment. But I don't think it makes sense to criticise religions on the grounds that they don't accord with modern sensibilities. If God exists, it would seem unlikely that he changes his views on morality with the times. Given that human moral norms have changed wildly over the course of human history, it would seem more likely that God's views contain quite a few elements which are out of step with 21st Century western thinking than it would that we have happened now at this point in history on a morality which accords with God's. If any religion were true, I would expect it to contain quite a lot that I would find uncomfortable.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
It seems not outrageous for a traditionalist Christian to believe that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman.
O/T Liz Truss is unhinged. Nothing more, nothing less.
The right wing nutters who live on this blog seem to think she is something special. She is no Thatcher. She is likely to give Cameron and Johnson a good run for the worst PM ever.
Johnson I’ll give you but Cameron? Formed a coalition that worked well for 5 years then won a majority. Gave the nation a chance to vote on its political future over Europe, something all others denied since the 70’s. A decent man, and a decent PM. Your countrymen and women are the ones to blame for Brexit, not Cameron.
He didn’t think through the referendum. He was lazy and arrogant.
I really just do not understand this attitude
The question was put to the people who voted in a referendum the result of which you have not come to terms with along with many others
The remain supporters failed to win a very winnable case and seem to want to blame everyone but themselves
Furthermore, Starmer is not offering to re-join, indeed neither are the lib dems implicitly promising to do so, so little will change in the foreseeable though a better relationship with the EU while remaining outside would be welcome
The Remain campaign was shockingly poor and Cameron made it as difficult to win as he possibly could because he fully expected to walk it. Osborne told him it was an outrageous risk.
Yes Corbyn, and the entire Labour Party are probably even more culpable for their utter ineptitude than Cameron. I blame them, particularly Corbyn wholeheartedly. The LibDems on the other hand were superb, it's just they didn't have the networks to win over enough doubters.
Crucially no one had the vaguest idea of what they were voting for Leave and Remain, and both sides lied. Leave lied better and Boris was sublime, however like Cameron he expected Remain to win and like Cameron didn't know what to do when they didn't.
Still it's done now and it's going great ...maybe!
When I voted to Leave the European Union, my assumption was that I was voting to leave the European Union. Equally, when quite a lot of people voted to Remain in the European Union, I think they expected that meant we would remain in the European Union.
The problem was that leaving meant a lot of different things to different people, there was not a clear leave choice, plenty of people who voted to leave the European Union still wanted to stay in much of the economic agreements, including people like Dan Hannan who campaigned by saying that leaving the EU did not mean that we had to leave the single market.
A very commonly expressed view was we should leave the political and keep the economic. I disagreed, but I did accept that there was a case.
However, what has happened is a complete break down of all legal links between Britain and the EU, and that was the choice only of a small, extremist, faction. The small minority that still argues that hard Brexit was the only solution that counted as Leave, is either ignorant or dishonest. The compromise was obvious, but after May´s citizen of nowhere speech it was not taken, and the damage has already been immense.
Had that been made clear at the vote, that Leave would mean that there would be a complete end of all legal and economic ties Remain would probably have won and that is why a clear majority now believes that leaving was a bad idea. It is the failure to establish any compromise, and indeed to attempt to detach Britain even further from the EU, that will ultimately cause the end of the Conservatives. It is economically very damaging and in the end will be politically toxic.
The fact that the leadership of the Conservatives is utter abysmal is just a side show in the growing anger at the Tories.
During the referendum it was determined by Vote Leave that Leaving the UK meant Leaving the Single Market.
Yes people like Dan Hannan and Richard Tyndall prior to the Referendum campaign had advocated a Single Market solution, but nobody official did so during the Referendum itself. Vote Leave were utterly explicit that we'd leave the Single Market and get a trade agreement instead. It was made clear at the vote. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove both explicitly said Leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market, as too did Clegg, Cameron, Osborne and more.
As for a breakdown of relations with the EU, that takes 2 to tango. If EU bods stop trying to interfere in NI, which is a part of the UK, then relations would be better. Just but not as serious as if Putin stops trying to interfere in Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine, then relations would be better.
Eh? NI is also part of the EU.
No, its not.
If it is, then who are the MEPs that the voters in NI elected?
If it is, then who represents NI on the EU Commission?
Ask Mr Johnson. He thought it was a great deal.
The deal doesn't say NI is a part of the EU though, that's a myth spread by you guys.
The deal does explicitly recognise NI as a part of the UK, and as a sovereign part of the UK a future PM Truss is 100% entitled to pass the NI Protocol Bill, and the EU is fully entitled to butt out of the UK's sovereign territory.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They become legal in civil law in England not religious law
C of S isn't an Established church. They are a private body. They can do what they like. And even being able to do it is a damn sight more than the C of E.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
No the Church of England is not the state, we are not a theocracy, the Church of England does not have a say in making our laws beyond having a miniscule presence in the House of Lords.
The Queen is Head of State and as part of that role signs what Parliament has passed into law. That is completely separate from her role ad Head of the Church of England preserving its role as our established Christian Church.
It was my right to refuse to get married in a registry office, if you wish to have a civil non religious marriage that is your affair. However we religious whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Jew consider our religious marriage more important than the legal one and now it is right that you can have a legal wedding at the same time as a religious one with a priest or Imam or Rabbi licensed to do so
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
The Bible is quite clear marriage is between a man and a woman that is not the same as hating homosexuality which is clearly not a message of Christ
You are still narrow minded and prejudiced no matter how you try to explain it
So in your view therefore are all traditional Christians, Muslims and Jews who also take the view marriage can only be between a man and a woman
Since about 2005, and in almost every Western economy, something historically unprecedented and extremely alarming has been happening to energy consumption: it’s either flatlining or in decline. This remarkable but little discussed fact is jeopardising almost every aspect of our public policy, from climate change mitigation, through national security to societal progression itself. President Biden’s plans to vastly increase spending on renewables such as wind and solar through the Inflation Reduction Act are grabbing the headlines, and it’s not hard to see why, but they may actually be counterproductive, and in any case are overshadowed by the sweeping macroscopic trend of falling Western demand for energy.
According to data collected by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, total energy consumption in the UK, for example, is back at levels not seen since the 1950s; there has been a 30 percent decline from its peak in 2003, which is astonishing given that the population has increased by 12.5 percent, to 67 million, over the same period."
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They become legal in civil law in England not religious law
C of S isn't an Established church. They are a private body. They can do what they like. And even being able to do it is a damn sight more than the C of E.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
As an atheist, I'm all in favour of disestablishmment. But I don't think it makes sense to criticise religions on the grounds that they don't accord with modern sensibilities. If God exists, it would seem unlikely that he changes his views on morality with the times. Given that human moral norms have changed wildly over the course of human history, it would seem more likely that God's views contain quite a few elements which are out of step with 21st Century western thinking than it would that we have happened now at this point in history on a morality which accords with God's. If any religion were true, I would expect it to contain quite a lot that I would find uncomfortable.
Since about 2005, and in almost every Western economy, something historically unprecedented and extremely alarming has been happening to energy consumption: it’s either flatlining or in decline. This remarkable but little discussed fact is jeopardising almost every aspect of our public policy, from climate change mitigation, through national security to societal progression itself. President Biden’s plans to vastly increase spending on renewables such as wind and solar through the Inflation Reduction Act are grabbing the headlines, and it’s not hard to see why, but they may actually be counterproductive, and in any case are overshadowed by the sweeping macroscopic trend of falling Western demand for energy.
According to data collected by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, total energy consumption in the UK, for example, is back at levels not seen since the 1950s; there has been a 30 percent decline from its peak in 2003, which is astonishing given that the population has increased by 12.5 percent, to 67 million, over the same period."
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They become legal in civil law in England not religious law
C of S isn't an Established church. They are a private body. They can do what they like. And even being able to do it is a damn sight more than the C of E.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
As an atheist, I'm all in favour of disestablishmment. But I don't think it makes sense to criticise religions on the grounds that they don't accord with modern sensibilities. If God exists, it would seem unlikely that he changes his views on morality with the times. Given that human moral norms have changed wildly over the course of human history, it would seem more likely that God's views contain quite a few elements which are out of step with 21st Century western thinking than it would that we have happened now at this point in history on a morality which accords with God's. If any religion were true, I would expect it to contain quite a lot that I would find uncomfortable.
Quite.
But marriage is basically a legal contract rather than a religious sacrament (it has always been thus since the 16thC in Scotland for instance*). In that sense, therefore, it's not so much modern sensibilities but practicalities.
* In law. The church bit was never essential. Though people of various denominations liked to go to church for it as well.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Of course you don't think it is sacred as you take narcissistic libertarianism to the ultra extreme including abortion to birth and euthanasia on demand for the non terminally ill
What is so sacred about life that someone of sound mind who wishes to die should be denied that right to control their own life?
Is life so sacred that you're a vegan?
The government has no business killing anyone who is not severely terminally ill with no hope of recovery no, once you start to do so you are on a very tricky slope. No conservative could or should ever support such a proposition, though as you are no conservative hardly surprising you do.
Human life is entirely different to animal life, we are made to eat animals and God created animals in part for us to eat, as long as they are farmed humanely nothing wrong with that. We do not however eat or kill other humans
I know you believe in evolution, as we have discussed this before, and I assume you accept we evolved from apes so how do you distinguish between animals and humans? At what point in the evolution does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human and therefore can't be eaten?
You have also said you believe in the 10 commandments on this thread, yet you support Boris who has clearly lied. In the past you have justified such things as long as it is not illegal. Doesn't God set a higher standard? He appears to by the 10 commandments. Shouldn't you by not supporting Boris who is clearly breaking a commandment.
Since about 2005, and in almost every Western economy, something historically unprecedented and extremely alarming has been happening to energy consumption: it’s either flatlining or in decline. This remarkable but little discussed fact is jeopardising almost every aspect of our public policy, from climate change mitigation, through national security to societal progression itself. President Biden’s plans to vastly increase spending on renewables such as wind and solar through the Inflation Reduction Act are grabbing the headlines, and it’s not hard to see why, but they may actually be counterproductive, and in any case are overshadowed by the sweeping macroscopic trend of falling Western demand for energy.
According to data collected by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, total energy consumption in the UK, for example, is back at levels not seen since the 1950s; there has been a 30 percent decline from its peak in 2003, which is astonishing given that the population has increased by 12.5 percent, to 67 million, over the same period."
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
2007 IHT proposals were an 'utter game changer'? How many voters were actually or potentially impacted by the IHT changes? A small minority, I'd guess.
How many voters would be impacted by freezing the energy price cap? Just about every one.
It turned double digit Labour leads into double digit Tory leads.
Labour MPs were publicly writing 'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.
That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
But you're going to struggle to convince me that the change in polling fortunes was driven by Tory IHT proposals rather than Brown's election hesitancy.
My view would be, didn’t that announcement come at a conference, a successful “we are nice not nasty and incompetent, and we are back” conference for the Tories, during the barnstorming speech by fresh David Cameron. It could have been all that which contributed to the poll switch as well not just that announcement.
I also feel if Brown had gone ahead with that election, he could have won it, though the size of majority uncertain which is why they called it off, because Browns limitations as PM were not yet clear, nor his failures as Chancellor yet known, he still had a strong reputation and the Tories a weak one, an election at that time may have come too soon for the Tories under Dave and George.
I suppose it could be a series of extraordinary coincidences.
Not that extraordinary. If you take tens of thousands of pictures of one woman and compare them with tens of thousands of pictures of another that she looks vaguely similar to, you're bound to ultimately get some similarities. People have done these 'lookalike' comparisons for as long as the internet/Private Eye or others have existed.
Was George W Bush trying to look like a monkey?
She is a vapid, posturing windbag and as big a threat to world peace and stability as Putin. did George Bush get an Official Photographer to tag along everywhere he went and take those photos? Do you realise that the Truss photos are carefully curated (dread word) and posted on instagram by or on behalf of her, not her enemies?
Taking photos doesn't mean you're trying to be Thatcher, unless she curated the lookalikes and posted them side-by-side herself just as moonshine just did with Starmer and Boris.
see the footage of her landing? the 3 bods from the embassy, 2 women and a wallace-grade baldy, are HATLESS, it's only uniform guy wearing one cos he has to.
She was dressing up.
She wore a hat while visiting a notoriously cold country?
Oh well that changes everything, she must be only the second person in history to wear a hat while visiting Russia.
Although on your link there's 2 other people wearing hats. They're not women though, so I guess they don't count.
The particularly charming poster Ismael also misunderstands something. I don’t think there’s anyone here who is giving full throttled support to Truss. I’m certainly not, I have little idea whether she’ll be any good and I suspect neither does she until she starts the job. Big step up even from Foreign Sec.
But the reflexive hate for her before she’s even got going strikes me as quite bizarre, when there’s nothing obvious in her track record to justify it. Perhaps she’ll do enough for the Tories to earn my vote for the first time in 4 elections, perhaps not. But it would be good to see a more serious critique of her abilities and plans, rather than “oh look she’s wearing a blue jacket and a hat. What a f**** b***ch! Who does she think she is!”.
What? You can't claim the moral high ground on charm, and start making blanket accusations of "reflexive hate." One or the other.
And "before she's even got going." Many of us here have an informed and detailed knowledge of UK politics, and thanks for confirming you are not among us. She is Foreign Sec FFS. This is not an Emma Raducanu situation. She is also a terrible and deeply unserious person, despite your elderly penchant for her disciplinary reputation.
Her most telling contribution as Foreign Secretary, has been to firmly elucidate the position that “Russia must lose” and that that means their troops “leaving the whole of Ukraine including Crimea”. At the time I remember quite a lot of bed wetters in the guardian and elsewhere saying she was recklessly endangering the whole world for personal ambition. These days, it’s a pretty median position. Backed this week by Putin’s erstwhile ally Erdogan no less. Now it’s an exaggeration to say she has personally driven that narrative shift. She hasn’t. But she did play her part in driving it towards broad international acceptance.
Not that she drove the formation of Aukus, her appointment aligned with the announcement. But her department saw it over the line. As for her time as Trade Sec, sure there are those who moan about us getting cheaper food products from strategic allies. I’m not one of them but I am disappointed no progress was made with the US on a financial sector accord that would become the global standard.
I don’t know really what to do with her being a “terrible and deeply unserious person”. And I’m not elderly or into that particular niche. I just think that at a time of national peril, she deserves a chance and the nation’s goodwill. If she’s no good, she’ll be booted out!
Pushing the line that the war is not over until Crimea returns to Ukraine, by any assessment, prolongs the conflict, and prolongs UK involvement in it. If you hold the somewhat quaint view that foreign policy is a tool to promote the security and prosperity of the UK, that is taking a 12 boar and emptying both barrels into your own size 9s.
However, I give a pass to Truss for anything she says on Ukraine. Our foreign policy on this is decided by America. It will be a bold leader indeed who departs from the US line on anything. If she starts to forge the beginnings an independent foreign and defence policy, it will be a pleasant surprise.
Ensuring Ukraine's territory is returned to Ukraine ends the war, it doesn't prolong it.
If you want the war over, you should be pushing to do everything we can to ensure Russia leaves the entirety of Ukraine, which of course includes Crimea. If Vlad leaves Ukraine, the war is over, until he does, it isn't.
No, the war is over when the two sides stop fighting, not when an arbitrary set of preferred conditions transpire.
The two sides stop fighting when the invader leaves the nation they've invaded.
That means Russia out of Ukraine, including Crimea.
Dribbling garbage. Most of the world's countries sit on bits of territory once forcibly removed from other nations. Including our own.
Not since WWII at least whereby nations agreed not to seize bits of territory by war. The UK hasn't seized any territory since then.
If you genuinely want the war over, why aren't you demanding Russia leaves Crimea? If you genuinely want the war over, why aren't you demanding the UK applies maximum pressure to ensure Russia leaves Crimea, thus ending the war?
Seems to me that you don't genuinely want the war over. Instead you simply want Russia to win the war, then be able to launch its next war.
"Not since WWII at least whereby nations agreed not to seize bits of territory by war"
That is not even true, if we confine ourselves to the EU. (It is certainly not true in the wider world.)
Cyprus.
The Turkish Army invaded in 1974 & occupied 1/3rd of the island which is de facto partitioned. Eventually, the partition has become accepted, in the sense that no-one expects much change anytime soon.
That is what will most likely happen now. There will be a de facto partitioning of Eastern Ukraine.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
Your so called Christian beliefs seem far away from Christianity but very near prejudice
It seems not outrageous for a traditionalist Christian to believe that marriage is a sacrament between a man and a woman.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They become legal in civil law in England not religious law
C of S isn't an Established church. They are a private body. They can do what they like. And even being able to do it is a damn sight more than the C of E.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
As an atheist, I'm all in favour of disestablishmment. But I don't think it makes sense to criticise religions on the grounds that they don't accord with modern sensibilities. If God exists, it would seem unlikely that he changes his views on morality with the times. Given that human moral norms have changed wildly over the course of human history, it would seem more likely that God's views contain quite a few elements which are out of step with 21st Century western thinking than it would that we have happened now at this point in history on a morality which accords with God's. If any religion were true, I would expect it to contain quite a lot that I would find uncomfortable.
Quite.
But marriage is basically a legal contract rather than a religious sacrament (it has always been thus since the 16thC in Scotland for instance*). In that sense, therefore, it's not so much modern sensibilities but practicalities.
* In law. The church bit was never essential. Though people of various denominations liked to go to church for it as well.
Indeed. I as an atheist straight person got married coincidentally around the time that Parliament was passing the gay marriage act.
I'm curious why hate-filled bigots like HYUFD and Liam Fox think its OK for atheists like me to have a secular marriage that doesn't conform to their religion, but that gay atheists or others can't have their own secular marriage?
Marriage has bugger all to do with religion. If it did, I wouldn't be married. If your Church wants to deny marriage for whatever reason, I'm OK with that and I'd oppose the law compelling your Church to enforce it - Parliament compelling the Church to go against their beliefs would be wrong, but the Church trying to enforce its beliefs on non-believers is equally wrong.
Chatting to a pollster this evening, they think Starmer's cost of living policy proposal is just like Dave & George's IHT announcement in 2007.
Utter game changer and makes the government look like disinterested incompetents whilst making voters think the LOTO has my values.
2007 IHT proposals were an 'utter game changer'? How many voters were actually or potentially impacted by the IHT changes? A small minority, I'd guess.
How many voters would be impacted by freezing the energy price cap? Just about every one.
It turned double digit Labour leads into double digit Tory leads.
Labour MPs were publicly writing 'Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority'
Perhaps the magnitude of the moment we face is too great for us collectively to bear. Shortly there will be an election, in which Labour will increase its majority, and in so doing utterly shatter the glass paradigm of cyclical politics which has contained us for the century since 1906. This ought to herald another decade of strong, confident, consensual Labour government. Which will finally and irrevocably transform the nature of politics and civic life in Britain.
That is a frightening responsibility. The young princes who now stride the parade ground with the confidence born of aristocratic schooling can never be afraid. They never have been. Like latter day Pushkins drilled in the elite academy of Brownian blitzkrieg, they are bursting with their sense of destiny. It’s not the Milibands, the Ballses or the Burnhams who are unconsciously nervous. This is the moment for which they were created. They are ready.
But you're going to struggle to convince me that the change in polling fortunes was driven by Tory IHT proposals rather than Brown's election hesitancy.
My view would be, didn’t that announcement come at a conference, a successful “we are nice not nasty and incompetent, and we are back” conference for the Tories, during the barnstorming speech by fresh David Cameron. It could have been all that which contributed to the poll switch as well not just that announcement.
I also feel if Brown had gone ahead with that election, he could have won it, though the size of majority uncertain which is why they called it off, because Browns limitations as PM were not yet clear, nor his failures as Chancellor yet known, he still had a strong reputation and the Tories a weak one, an election at that time may have come too soon for the Tories under Dave and George.
I distinctly recall the IHT card being what stopped Brown going for the election. Now that may be a false memory, but that’s what I recall.
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name!
Are you volunteering to be first up on the block like? That is very public spirited of you.
To ensure such an abomination is never reintroduced it is certainly a hill worth dying upon.
There was a good documentary on BBC3 which I ended up watching when stuck in an hotel room in Aberdeen about a University based organisation that was trying to stop executions in Texas just over a week ago. I am not sure I could do that kind of work.
In contrast there is a well sourced story about the Judges in the High Court who dealt with the appeal of the last man hanged in Scotland. Counsel was asked if this was going to take long as they had a really interesting trust problem to address at 11.00am. Different days.
So let's never return to them.
And w are not going to. Why do think we will?
It a cheap way to attract votes for an unpopular and cynical Government or an ambitious cynical Opposition that wants to creep over the line.
Priti Patel and I believe Suella Braverman (although apologies, I may be wrong) are advocates as are many Conservative MPs, like Gale, for example. The fact that when the likes of Ian Huntley are tried there are dozens and dozens of mawkish protestors demanding his life suggests it would be politically popular if morally wrong. Without the EU, without the ECHR all obstacles slip away. I believe a referendum is a clear and present danger. Once we get the hang (pun intended) of executing Ian Huntley and Gary Glitter, who and what for next?
Most people in the UK are quite dishonest with themselves over the death penalty. They think being aghast about the idea of it makes them morally superior. And it feels nice to be morally superior. But…
Jeremy Corbyn was about the only person who thought the execution by drone of the ISIS Beatles was a “tragedy”. Everyone else watched that news with their cornflakes and thought, jolly good show. Ditto Bin Laden. Ditto Shipman topping himself, even Blunkett admitted to cheering that one. Equally if we woke up at the weekend to vigilante justice being delivered in this Liverpool case, near everyone would think privately that the scumbag got what was coming to them.
There wasn't a safer way of dealing with the Isis Beatles, or Bin Laden.
Shipman made his own decision in order that his wife could benefit from a pension as I recall. Fred West too. I'd have preferred Shipman and West end their final years in s***hole prisons like Strageways and Winson Green.
As for your lynch mob, they will also serve time for the murder of a scumbag.
Agree re Shipman, I was not happy about that.
One of the reasons I oppose the death penalty is that, for some - particularly the superior, cocky Shipman type - I think it a lesser sentence than life imprisonment. He, presumably, took the same view.
(Other reasons have been well articulated by others)
I'm a firm pro-choice believer in death with dignity. If anyone wants to end their own life, then with safeguards, that should be allowed. Their life, their choice.
Safeguards with the likes of Shipman for that would need to be serious, but if they want 'the easy way out' then that should be their choice, same as it should be anyone else's. So long as the safeguards ensure its genuinely their choice.
Keeping them alive, against their wishes, just to punish them more is for me a form of torture that I would not accept. If you want to keep them alive, against their wishes, it should be for more than just punishment's sake.
I'm with Mexicanpete on this. Happy to withhold any right to death during a prison sentence.
I do support access to euthanasia for the general public, in principle, although I believe there are huge practical problems around, effectively, informed consent for that. There are conditions for which I would choose death over life, I think, but only at the appropriate point, which would probably be at a point after I was able to provide informed consent. Setting clear conditions in advance is tricky as you don't know how you would feel at that point in time. For non-physical reasons, it's even more problematic.
My wife and I have both said to each other we'd prefer euthanasia than going into a Care Home. She works in one and while she cares passionately about her job, most of her colleagues frankly don't and most of the residents don't want to be there either. There are some people there who are happy to be there, but there are many who say every single day that they want to die. She's said she never, ever wants to end up somewhere like that.
Of course closer to the time we might change our minds, but people should have a right to choose. Their life, their choice.
I find prohibitions on euthanasia as unacceptable as prohibitions on abortion. Hopefully one day it'll be as alien too to think people were once denied that freedom to choose.
Abortion is of course ending the life of another not your own, whatever time limit you set for it.
There is also a danger euthanasia is not your own choice, especially if not of sound mind. I would consider it for terminal illnesses with less than 6 months to live only
Abortion there is no other life that has been born yet, which is why birth should be the limit.
If people of sound mind wish to die, that should be their choice, even if not terminal. If someone is paralysed by an accident and faces years, maybe decades "living" but completely paralysed then if they make the choice they want to end it all they should have (after appropriate safeguards) the dignity of their choice respected.
Similarly if someone facing dementia makes that choice then if they want to end it all while still of sound mind before they're not, that again should be their choice.
People should be able to die with dignity, not have grim forms of suicide as the only alternative.
Rubbish, arguably life begins at conception but at most it begins at 24 weeks as is the legal UK abortion time limit. Abortion up to birth is therefore in my view murder.
The state should also have no business murdering someone who will survive whatever illness or disease they suffer, care and medical treatment is its only role. Life is sacred and the state has no business ending it except in extreme circumstances, such as for convicted serial killers or those with a terminal illness nearing the end of life who consent to that
Birth is the legal limit for abortion in limited circumstances in this country, as it absolutely should be.
24 weeks is the legal limit for other circumstances. Personally I don't care enough to argue about that, I'd prefer birth for all circumstances, but can live with 24.
Life is not "sacred", there is absolutely nothing "sacred" about life at all and if people wish to end their own life then that is not the state murdering them, it is them killing themselves. A humane and dignified method of ending your own life should be available to anyone of sound mind who wants it, rather than forcing them to inhumane continuing of life they don't want, or inhumane suicide as an alternative.
Euthanasia is people legally and humanely controlling and choosing the end of their own lives, its not murder.
What on earth are the inverted commas around 'sacred' supposed to mean?
Quotation marks.
HYUFD said that life was "sacred" and I was quoting him and saying that its not. It'd be an odd thing to write without the quotation.
Thanks. Moving on, I'm not sure whether life being sacred or not makes much difference. But I don't think the issue is a religious one. SFAICS you are saying that no particular rights are conferred on us by virtue of life being sacred. But you follow this by, again SFAICS, assuming that the rights of the unborn differ from the rights of the born in significant ways. Neither sacredness not unsacredness seems to ground this difference, which is the place where the difficulty lies.
Almost everyone agrees that the born and unborn have rights. Exactly which rights when and why is the question.
I consider life runs from birth to death.
Considering abortion is permitted in circumstances until the third trimester, but never permitted in any circumstances in the fourteenth trimester, the law agrees with me.
Restrictions on abortion late in pregnancy are like Sunday Trading laws, a compromised sop to those with objections to give them something to accept.
The only circumstances abortion is permitted beyond 24 weeks is in cases of severe disability or risk of severe injury to the mother, though in the former case there is a growing campaign to reverse that and rightly so
And can you abort those at risk of disabilities in the fourteen trimester? No, because by the 14th trimester, you're talking about real people who've been born. Life begins at birth.
Yes religious zealots like you that want to put their faith in God into law want to reverse the law, but thankfully you are not representative of either the UK or Parliament.
No it doesn't and you shouldn't be able to abort those with disabilities anymore than you can abort those who are able bodied after 24 weeks either. One thing the reversal of Roe v Wade has done is begin the fightback against the abortion on demand and until birth crowd like you, even if obviously we are not going to have the same abortion laws as Alabama.
Liam Fox is leading the campaign to end abortion of the disabled until birth, he is hardly an extremist
Considering though your notion of moderate is Sarah Palin, I don't know why I should be surprised.
Most Conservative MPs voted against gay marriage, so what, you can still support homosexuality being legal and even gay civil unions but object to gay marriage on religious grounds
But you advocate letting C of E vicars refuse to marry gay couples. Yet the C of E is part of the State. So why can C of E vicars refuse marriages that are positively permitted by laws of the Houses of Parlament?
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
Yes, just as Church of Scotland Ministers can still refuse to conduct gay marriages. The Queen signed gay marriage into law as part of her role as Head of State, though personally civil unions was enough not as part of her role as Supreme Governor of the Church of England which is an entirely separate one. They become legal in civil law in England not religious law
C of S isn't an Established church. They are a private body. They can do what they like. And even being able to do it is a damn sight more than the C of E.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
As an atheist, I'm all in favour of disestablishmment. But I don't think it makes sense to criticise religions on the grounds that they don't accord with modern sensibilities. If God exists, it would seem unlikely that he changes his views on morality with the times. Given that human moral norms have changed wildly over the course of human history, it would seem more likely that God's views contain quite a few elements which are out of step with 21st Century western thinking than it would that we have happened now at this point in history on a morality which accords with God's. If any religion were true, I would expect it to contain quite a lot that I would find uncomfortable.
Quite.
But marriage is basically a legal contract rather than a religious sacrament (it has always been thus since the 16thC in Scotland for instance*). In that sense, therefore, it's not so much modern sensibilities but practicalities.
* In law. The church bit was never essential. Though people of various denominations liked to go to church for it as well.
For the religious marriage is actually primarily a religious sacrament not a legal contract
What could Suella Braverman do right that Priti Patel has done wrong?
I do not say it is right. I do not think it is.
But I suspect she will try to leave the ECHR. She's talked about it often enough during her campaign to be leader.
I fear you may be right! If ever it could be said that the Conservative party had departed from Churchill's legacy it would be that.
It would be a day of shame for Britain to do that.
But party party day for all those lefty legal aid lawyers who would get to argue all the same points again in respect of whatever replaced it. It is so blindingly obvious that this would be the consequence that even Braverman can surely see it. Maybe if her officials used smaller words....
Our own court system would have let the flight go ahead outwith the last minute intervention by the ECHR. There's enough legal layers (3 (High, Appeal, Supreme)) without needing a 4th (ECHR). Our own courts only changed their mind when the ECHR basically told them to. It's an unnecessary layer imo, and since we're outside the EU, and therefore outside of protocol 14 of the Lisbon treaty it's something we ought to ditch. Personally I'd vote to head back into the EU and accept we'd need to be under it's remit (Thems the breaks) - but if we're out the EU I don't see the point.
I think it is a mistake to see this purely in terms of being an administrative/ procedural issue. The problem with leaving the ECHR is the international significance of it. It undoes a lot of long term foreign policy objectives, IE promoting human rights and stopping the death penalty. The suspicion is that this is actually part of the plan.
The day capital punishment is restored is the day to plan my exit. Not in my name
Comments
I am not confident any of Johnson, Truss or Sunak can overcome the demand for change after 14 years of conservative - coalition governments
Furthermore I am not that bothered by a Labour government in 2024 in view of the magnitude of problems it would face
How do you get by with "interested" not being subdivided into say Yesinterested vs OKinterested? I get on fine with general intelligence and understanding of context, but I am guessing you must have something else up your sleeve.
The first double digit lead was nearly 2 months later and regular double digit leads 6 months away.
For what ever reasons she does not want to say what the plan will be whilst the tory members are voting.
Starmer has played a blinder though, because unless her plan is equally nuclear the Tory polling is only going one way.
Yes people like Dan Hannan and Richard Tyndall prior to the Referendum campaign had advocated a Single Market solution, but nobody official did so during the Referendum itself. Vote Leave were utterly explicit that we'd leave the Single Market and get a trade agreement instead. It was made clear at the vote. Boris Johnson and Michael Gove both explicitly said Leaving the EU meant leaving the Single Market, as too did Clegg, Cameron, Osborne and more.
As for a breakdown of relations with the EU, that takes 2 to tango. If EU bods stop trying to interfere in NI, which is a part of the UK, then relations would be better. Just but not as serious as if Putin stops trying to interfere in Crimea, which is a part of Ukraine, then relations would be better.
It's outrageous. Either disestablish the C of E or make the vicars follow the laws set down by the Head of their Church, one HMtQ.
You can't have it both ways.
That means Russia out of Ukraine, including Crimea.
But you're going to struggle to convince me that the change in polling fortunes was driven by Tory IHT proposals rather than Brown's election hesitancy.
Actually, that's a minefield.
Do you recognise yourself as a male homosexual?
Is there anything in the NT which you would recognise as saying generally Mind your own fucking business and leave othe people alone?
Since about 2005, and in almost every Western economy, something historically unprecedented and extremely alarming has been happening to energy consumption: it’s either flatlining or in decline. This remarkable but little discussed fact is jeopardising almost every aspect of our public policy, from climate change mitigation, through national security to societal progression itself. President Biden’s plans to vastly increase spending on renewables such as wind and solar through the Inflation Reduction Act are grabbing the headlines, and it’s not hard to see why, but they may actually be counterproductive, and in any case are overshadowed by the sweeping macroscopic trend of falling Western demand for energy.
According to data collected by the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, total energy consumption in the UK, for example, is back at levels not seen since the 1950s; there has been a 30 percent decline from its peak in 2003, which is astonishing given that the population has increased by 12.5 percent, to 67 million, over the same period."
https://quillette.com/2022/08/24/the-energy-of-nations/
The history of sabbatarianism and its collision with such things as working-class recreation (on the only free day of the week) and innocent activities such as musical concerts is one of the more intriguing tributaries of Victorian social history.
Be gentle.
They spread the idea that only millionaires should pay any tax, not just IHT.
You can see why a majority of members don’t want to lose Boris, why in the confidence vote so many MPs still backed him as best option for next election, when he spoke today, hearing him for the first time in a while, what a breath of fresh air after Sunak and Truss, straight away you can see how the electorate fell for the cad in the first place. The gravitas is there, the charisma is there, a certain chutzpah, courage even - that makes you believe what he is saying - it’s the complete opposite from how strained and false Sunak and Truss come across.
Look, they may all be dishonest and lying, but there’s good and bad at it.
The C of E very much is a public body and arm of the state. You're just coming up with crap justifications. The Queen can't be a Christian one moment and then not at all the next moment when signing something into law.
We need to strip out the power of conducting legal marriages from all religious sects given that some such as the C of E refuse to follow the law of the land. Only civil registry offices should have that power.
Just saying.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/aug/24/sacked-labour-mp-sam-tarry-faces-reselection-battle-before-party-conference
What sort of Leader happy to have you in Cabinet one minute, unnecessarily machinating to end your political career the next? Surely way over the top decision making from Team Starmer and his NEC?
As the Johnson era/error draws to an end, perhaps BoJo can be put in the same category.
If it is, then who are the MEPs that the voters in NI elected?
If it is, then who represents NI on the EU Commission?
You think I am joking when I say that the evidence suggests that Christ was an active homosexual.
Unlike you. Remember MH17?
If you genuinely want the war over, why aren't you demanding Russia leaves Crimea? If you genuinely want the war over, why aren't you demanding the UK applies maximum pressure to ensure Russia leaves Crimea, thus ending the war?
Seems to me that you don't genuinely want the war over. Instead you simply want Russia to win the war, then be able to launch its next war.
But I don't think it makes sense to criticise religions on the grounds that they don't accord with modern sensibilities. If God exists, it would seem unlikely that he changes his views on morality with the times. Given that human moral norms have changed wildly over the course of human history, it would seem more likely that God's views contain quite a few elements which are out of step with 21st Century western thinking than it would that we have happened now at this point in history on a morality which accords with God's.
If any religion were true, I would expect it to contain quite a lot that I would find uncomfortable.
The deal does explicitly recognise NI as a part of the UK, and as a sovereign part of the UK a future PM Truss is 100% entitled to pass the NI Protocol Bill, and the EU is fully entitled to butt out of the UK's sovereign territory.
The Queen is Head of State and as part of that role signs what Parliament has passed into law. That is completely separate from her role ad Head of the Church of England preserving its role as our established Christian Church.
It was my right to refuse to get married in a registry office, if you wish to have a civil non religious marriage that is your affair. However we religious whether Christian, Muslim, Hindu or Jew consider our religious marriage more important than the legal one and now it is right that you can have a legal wedding at the same time as a religious one with a priest or Imam or Rabbi licensed to do so
This is one of my favourite songs of 2022, that my wife discovered on TikTok, "God Is A Freak", its quite apt:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e07I7io1myI
2. Why is this alarming?
But marriage is basically a legal contract rather than a religious sacrament (it has always been thus since the 16thC in Scotland for instance*). In that sense, therefore, it's not so much modern sensibilities but practicalities.
* In law. The church bit was never essential. Though people of various denominations liked to go to church for it as well.
You have also said you believe in the 10 commandments on this thread, yet you support Boris who has clearly lied. In the past you have justified such things as long as it is not illegal. Doesn't God set a higher standard? He appears to by the 10 commandments. Shouldn't you by not supporting Boris who is clearly breaking a commandment.
I also feel if Brown had gone ahead with that election, he could have won it, though the size of majority uncertain which is why they called it off, because Browns limitations as PM were not yet clear, nor his failures as Chancellor yet known, he still had a strong reputation and the Tories a weak one, an election at that time may have come too soon for the Tories under Dave and George.
That is not even true, if we confine ourselves to the EU. (It is certainly not true in the wider world.)
Cyprus.
The Turkish Army invaded in 1974 & occupied 1/3rd of the island which is de facto partitioned. Eventually, the partition has become accepted, in the sense that no-one expects much change anytime soon.
That is what will most likely happen now. There will be a de facto partitioning of Eastern Ukraine.
I'm curious why hate-filled bigots like HYUFD and Liam Fox think its OK for atheists like me to have a secular marriage that doesn't conform to their religion, but that gay atheists or others can't have their own secular marriage?
Marriage has bugger all to do with religion. If it did, I wouldn't be married. If your Church wants to deny marriage for whatever reason, I'm OK with that and I'd oppose the law compelling your Church to enforce it - Parliament compelling the Church to go against their beliefs would be wrong, but the Church trying to enforce its beliefs on non-believers is equally wrong.
Live and let live.