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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
Whether they needed it or not, that's what they got. You need to live with it, not be bitter about it. There has to be a parable in the Bible about not letting how others live upset you so much.
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."
Is it not possible that energy use is falling at least partially because of.. errr... Government attempts to reduce energy usage?
Lightbulbs. How many houses use to run 60W or 100W lightbulbs. Now mostly replaced with bulbs likely to be around 5W. Considering lights are on a lot in the winter that is a massive power saving when multiplied up across the country.
I glanced at the Quillette piece. The argument seems to be that, in the past, more efficient energy use led to other uses being economic, so total energy use went up. So, to take the light bulb example, lower energy bulbs means we should be using a lot more of them. That's not happening, and that's a bad thing.
Now, that has happened in the past. A single candle was replaced by a gas lamp was replaced by multiple light bulbs. But it also looks like we have maxed out on things we want to illuminate. The same probably goes for other energy uses. We can generally warm our houses to 20 degrees if we want to. 30 degrees would be possible but unpleasant.
I don't know what problems that causes economically, unless you derive money and power from selling energy.
But we have switched from prior things that consumed energy to other ones.
Yes I only may only have a 5w bulb on my ceiling, but I now have a 60" TV that needs illuminating too.
Total global energy consumption has gone up, not done, as you'd expect - but our taxation being punitive on domestic fuel energy but zero-rated on imports has led us to us exporting our energy consumption and importing finished goods like that 60" TV instead.
Countries like China are producing and consuming more energy and we are buying from them goods produced by that energy. So we are still indirectly consuming energy, we've simply exported that consumption from a country that uses primarily clean fuels, to a country that still uses coal.
You may well have a large TV, but it likely uses similar-to-less energy than a smaller CRT set did. Accelerating electrons at a screen was pretty energy-inefficient (which is why the screen got staticy and the back of the set got warm and they used to tell people to unplug their sets lest they catch fire.)
Same thing with computers. Once everything goes solid-state, the power needed falls by an order of magnitude. So the laptop I'm typing on doesn't need a fan and the battery lasts all day.
Now the claim being made is that we should find an alternative use for all this saved energy. But TV screens have got about as big as they can usefully get. I wouldn't want my computer to be any bigger, and wouldn't really notice if it got any faster.
And whilst manufacturing is an issue, there are gains there because stuff generally breaks down less, so doesn't need to be replaced as often. The more use something gets, the lighter its environmental footprint.
I'm not surprised that global energy use is still going up- there is a lot of the world that is nowhere near the levels of "enough" that the West has reached. But we shouldn't feel that we have to use energy just because. And we should absolutely be thinking about the externalities and whether some of the things we do are dumb and wasteful.
As a planet we are finding alternative uses for all this saved energy. Total energy consumption is going up, not down.
We're simply offshoring our energy consumption and importing the proceeds of it.
Absolutely we should be thinking about the externalities of energy, but we should also recognise that abundant, cheap, clean energy allows us to do many good things with that energy and we should be seeking to enable that future.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
God is single! Marriage = Socialism!
No, marriage is the backbone of conservatism
"And thus spake Sunil unto his PB Disciples: 'Know ye that the Lord God did NOT marry the baby-mama of His only begotten son!'."
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
We religious like We Tories and We English. Belong to the in group, bully and hate and marginalise the out group. At all costs.
The gospels are primarily a sustained hymn of hatred of utterly horrible bigots like you.
No, if we really were that then homosexuality would be illegal again as would divorce and we would scrap Holyrood and expel Scottish MPs from Westminster and arrest Sturgeon and also expel all non English born from England.
The words of Christ are many things but words of hatred certainly not
The words of Christ may not be hatred, but you don't care about Christ.
The words of Paul have more hatred, and you care more about your own hate-filled ramblings than anything Jesus said.
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
Off to bed, but if I may, vide Aristotle:
"man is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it [...]."
Quick glance at front pages. Big Problems for Starmer and Labour Mount up on the “I”. Tory members don’t deserve derision on front of the Independent. In the Tele Sunak plays the “wrong to empower scientists in pandemic” card It’s interesting how Anti Truss Murdoch’s Times has been throughout? The star has lost it on weather again, this time drawing willies all over the place best reserved for Australian metrological charts? Sure it may rain in London tomorrow morning, but not bad weekend after that. The big story is on front of the mail: after I raged at Albanian traffickers bussing them to the channel yesterday, Patel has a new agreement with Albania to fly them straight back. I’m sure someone will ask, how much tax payer dosh is Patel bunging them in this attempt to hold on to her job?
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
How anglocentric of you. That's certainly not the case in Scotland. Hence the complete incomprehension of southerners when they got to Scotland and found that making a contract before witnesses, but not in church, was sufficient to become married.
{The laws were changed - influential southerners were getting upset at what happened to their children and heirs.}
Ask the average Presbyterian if they consider the religious aspect of their marriage or the Scottish civil law aspect of their marriage more important. Their answer will almost certainly be the same as mine
"Wah, wah, what I think is more important than the historical facts." And I have just given you the facts.
Another is that marriage is not a sacrament in the Presbyterian tradition. You do understand? Quite different.
Another is that the religious aspect was so downplayed that people didn't even get married in church. In the frontp arlour if it was OK. The minister might come along, as well. Or perhaps folk might ask to have the manse study for a few minutes.
No you haven't. Even in the Presbyterian Church most Presbyterians would still see their marriage as primarily a witness of their union before God, not a civil one, regardless of location
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
You hate gays by refusing to let them get married in your state church against the laws of the same state.
Of course, maybe you know better than God.
Clearly you know better than God as you have just redefined marriage outside of what it is defined in in the Bible as a union between a man and woman for life to suit your agenda
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
So presumably you are in favour of Sharia Law and the Jewish courts?
Even the religious who get married still have to have a civil law union too.
Sharia law and the Jewish courts cannot go against UK law if the 2 are in conflict, if they aren't though yes they are fine
Have you considered the Thirty Nine Articles which sets out the Elizabethan establishment of the Church of England?
This sets out that there were only two sacrements in the Gospel: Baptism and the Eucharist?
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
So presumably you are in favour of Sharia Law and the Jewish courts?
Even the religious who get married still have to have a civil law union too.
Sharia law and the Jewish courts cannot go against UK law if the 2 are in conflict, if they aren't though yes they are fine
Have you considered the Thirty Nine Articles which sets out the Elizabethan establishment of the Church of England?
This sets out that there were only two sacrements in the Gospel: Baptism and the Eucharist?
It sounds like Elizabeth or Cromwell or whoever was Dangerously Woke.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
So presumably you are in favour of Sharia Law and the Jewish courts?
Even the religious who get married still have to have a civil law union too.
Sharia law and the Jewish courts cannot go against UK law if the 2 are in conflict, if they aren't though yes they are fine
So why is the C of E permitted to be in conflict with English law?
It isn't, gay marriage included a religious exemption when it was passed though it would have been better just to stick to gay civil unions in English law and not redifine marriage
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
Not if it assumes a primarily religious term like marriage for its own. Parliament could just have expanded gay civil unions to non religious heterosexuals as the primary form of registry office union rather than assuming the term marriage for both.
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
We had a marriage. We didn't need a change in the law. Marriage is a civil union and has been for thousands of years, since before your religion even existed.
No, marriage is not a civil union, marriage is primarily a religious institution between man and woman for life and that is whether Christian, Muslim or before both Jewish marriage
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
You hate gays by refusing to let them get married in your state church against the laws of the same state.
Of course, maybe you know better than God.
Clearly you know better than God as you have just redefined marriage outside of what it is defined in in the Bible as a union between a man and woman for life to suit your agenda
But God did NOT marry the mother of His only begotten son!
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
Quick glance at front pages. Big Problems for Starmer and Labour Mount up on the “I”. Tory members don’t deserve derision on front of the Independent. In the Tele Sunak plays the “wrong to empower scientists in pandemic” card It’s interesting how Anti Truss Murdoch’s Times has been throughout? The star has lost it on weather again, this time drawing willies all over the place best reserved for Australian metrological charts? Sure it may rain in London tomorrow morning, but not bad weekend after that. The big story is on front of the mail: after I raged at Albanian traffickers bussing them to the channel yesterday, Patel has a new agreement with Albania to fly them straight back. I’m sure someone will ask, how much tax payer dosh is Patel bunging them in this attempt to hold on to her job?
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
Not if it assumes a primarily religious term like marriage for its own. Parliament could just have expanded gay civil unions to non religious heterosexuals as the primary form of registry office union rather than assuming the term marriage for both.
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
We had a marriage. We didn't need a change in the law. Marriage is a civil union and has been for thousands of years, since before your religion even existed.
No, marriage is not a civil union, marriage is primarily a religious institution between man and woman for life and that is whether Christian, Muslim or before both Jewish marriage
That is completely untrue. All cultures have marriage. It's only a religious thing in the ghastly intolerant religions of the book because everything is religious to them. Every language has a word for bastard.
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."
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.
Three reasons. Firstly, because I am not sure that Russia leaving Crimea is the outcome desired by the people of Crimea. I would however be in favour of an internationally-observed plebiscite to establish whether this is the case. Secondly, because I think getting Russia out of Crimea would be a difficult, if not impossible military aim, so making an end to hostilities contingent on that, guarantees an almost permanent conflict, which is good for nobody. Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, nobody involved in the matter gives a flying fuck what I 'demand' (or even what you demand), so it would not make a blind bit of difference.
1. In the only free and fair vote in Crimea, Crimea voted to be independent of Russia and be a part of Ukraine. If its not clear that the people of Crimea want Russia to leave, then why don't we ask them after they've left? They already said they wanted them to leave once before.
2. No getting Russia out of Ukrainian Crimea will not be difficult or impossible, any more than Russia getting Ukraine to give up its independence or territory is going to be difficult or impossible.
3. Yet you keep proclaiming your supposed desire for the war to end, yet you oppose the one way we have to make the war end, which is aiding our allies to win the war and kick the invaders out of their territory.
If we aid Ukraine sufficiently to get Russians kicked out of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, as they've already been kicked out of Snake Island, then the war would be over. Do you want to see that happen, yes or no?
1. Just hold it now. It's gonna be held with one of the interested parties controlling the territory. Hence the international observers.
2. More utterly unsubstantiated bollocks which even the most enthisiastic supporter of Western involvement in the conflict wouldn't put their name to. I never brought Ukraine's willingness or otherwise to give up its independence into this - crappy straw man argument. However, on your second point, it has already been established that it was Western politicians like Truss, not Ukraine, that have pushed the Crimea angle.
3. As we've already established, your point about there being 'only one way' to end the conflict was garbage. And the points that you made to defend that point were shown to be garbage. Repetition of it isn't helping. Or are Turkey not still hanging on to chunks of Cyprus with the square root of fuck all consequences?
1. It can't be held now until the Russian guns leave which allows people to vote freely without reprisals, and the people displaced by Russian guns are allowed to return back to their homes. Your transparent agenda is showing.
2. You are either very ignorant, or a Putinist liar. The Ukrainian President has repeatedly said all of Ukraine must be liberated before the war is over, including Crimea. Why do you know better than the Ukrainian President?
3. Its the one way we have that we can aid the war to end, is to give the aid to Ukraine that they're begging for to end the war on their terms, liberation of their land. Its either that, or we aid Russia to end the war on their terms, defeat of Ukraine. Or we do nothing so prolonging the war as we aren't taking steps to bring it to a conclusion.
So which do you want us to do? Aid Ukraine to help them win the war on their terms? Aid Russia to help them win the war on their terms? Do nothing to help the war end?
1. Hence internationally-observed, to everyone's satisfaction. If I were talking about a Russian-controlled vote, I think there has already been one.
2. Ukraine rightly refusing to rubber stamp the Russian annexation of Crimea isn't the same as making its return a precondition for peace. Ukraine has had various rounds of peace talks with Russia, implying that Crimea's return was not a necessary precondition for the end of current hostilities.
3. Oh, you're allowing two ways for it to end now are you? That's generous, can we persuade you to any further bids? Only one thing is necessary for a war to end. For both sides to stop fighting.
Your arguments are risible - develop a shred of self-awareness and just look at the stream of utter guff you've put your pb name to.
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."
Is it not possible that energy use is falling at least partially because of.. errr... Government attempts to reduce energy usage?
Lightbulbs. How many houses use to run 60W or 100W lightbulbs. Now mostly replaced with bulbs likely to be around 5W. Considering lights are on a lot in the winter that is a massive power saving when multiplied up across the country.
I glanced at the Quillette piece. The argument seems to be that, in the past, more efficient energy use led to other uses being economic, so total energy use went up. So, to take the light bulb example, lower energy bulbs means we should be using a lot more of them. That's not happening, and that's a bad thing.
Now, that has happened in the past. A single candle was replaced by a gas lamp was replaced by multiple light bulbs. But it also looks like we have maxed out on things we want to illuminate. The same probably goes for other energy uses. We can generally warm our houses to 20 degrees if we want to. 30 degrees would be possible but unpleasant.
I don't know what problems that causes economically, unless you derive money and power from selling energy.
But we have switched from prior things that consumed energy to other ones.
Yes I only may only have a 5w bulb on my ceiling, but I now have a 60" TV that needs illuminating too.
Total global energy consumption has gone up, not done, as you'd expect - but our taxation being punitive on domestic fuel energy but zero-rated on imports has led us to us exporting our energy consumption and importing finished goods like that 60" TV instead.
Countries like China are producing and consuming more energy and we are buying from them goods produced by that energy. So we are still indirectly consuming energy, we've simply exported that consumption from a country that uses primarily clean fuels, to a country that still uses coal.
You may well have a large TV, but it likely uses similar-to-less energy than a smaller CRT set did. Accelerating electrons at a screen was pretty energy-inefficient (which is why the screen got staticy and the back of the set got warm and they used to tell people to unplug their sets lest they catch fire.)
Same thing with computers. Once everything goes solid-state, the power needed falls by an order of magnitude. So the laptop I'm typing on doesn't need a fan and the battery lasts all day.
Now the claim being made is that we should find an alternative use for all this saved energy. But TV screens have got about as big as they can usefully get. I wouldn't want my computer to be any bigger, and wouldn't really notice if it got any faster.
And whilst manufacturing is an issue, there are gains there because stuff generally breaks down less, so doesn't need to be replaced as often. The more use something gets, the lighter its environmental footprint.
I'm not surprised that global energy use is still going up- there is a lot of the world that is nowhere near the levels of "enough" that the West has reached. But we shouldn't feel that we have to use energy just because. And we should absolutely be thinking about the externalities and whether some of the things we do are dumb and wasteful.
As a planet we are finding alternative uses for all this saved energy. Total energy consumption is going up, not down.
We're simply offshoring our energy consumption and importing the proceeds of it.
Absolutely we should be thinking about the externalities of energy, but we should also recognise that abundant, cheap, clean energy allows us to do many good things with that energy and we should be seeking to enable that future.
While that's true, the pace of increase is slowing dramatically. China's energy growth used to be 3x GDP, it's now under 0.5x..
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Why shouldn't Bartholomew and his wife be married, if that's what they want?
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
Not if it assumes a primarily religious term like marriage for its own. Parliament could just have expanded gay civil unions to non religious heterosexuals as the primary form of registry office union rather than assuming the term marriage for both.
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
We had a marriage. We didn't need a change in the law. Marriage is a civil union and has been for thousands of years, since before your religion even existed.
No, marriage is not a civil union, marriage is primarily a religious institution between man and woman for life and that is whether Christian, Muslim or before both Jewish marriage
Key word in your sentence there - 'primarily'.
This accepts it is not 'wholly' a religious institution. It must therefore, at least in a small part, be non-religious.
As such, you are, it seems, in fact accepting the central argument others are making about marraige, but trying to do so without being too obvious about it.
You are always very careful with your words as you like to make clear, and would not have said primarily (definition - for the most part; mainly) if you meant something else, so it is no accidental inclusion.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
It's to US religious you fucking banana. Always this we this, we that, backed up by a psychotic need to control and dominate. Leave other people alone you utter creep.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Why shouldn't Bartholomew and his wife be married, if that's what they want?
It doesn't impact upon you or me.
Exactly. Legal marriage is different from marriage 'in the sight of God'. They are both marriage. Some are interested in getting both kinds, some only in the legal side. Hyufd is wrong on this and Barty right.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
God is single! Marriage = Socialism!
No, marriage is the backbone of conservatism
"And thus spake Sunil unto his PB Disciples: 'Know ye that the Lord God did NOT marry the baby-mama of His only begotten son!'."
Joseph was Jesus' father, committed to Mary as his wife as per God's plan
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
I do concede you are probably still an animal, most likely a form of hyena
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
We religious like We Tories and We English. Belong to the in group, bully and hate and marginalise the out group. At all costs.
The gospels are primarily a sustained hymn of hatred of utterly horrible bigots like you.
No, if we really were that then homosexuality would be illegal again as would divorce and we would scrap Holyrood and expel Scottish MPs from Westminster and arrest Sturgeon and also expel all non English born from England.
The words of Christ are many things but words of hatred certainly not
The words of Christ may not be hatred, but you don't care about Christ.
The words of Paul have more hatred, and you care more about your own hate-filled ramblings than anything Jesus said.
Believing marriage is as intended and set out in the Bible (even by Jesus) as being between a man and woman for life is not hatred
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Marriage is civil. Has been since for thousands of years since before your Jesus that you so love to ignore was according to your own religious text born or said the words "render unto Caesar" about separating religious and civil laws.
So no thanks, civil partnerships are not the same, when people want civil marriage. Try again.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
So presumably you are in favour of Sharia Law and the Jewish courts?
Even the religious who get married still have to have a civil law union too.
Sharia law and the Jewish courts cannot go against UK law if the 2 are in conflict, if they aren't though yes they are fine
Have you considered the Thirty Nine Articles which sets out the Elizabethan establishment of the Church of England?
This sets out that there were only two sacrements in the Gospel: Baptism and the Eucharist?
Marriage doesn't need to be a sacrament to still be primarily a witness of your union before God not the state
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
Until about 5 minutes ago (in the scheme of things) almost everyone believed that marriage was something between one man and one woman. To describe people who still believe in that as purveyors of hatred seems ridiculous IMO.
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
In his view that would have been a union not a marriage, as he made quite clear marriage was a union between a man and a woman
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage already was a going concern of the state in Roman times and Jesus never tried to overturn that. Under Roman law, marriage was a private (civil) contract. Pagans, Romans, Greeks, Byzantines, Egyptians - they could all get married, with or without the Church.
What the Church does is up to the Church. What Parliament does, is for the State, not the Church.
Have your Anglican communion determine whatever laws the Church does or does not want to state for religious marriages. Civil marriages pre-date the Church.
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
Not if it assumes a primarily religious term like marriage for its own. Parliament could just have expanded gay civil unions to non religious heterosexuals as the primary form of registry office union rather than assuming the term marriage for both.
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
We had a marriage. We didn't need a change in the law. Marriage is a civil union and has been for thousands of years, since before your religion even existed.
No, marriage is not a civil union, marriage is primarily a religious institution between man and woman for life and that is whether Christian, Muslim or before both Jewish marriage
That is completely untrue. All cultures have marriage. It's only a religious thing in the ghastly intolerant religions of the book because everything is religious to them. Every language has a word for bastard.
All cultures usually have a union of 2 people, all cultures do not however have a religious marriage in the terms Christians or Jews or Muslims would view it as
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
But still a marriage between a man and a woman
So some parts of the rules are important and others are not? Who decides which bits are inviolable, besides yourself?
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Why shouldn't Bartholomew and his wife be married, if that's what they want?
It doesn't impact upon you or me.
They can have a union in law yes, as can homosexuals. However calling both a religious marriage does impact on the religious as they aren't
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
Apple trees... unfortunate echoes of the Garden of Eden fiasco, I reckon.
(Though I don't know how/why the tree of knowledge got associated with apples.)
Until about 5 minutes ago (in the scheme of things) almost everyone believed that marriage was something between one man and one woman. To describe people who still believe in that as purveyors of hatred seems ridiculous IMO.
Well it isn't. For most of human history a great many peoples thought slavery was reasonable and practiced it to some degree, until about 10 minutes ago (in the scheme of things), yet we don't have a problem considering that a great evil if someone suggested it now.
Now, you may say that that is not the same thing, that believing marriage is between one man and one woman is not equivalent to believing it is ok to enslave others, and I would agree with you on that point.
However, your logic is that 'People thought it was ok before, so it cannot be called purveying hatred now', and that is one of the most ridiculous arguments people employ in these situations, when you extend that logic to things beyond the one thing that people are arguing is ok because it was that way in the past.
I don't think holding a traditional view on marriage is in itself purveying hatred (though some who are traditional may act in a hateful way as well), but the idea it cannot be because most people used to think that way is just plain wrong. IMO.
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
Apple trees... unfortunate echoes of the Garden of Eden fiasco, I reckon.
(Though I don't know how/why the tree of knowledge got associated with apples.)
I sometimes wonder where Uncle Hoof is now. And if the marriage was happy
Until about 5 minutes ago (in the scheme of things) almost everyone believed that marriage was something between one man and one woman. To describe people who still believe in that as purveyors of hatred seems ridiculous IMO.
Not really. Actually there's plenty of evidence that in antiquity polygamous and/or same-sex unions were allowed in different societies. As there is evidence in more modern times outside of Europe too. So the idea of marriage as being exclusively between just one man and just one woman may be the more historical oddity.
There's evidence for same sex unions in Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, China and more. Multiple Roman Emperors had same-sex marriages including Nero.
But either way, same sex love has been legal for fifty years. Denying those who love each other, in committed and legal relationships, the right of marriage, is hatred.
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
In his view that would have been a union not a marriage, as he made quite clear marriage was a union between a man and a woman
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
Jesus fucking Christ on a Harley Davidson you grovelling wombat, he is talking about DIVORCE in a society where all marriages were MF only; surely even a drivelling idiot like you can see that he would have said θῆλυς if he meant θῆλυς, while actually he says exclusively throughout the chapter, γυνή?
There is a stage at which ignorance and stupidity become moral faults and serious sins, and you are well past 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
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
Not if it assumes a primarily religious term like marriage for its own. Parliament could just have expanded gay civil unions to non religious heterosexuals as the primary form of registry office union rather than assuming the term marriage for both.
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
We had a marriage. We didn't need a change in the law. Marriage is a civil union and has been for thousands of years, since before your religion even existed.
No, marriage is not a civil union, marriage is primarily a religious institution between man and woman for life and that is whether Christian, Muslim or before both Jewish marriage
Key word in your sentence there - 'primarily'.
This accepts it is not 'wholly' a religious institution. It must therefore, at least in a small part, be non-religious.
As such, you are, it seems, in fact accepting the central argument others are making about marraige, but trying to do so without being too obvious about it.
You are always very careful with your words as you like to make clear, and would not have said primarily (definition - for the most part; mainly) if you meant something else, so it is no accidental inclusion.
Well done.
It hasn't been because the state has assumed the term for itself but in its origins it is a religious term
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
God is single! Marriage = Socialism!
No, marriage is the backbone of conservatism
"And thus spake Sunil unto his PB Disciples: 'Know ye that the Lord God did NOT marry the baby-mama of His only begotten son!'."
Joseph was Jesus' father, committed to Mary as his wife as per God's plan
But God was the father - He did NOT marry the mother of His son.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Why shouldn't Bartholomew and his wife be married, if that's what they want?
It doesn't impact upon you or me.
They can have a union in law yes, as can homosexuals. However calling both a religious marriage does impact on the religious as they aren't
Who the hell said "religious marriage"? Not me.
Mine is a civil marriage thank you very much. The law is to determine civil marriages, not religious ones, as the law has been involved in for many thousands of years.
You can keep your religious claptrap to your Church. Pray to whatever God you want, I don't seek to deny you that right, but don't seek to deny me a marriage.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Why shouldn't Bartholomew and his wife be married, if that's what they want?
It doesn't impact upon you or me.
Exactly. Legal marriage is different from marriage 'in the sight of God'. They are both marriage. Some are interested in getting both kinds, some only in the legal side. Hyufd is wrong on this and Barty right.
They aren't. Otherwise there would have been no need for civil unions in the first place, you could just have had gay marriage straight away. The reason there wasn't was because at that time the government was not trying to challenge the religious definition of marriage of lifelong union between a man and 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.
For the religious marriage is actually primarily a religious sacrament not a legal contract
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
Not if it assumes a primarily religious term like marriage for its own. Parliament could just have expanded gay civil unions to non religious heterosexuals as the primary form of registry office union rather than assuming the term marriage for both.
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
We had a marriage. We didn't need a change in the law. Marriage is a civil union and has been for thousands of years, since before your religion even existed.
No, marriage is not a civil union, marriage is primarily a religious institution between man and woman for life and that is whether Christian, Muslim or before both Jewish marriage
Key word in your sentence there - 'primarily'.
This accepts it is not 'wholly' a religious institution. It must therefore, at least in a small part, be non-religious.
As such, you are, it seems, in fact accepting the central argument others are making about marraige, but trying to do so without being too obvious about it.
You are always very careful with your words as you like to make clear, and would not have said primarily (definition - for the most part; mainly) if you meant something else, so it is no accidental inclusion.
Well done.
It hasn't been because the state has assumed the term for itself but in its origins it is a religious term
No it is not!
Marriage pre-dates your religion.
In Roman times, when you think Jesus was born, marriage was a civil union between families. It is not religious.
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
Apple trees... unfortunate echoes of the Garden of Eden fiasco, I reckon.
(Though I don't know how/why the tree of knowledge got associated with apples.)
According to Suzie Dent, apple used to be a generic term for fruit. Hence pineapple was a fruit that resembled a pine cone.
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
In his view that would have been a union not a marriage, as he made quite clear marriage was a union between a man and a woman
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
Jesus fucking Christ on a Harley Davidson you grovelling wombat, he is talking about DIVORCE in a society where all marriages were MF only; surely even a drivelling idiot like you can see that he would have said θῆλυς if he meant θῆλυς, while actually he says exclusively throughout the chapter, γυνή?
There is a stage at which ignorance and stupidity become moral faults and serious sins, and you are well past it.
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.
Three reasons. Firstly, because I am not sure that Russia leaving Crimea is the outcome desired by the people of Crimea. I would however be in favour of an internationally-observed plebiscite to establish whether this is the case. Secondly, because I think getting Russia out of Crimea would be a difficult, if not impossible military aim, so making an end to hostilities contingent on that, guarantees an almost permanent conflict, which is good for nobody. Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, nobody involved in the matter gives a flying fuck what I 'demand' (or even what you demand), so it would not make a blind bit of difference.
1. In the only free and fair vote in Crimea, Crimea voted to be independent of Russia and be a part of Ukraine. If its not clear that the people of Crimea want Russia to leave, then why don't we ask them after they've left? They already said they wanted them to leave once before.
2. No getting Russia out of Ukrainian Crimea will not be difficult or impossible, any more than Russia getting Ukraine to give up its independence or territory is going to be difficult or impossible.
3. Yet you keep proclaiming your supposed desire for the war to end, yet you oppose the one way we have to make the war end, which is aiding our allies to win the war and kick the invaders out of their territory.
If we aid Ukraine sufficiently to get Russians kicked out of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, as they've already been kicked out of Snake Island, then the war would be over. Do you want to see that happen, yes or no?
1. Just hold it now. It's gonna be held with one of the interested parties controlling the territory. Hence the international observers.
2. More utterly unsubstantiated bollocks which even the most enthisiastic supporter of Western involvement in the conflict wouldn't put their name to. I never brought Ukraine's willingness or otherwise to give up its independence into this - crappy straw man argument. However, on your second point, it has already been established that it was Western politicians like Truss, not Ukraine, that have pushed the Crimea angle.
3. As we've already established, your point about there being 'only one way' to end the conflict was garbage. And the points that you made to defend that point were shown to be garbage. Repetition of it isn't helping. Or are Turkey not still hanging on to chunks of Cyprus with the square root of fuck all consequences?
1. It can't be held now until the Russian guns leave which allows people to vote freely without reprisals, and the people displaced by Russian guns are allowed to return back to their homes. Your transparent agenda is showing.
2. You are either very ignorant, or a Putinist liar. The Ukrainian President has repeatedly said all of Ukraine must be liberated before the war is over, including Crimea. Why do you know better than the Ukrainian President?
3. Its the one way we have that we can aid the war to end, is to give the aid to Ukraine that they're begging for to end the war on their terms, liberation of their land. Its either that, or we aid Russia to end the war on their terms, defeat of Ukraine. Or we do nothing so prolonging the war as we aren't taking steps to bring it to a conclusion.
So which do you want us to do? Aid Ukraine to help them win the war on their terms? Aid Russia to help them win the war on their terms? Do nothing to help the war end?
1. Hence internationally-observed, to everyone's satisfaction. If I were talking about a Russian-controlled vote, I think there has already been one.
2. Ukraine rightly refusing to rubber stamp the Russian annexation of Crimea isn't the same as making its return a precondition for peace. Ukraine has had various rounds of peace talks with Russia, implying that Crimea's return was not a necessary precondition for the end of current hostilities.
3. Oh, you're allowing two ways for it to end now are you? That's generous, can we persuade you to any further bids? Only one thing is necessary for a war to end. For both sides to stop fighting.
Your arguments are risible - develop a shred of self-awareness and just look at the stream of utter guff you've put your pb name to.
Until about 5 minutes ago (in the scheme of things) almost everyone believed that marriage was something between one man and one woman. To describe people who still believe in that as purveyors of hatred seems ridiculous IMO.
According to Mormoms, marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman and a woman 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.
For the religious marriage is actually primarily a religious sacrament not a legal contract
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Why shouldn't Bartholomew and his wife be married, if that's what they want?
It doesn't impact upon you or me.
Exactly. Legal marriage is different from marriage 'in the sight of God'. They are both marriage. Some are interested in getting both kinds, some only in the legal side. Hyufd is wrong on this and Barty right.
They aren't. Otherwise there would have been no need for civil unions in the first place, you could just have had gay marriage straight away. The reason there wasn't was because at that time the government was not trying to challenge the religious definition of marriage of lifelong union between a man and woman
You couldn't have gay marriage without the law allowing it, because marriage is a legal not religious construct.
If marriage were a religious construct then Churches that wanted to allow gay marriages (which did exist) could have done so without a change in the law, but they couldn't, because marriage is legal not religious.
You can have religious regulations on top of the legal commitment. That's between you, your Church and your God. Not Parliament.
Anyway - Daughter news: she's been referred to hospital next Tuesday for a morning of tests, ultrasound, MRI, the lot. A bit concerning but also encouraging that it's been so prompt.
Bizarrely, the hospital rang her before the GP. When she asked them what the referral was for ie why they said they couldn't tell her as the GP had to. Then the GP rang her and asked what the problem was. So she had to tell him that he was meant to be telling her the result of her tests. He knew nothing about this but eventually managed to locate her notes and tell her that the test results meant she was being referred to hospital.
At this point Daughter decided that playing footsie with Dr Kafka was more than she could bear and came home. She's just relieved to have been referred to a specialist department. As am I. Let's hope they get to the bottom of what's ailing her.
Until about 5 minutes ago (in the scheme of things) almost everyone believed that marriage was something between one man and one woman. To describe people who still believe in that as purveyors of hatred seems ridiculous IMO.
According to Mormoms, marriage is a sacred institution between a man and a woman and a woman 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.
For the religious marriage is actually primarily a religious sacrament not a legal contract
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Why shouldn't Bartholomew and his wife be married, if that's what they want?
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
In his view that would have been a union not a marriage, as he made quite clear marriage was a union between a man and a woman
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
Jesus fucking Christ on a Harley Davidson you grovelling wombat, he is talking about DIVORCE in a society where all marriages were MF only; surely even a drivelling idiot like you can see that he would have said θῆλυς if he meant θῆλυς, while actually he says exclusively throughout the chapter, γυνή?
There is a stage at which ignorance and stupidity become moral faults and serious sins, and you are well past 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.
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
I do concede you are probably still an animal, most likely a form of hyena
????? What on earth does that mean? It was a reasonable question. You have previously said you believe in evolution so where does an animal end and a human begin in God's eye. It is a reasonable question to ask. Was Lucy for instance human or animal?
What is your problem or has it just dawned on you tonight that I was right last night. It seems everyone else on here is the same as me and you are alone in your mad ideas. Tonight's conversations have nothing to do with politics and you are being ridiculed by what you described as the handful of true conservatives on here and I have not been involved.
Is it just dawning on you that it is you that has the problems here?
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
Presumably since he could see with his own eyes others not of his followers could marry in different ways he felt it would be ridiculous to claim marriage did not exist for 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.
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
I do concede you are probably still an animal, most likely a form of hyena
????? What on earth does that mean? It was a reasonable question. You have previously said you believe in evolution so where does an animal end and a human begin in God's eye. It is a reasonable question to ask. Was Lucy for instance human or animal?
What is your problem or has it just dawned on you tonight that I was right last night. It seems everyone else on here is the same as me and you are alone in your mad ideas. Tonight's conversations have nothing to do with politics and you are being ridiculed by what you described as the handful of true conservatives on here and I have not been involved.
Is it just dawning on you that it is you that has the problems here?
It's to build a narrative later when someone complains about a pile on 'bullying'.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Marriage is civil. Has been since for thousands of years since before your Jesus that you so love to ignore was according to your own religious text born or said the words "render unto Caesar" about separating religious and civil laws.
So no thanks, civil partnerships are not the same, when people want civil marriage. Try again.
No. He was talking about tax law.
Unions under civil law which linked in with the definition of marriage under the Bible, Koran and Torah were one thing, unions which redefined the definition of marriage to suit their agenda quite another. So no, civil partnerships and marriage can be kept separate.
And given you earlier were advocating abortion until birth for both the disabled and not I don't need to be made to feel morally inferior by you!!!
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
Quick glance at front pages. Big Problems for Starmer and Labour Mount up on the “I”. Tory members don’t deserve derision on front of the Independent. In the Tele Sunak plays the “wrong to empower scientists in pandemic” card It’s interesting how Anti Truss Murdoch’s Times has been throughout? The star has lost it on weather again, this time drawing willies all over the place best reserved for Australian metrological charts? Sure it may rain in London tomorrow morning, but not bad weekend after that. The big story is on front of the mail: after I raged at Albanian traffickers bussing them to the channel yesterday, Patel has a new agreement with Albania to fly them straight back. I’m sure someone will ask, how much tax payer dosh is Patel bunging them in this attempt to hold on to her job?
Even the Mail asks "but can she deliver?".
I think we all know the answer to that one tbh.
Good point Ben. It’s almost like, or very much like, the Mail knows in two weeks time she’s yesterdays chip wrapping, so no need to back her or her plan with the usual stridency.
They are providing a bus service from Albania to the inflatable dinghy though, which is not on. The evil traffickers should stop piddling around now, they have amply demonstrated they could run a travel company to rival the best. Give them a rail franchise and a free port in return for stopping the channel crossings.
rcs1000 said: "Oi. You're beginning to cross a line." Maybe my little hint about the Navajo detectives, Leaphorn and Chee, wasn't clear enough for some.
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
In his view that would have been a union not a marriage, as he made quite clear marriage was a union between a man and a woman
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
Jesus fucking Christ on a Harley Davidson you grovelling wombat, he is talking about DIVORCE in a society where all marriages were MF only; surely even a drivelling idiot like you can see that he would have said θῆλυς if he meant θῆλυς, while actually he says exclusively throughout the chapter, γυνή?
There is a stage at which ignorance and stupidity become moral faults and serious sins, and you are well past 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
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
In his view that would have been a union not a marriage, as he made quite clear marriage was a union between a man and a woman
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
Jesus fucking Christ on a Harley Davidson you grovelling wombat, he is talking about DIVORCE in a society where all marriages were MF only; surely even a drivelling idiot like you can see that he would have said θῆλυς if he meant θῆλυς, while actually he says exclusively throughout the chapter, γυνή?
There is a stage at which ignorance and stupidity become moral faults and serious sins, and you are well past it.
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
He could have a blessing for his union with the tree but not a civil union or religious marriage
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
But still a marriage between a man and a woman
So some parts of the rules are important and others are not? Who decides which bits are inviolable, besides yourself?
Until about 5 minutes ago (in the scheme of things) almost everyone believed that marriage was something between one man and one woman. To describe people who still believe in that as purveyors of hatred seems ridiculous IMO.
Not really. Actually there's plenty of evidence that in antiquity polygamous and/or same-sex unions were allowed in different societies. As there is evidence in more modern times outside of Europe too. So the idea of marriage as being exclusively between just one man and just one woman may be the more historical oddity.
There's evidence for same sex unions in Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, China and more. Multiple Roman Emperors had same-sex marriages including Nero.
But either way, same sex love has been legal for fifty years. Denying those who love each other, in committed and legal relationships, the right of marriage, is hatred.
Allowing them a civil union but not a marriage is not hatred
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
But still a marriage between a man and a woman
So some parts of the rules are important and others are not? Who decides which bits are inviolable, besides yourself?
The Bible
Yet there is still some personal judgement involved, no?
Otherwise you'd be executing doctors for working on the Sabbath.
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Marriage took many forms in the Roman Empire. Jesus certainly took marriage most seriously, but he never tried to prescribe how and whether pagans could marry.
In his view that would have been a union not a marriage, as he made quite clear marriage was a union between a man and a woman
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.” https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
Jesus fucking Christ on a Harley Davidson you grovelling wombat, he is talking about DIVORCE in a society where all marriages were MF only; surely even a drivelling idiot like you can see that he would have said θῆλυς if he meant θῆλυς, while actually he says exclusively throughout the chapter, γυνή?
There is a stage at which ignorance and stupidity become moral faults and serious sins, and you are well past 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
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
Yes you can sign your contract in Church.
You can sign your contract in a nice, secular wedding venue like I did.
You can sign your contract in a Town Hall.
You can sign your contract in a Pub.
Where you want to sign your marriage contract is your own personal choice, because it's got nothing to do with any Church, unless YOU choose to involve the Church, or a Pub, or anything else.
No, my marriage contract IS defined by being in church otherwise it is not a proper religious marriage. You can have the legal contract alongside which if you do not want a religious marriage you can just call a civil union but it is the religious part that makes it a marriage
What your Church decrees is up to your Church and the people who choose to attend the Church.
What Parliament decrees has sod all to do with the Church.
That is why people can have civil marriages following Parliamentary law, or uncivil marriages based on whatever religious dogma you want to follow.
But are you now pretending that my wife and I, and everyone else who ever had a civil wedding, are not actually married? Are you so willing to die on this hill that you pretension now is that we're not married at all, since it is the religious part that makes it a marriage?
Not if it assumes a primarily religious term like marriage for its own. Parliament could just have expanded gay civil unions to non religious heterosexuals as the primary form of registry office union rather than assuming the term marriage for both.
You and your wife just needed a legal union, you did not need a marriage
We had a marriage. We didn't need a change in the law. Marriage is a civil union and has been for thousands of years, since before your religion even existed.
No, marriage is not a civil union, marriage is primarily a religious institution between man and woman for life and that is whether Christian, Muslim or before both Jewish marriage
Key word in your sentence there - 'primarily'.
This accepts it is not 'wholly' a religious institution. It must therefore, at least in a small part, be non-religious.
As such, you are, it seems, in fact accepting the central argument others are making about marraige, but trying to do so without being too obvious about it.
You are always very careful with your words as you like to make clear, and would not have said primarily (definition - for the most part; mainly) if you meant something else, so it is no accidental inclusion.
Well done.
It hasn't been because the state has assumed the term for itself but in its origins it is a religious term
No it is not!
Marriage pre-dates your religion.
In Roman times, when you think Jesus was born, marriage was a civil union between families. It is not religious.
True dat, ditto Greece and every other society I know about. Marriage is basically a union whose children are not bastards and therefore get to inherit property, and bastards are the children od unions which are not marriages. If you think that's circular, complain to Ugg the caveman about it.
What irritates me is HYUFD's shameless ignorance and incuriosity about 1. Everything which is not Christianity, and 2. Christianity.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Marriage is civil. Has been since for thousands of years since before your Jesus that you so love to ignore was according to your own religious text born or said the words "render unto Caesar" about separating religious and civil laws.
So no thanks, civil partnerships are not the same, when people want civil marriage. Try again.
No. He was talking about tax law.
Unions under civil law which linked in with the definition of marriage under the Bible, Koran and Torah were one thing, unions which redefined the definition of marriage to suit their agenda quite another. So no, civil partnerships and marriage can be kept separate.
And given you earlier were advocating abortion until birth for both the disabled and not I don't need to be made to feel morally inferior by you!!!
Graeco-Roman laws significantly predate both Biblical or Koranic law, and were more relevant to most of the world than Torah law too.
Are you trying to deny that the Romans had marriages? Their marriages were civil, not religious, constructs and that is what marriage was for thousands of years before the supposed birth of Christ.
So don't try and hijack marriage and steal it for your religion. Its secular and available to all whether religious or not.
You can add on whatever religious trimmings you want and keep to them if you please, nobody wants to deny you that right, but that is on top of civil marriage, not instead of it.
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
But still a marriage between a man and a woman
So some parts of the rules are important and others are not? Who decides which bits are inviolable, besides yourself?
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
I do concede you are probably still an animal, most likely a form of hyena
????? What on earth does that mean? It was a reasonable question. You have previously said you believe in evolution so where does an animal end and a human begin in God's eye. It is a reasonable question to ask. Was Lucy for instance human or animal?
What is your problem or has it just dawned on you tonight that I was right last night. It seems everyone else on here is the same as me and you are alone in your mad ideas. Tonight's conversations have nothing to do with politics and you are being ridiculed by what you described as the handful of true conservatives on here and I have not been involved.
Is it just dawning on you that it is you that has the problems here?
No. It just shows that the vast majority of PB including you are social liberals and economic conservatives (and most of those on here tonight would not now vote Conservative either but even of those that would far fewer are social conservatives). Just as socialist Corbynites regularly get drowned out for having views beyond the pale before the last election so social and religious conservatives like me now equally get drowned out by the herd, in fact even more so.
Yet millions if not billions globally would still define marriage as a term to define a lifelong union between a man and woman only
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.
Three reasons. Firstly, because I am not sure that Russia leaving Crimea is the outcome desired by the people of Crimea. I would however be in favour of an internationally-observed plebiscite to establish whether this is the case. Secondly, because I think getting Russia out of Crimea would be a difficult, if not impossible military aim, so making an end to hostilities contingent on that, guarantees an almost permanent conflict, which is good for nobody. Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, nobody involved in the matter gives a flying fuck what I 'demand' (or even what you demand), so it would not make a blind bit of difference.
If Russia leaving Crimea isn't the outcome desired by the people of Crimea, then that is only because of the ethnic cleansing committed since the 2014 theft.
I don't know anything about that, but the numbers would be interesting.
The numbers are out there, they had a vote in 1991. They voted to leave Russia by 54.1%
There has not been a free and fair vote, pre-invasion, since then.
So unless you have any evidence that the Ukrainians in Crimea have changed their minds since then, their vote stands and Russia should leave Ukrainian Crimea.
Again I ask, you pretend you want the war over, rather than Russia to win the war as you transparently do, but if the UK and allies give enough aid to Ukraine to dislodge Russia from all of Ukraine then the war would be over. If that happened, would that be a good thing in your eyes?
The war ending in complete Russian capitulation (but with Russia retaining the function of a state and not have its nukes fall to warlords etc.) would be a welcome development.
I can't agree with the way you've phrased your sentence, because it's a blank cheque. How much aid? 'As much as it takes.' - well 'No' then. Anyone who says 'as much as it takes' when British subjects are choosing between heating and eating, is the real traitor.
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
But still a marriage between a man and a woman
So some parts of the rules are important and others are not? Who decides which bits are inviolable, besides yourself?
The Bible
So the Bible matters more than Parliament or the law on civil matters to you?
You really have gone off the deep end. You make the Mullahs of Afghanistan look moderate.
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.
Three reasons. Firstly, because I am not sure that Russia leaving Crimea is the outcome desired by the people of Crimea. I would however be in favour of an internationally-observed plebiscite to establish whether this is the case. Secondly, because I think getting Russia out of Crimea would be a difficult, if not impossible military aim, so making an end to hostilities contingent on that, guarantees an almost permanent conflict, which is good for nobody. Thirdly, and possibly most importantly, nobody involved in the matter gives a flying fuck what I 'demand' (or even what you demand), so it would not make a blind bit of difference.
If Russia leaving Crimea isn't the outcome desired by the people of Crimea, then that is only because of the ethnic cleansing committed since the 2014 theft.
I don't know anything about that, but the numbers would be interesting.
The numbers are out there, they had a vote in 1991. They voted to leave Russia by 54.1%
There has not been a free and fair vote, pre-invasion, since then.
So unless you have any evidence that the Ukrainians in Crimea have changed their minds since then, their vote stands and Russia should leave Ukrainian Crimea.
Again I ask, you pretend you want the war over, rather than Russia to win the war as you transparently do, but if the UK and allies give enough aid to Ukraine to dislodge Russia from all of Ukraine then the war would be over. If that happened, would that be a good thing in your eyes?
The war ending in complete Russian capitulation (but with Russia retaining the function of a state and not have its nukes fall to warlords etc.) would be a welcome development.
I can't agree with the way you've phrased your sentence, because it's a blank cheque. How much aid? 'As much as it takes.' - well 'No' then. Anyone who says 'as much as it takes' when British subjects are choosing between heating and eating, is the real traitor.
So you're not interested in ending the war then. Stop pretending that you are.
I want to bring forward the end of the war by providing Ukraine with the weaponry they need to expel the Russians. You want the war to drag on.
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
I do concede you are probably still an animal, most likely a form of hyena
????? What on earth does that mean? It was a reasonable question. You have previously said you believe in evolution so where does an animal end and a human begin in God's eye. It is a reasonable question to ask. Was Lucy for instance human or animal?
What is your problem or has it just dawned on you tonight that I was right last night. It seems everyone else on here is the same as me and you are alone in your mad ideas. Tonight's conversations have nothing to do with politics and you are being ridiculed by what you described as the handful of true conservatives on here and I have not been involved.
Is it just dawning on you that it is you that has the problems here?
No. It just shows that the vast majority of PB including you are social liberals and economic conservatives (and most of those on here tonight would not now vote Conservative either but even of those that would far fewer are social conservatives). Just as socialist Corbynites regularly get drowned out for having views beyond the pale before the last election so social and religious conservatives like me now equally get drowned out by the herd, in fact even more so.
Yet millions if not billions globally would still define marriage as a term to define a lifelong union between a man and woman only
And overlap to a striking degree (minimum 80%?) with the people who would like to string up de batty bois.
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
Private matter. Which is fine. Only you insist that the legal contract has to be a religious one.
No, most religious in the UK want the chance to do both at the same time and have one ceremony with meaning not have to go through one less meaningful ceremony too. Which they are entitled to do with a priest or licensed minister
About time that the state didn't recognise such marriages, which are often contrary to its own principles, both as to what is permitted and what isn't. Except of course in theocracies such as England.
Rubbish that is anti religious discrimination
It isn't. It would include the atheistic and pagan groups too. Everyone would be treated equally. Get married in the state office or not at all, as far as law, tax, etc. are concerned.
Atheists and pagans are not interested in religious marriage and we religious are not primarily interested in civil marriages or unions either. Each should be entitled to 1 ceremony which respects the primacy of how they see their union
Nonsense, what utter religious discrimination. You are demandingf that the state accept your beliefs.
"Pagans are not interested in religious marriage." Now that is a blatant piece of sectarianism and lying bilge. And I'm not a pagan.
Modern paganism is a spiritual movement not really a religion.
We have freedom of religion in this country and that includes the freedom to recognise our religious marriages as our primary form of union with the civil side added on at the same time
And the freedom to not do so too.
But you want to deny the latter.
Nobody is seeking to deny you the right to a religious side to your marriage. You and other extremists like Liam Fox did want to deny others the civil side to theirs. Why?
The opposite, I made quite clear you could have non religious civil unions with no religious involvement at all. Just leave the marriage element to we religious.
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
Marriage is civil. Has been since for thousands of years since before your Jesus that you so love to ignore was according to your own religious text born or said the words "render unto Caesar" about separating religious and civil laws.
So no thanks, civil partnerships are not the same, when people want civil marriage. Try again.
No. He was talking about tax law.
Unions under civil law which linked in with the definition of marriage under the Bible, Koran and Torah were one thing, unions which redefined the definition of marriage to suit their agenda quite another. So no, civil partnerships and marriage can be kept separate.
And given you earlier were advocating abortion until birth for both the disabled and not I don't need to be made to feel morally inferior by you!!!
Graeco-Roman laws significantly predate both Biblical or Koranic law, and were more relevant to most of the world than Torah law too.
Are you trying to deny that the Romans had marriages? Their marriages were civil, not religious, constructs and that is what marriage was for thousands of years before the supposed birth of Christ.
So don't try and hijack marriage and steal it for your religion. Its secular and available to all whether religious or not.
You can add on whatever religious trimmings you want and keep to them if you please, nobody wants to deny you that right, but that is on top of civil marriage, not instead of it.
“ Their marriages were civil, not religious,”
I think this is wrong Bart, marriage in the polytheistic Greek and Roman religions was religious. Juno played the part of presiding over the marriage.
This is where you are confusing a philosophical concept with a religious one, for example Juno presiding over the marriage does make it religious, just as much as God presiding in a Christian one.
The other point I would make is you are both making the same mistake in calling Christianity so Jewish, Christianity is more Greek at the start than Jewish before evolving over centuries into something more original than its roots.
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.
Do apes normally eat other apes? No. Even if you are not religious you don't believe in cannibalism and eating and killing your own species.
Boris is PM and a sinner as are most of us, I would not support him for Archbishop of Canterbury but he was not in contention for that
Humans eat chimpanzees and chimpanzees eat chimpanzees. Humans also used to eat humans. Not that any of that is relevant to the point which was you saying God distinguished between humans and animals. How if we evolved from them? When does an ape stop being an ape and becomes a human?
How many chimpanzees eat chimpanzees? Barely any. How many humans eat humans? Barely any. If you believe in evolution which many Christians don't then by definition humans now are no longer apes
Ok let's get away from this tangent of 'how many' and back to the original point that you are not answering.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
I do concede you are probably still an animal, most likely a form of hyena
????? What on earth does that mean? It was a reasonable question. You have previously said you believe in evolution so where does an animal end and a human begin in God's eye. It is a reasonable question to ask. Was Lucy for instance human or animal?
What is your problem or has it just dawned on you tonight that I was right last night. It seems everyone else on here is the same as me and you are alone in your mad ideas. Tonight's conversations have nothing to do with politics and you are being ridiculed by what you described as the handful of true conservatives on here and I have not been involved.
Is it just dawning on you that it is you that has the problems here?
No. It just shows that the vast majority of PB including you are social liberals and economic conservatives (and most of those on here tonight would not now vote Conservative either but even of those that would far fewer are social conservatives). Just as socialist Corbynites regularly get drowned out for having views beyond the pale before the last election so social and religious conservatives like me now equally get drowned out by the herd, in fact even more so.
Yet millions if not billions globally would still define marriage as a term to define a lifelong union between a man and woman only
Nothing tonight has anything to do with politics. You are arguing with literally everyone on PB. Why don't you try answering my question without uncalled for insults. Do you ever accept you might be wrong on stuff?
My question was one that was reasonable and could have led to a civilised discussion. It is an interesting philosophical question. I'm genuinely interested in the potential conflict here for a religious person who accepts evolution.
PS what has marriage got to do with my question? I haven't commented on the marriage discussion at all. I'm not involved in that all. I haven't expressed a view. So what on earth did your last para mean in reply to me?
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
But still a marriage between a man and a woman
So some parts of the rules are important and others are not? Who decides which bits are inviolable, besides yourself?
The Bible
God doesn't believe in marriage - or else why is He still single?!
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.
Well yes but others have made the same point before you, including Jesus of Nazareth. What the NT says is fuck the OT and the Pharisees who make a living out of it, let people do what they want to do and don't interfere. What I don't understand is why the likes of HYUFD don't take their curious antipathy to/fascination with men sticking it up each others botties and become Orthodox Jews.
Read Paul or indeed Jesus who was clear marriage was between a man and woman
Dearie me. That passage is not about that, at all. It is hugely telling that you cite the specific verse and not the chapter when the verse on its own makes no sense. You are reading it as God hates queers, it actually says Christ hates Pharisees, and Pharisees is you.
Where did I say God hates queers? I did not advocate making homosexuality illegal again or even banning gay civil unions, just recognising marriage as a principally religious institution between a man and a woman
Marriage in your Church may be a religious institution between a man and a woman.
Marriage in other Churches is not. Marriage in law, it is not.
Why do you want religious law being written in Parliamentary Civil Law rather than religious Canon Law? Set your religious codex in Canon Law and allow the rest of us to have civil laws set by Parliament. Which is precisely what Jesus advised, Mark 12:13-17, but you and Fox don't care about Jesus.
Marriage in most Christian churches is defined as between a man and a woman, even if a few liberal ones allow gay blessings that is not the majority view.
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
And yet just as when that made up argument was used around the time gay marriage was legalised, the state has long involved itself with what a proper marriage requires. Including times when people were a lot more religious than now, and a lot more religious than you. It is an invention that you are giving the weight of immutability - but an invention all the same, and transparently one to boot.
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
But still a marriage between a man and a woman
So some parts of the rules are important and others are not? Who decides which bits are inviolable, besides yourself?
The Bible
Yet there is still some personal judgement involved, no?
Otherwise you'd be executing doctors for working on the Sabbath.
But The Vicar works on the Sabbath? So there is obviously a set of exclusions somewhere, in a missing annex.
Comments
We're simply offshoring our energy consumption and importing the proceeds of it.
Absolutely we should be thinking about the externalities of energy, but we should also recognise that abundant, cheap, clean energy allows us to do many good things with that energy and we should be seeking to enable that future.
Somebody has erred by including the letter 'f' on his avatar lapel badge, sponsored by some tech company called Shift.
If you accept humans evolved from 'animal' as you (although not all Christians do) at what point do they stop being animals? Eg was Lucy a human or animal?
The words of Paul have more hatred, and you care more about your own hate-filled ramblings than anything Jesus said.
"man is by nature a political animal, and a man that is by nature and not merely by fortune citiless is either low in the scale of humanity or above it [...]."
Clever chap, old Ari.
Big Problems for Starmer and Labour Mount up on the “I”.
Tory members don’t deserve derision on front of the Independent.
In the Tele Sunak plays the “wrong to empower scientists in pandemic” card
It’s interesting how Anti Truss Murdoch’s Times has been throughout?
The star has lost it on weather again, this time drawing willies all over the place best reserved for Australian metrological charts? Sure it may rain in London tomorrow morning, but not bad weekend after that.
The big story is on front of the mail: after I raged at Albanian traffickers bussing them to the channel yesterday, Patel has a new agreement with Albania to fly them straight back. I’m sure someone will ask, how much tax payer dosh is Patel bunging them in this attempt to hold on to her job?
Both Fox and I supported homosexual civil partnerships
https://twitter.com/tomfoxtom/status/1562481380705333249?s=21&t=kRb_VBw1xDYlMWA5SupEpA
This sets out that there were only two sacrements in the Gospel: Baptism and the Eucharist?
Jesus allowed things like tax to be the concern of the state, not the redefinition of marriage
Not even you can believe the things you spout about the unchanging nature of rules and interpretation, given the history of the faith is so full of change.
In the 1650s things were very confused as a result of various legislating on the subject, as Parliament had multiple marriage laws on the books as a result.
I don't recall this bit though, but it is very interesting if true - though the legality of the assembly would be called into question (though you cannot claim that as a reason it does not count as the state being involved, since you have previously insisted that the purging of the Commons and dissolution of the Lords in no way undermined the Rump being a legitimate parliament, though royalists would have disagreed with you, and as such the appointed assembly would have been legitimate at the time).
https://thehistoryofparliament.wordpress.com/2013/07/17/marriage-in-the-english-revolution/
The trend was towards simplicity and reduced ceremonial, and towards greater involvement by the state. During the Nominated Assembly or ‘Barebones Parliament’ of 1653, this was taken to its logical conclusion when the conducting of marriages was taken away from the clergy altogether and vested in justices of the peace
I think we all know the answer to that one tbh.
2. Ukraine rightly refusing to rubber stamp the Russian annexation of Crimea isn't the same as making its return a precondition for peace. Ukraine has had various rounds of peace talks with Russia, implying that Crimea's return was not a necessary precondition for the end of current hostilities.
3. Oh, you're allowing two ways for it to end now are you? That's generous, can we persuade you to any further bids? Only one thing is necessary for a war to end. For both sides to stop fighting.
Your arguments are risible - develop a shred of self-awareness and just look at the stream of utter guff you've put your pb name to.
It doesn't impact upon you or me.
This accepts it is not 'wholly' a religious institution. It must therefore, at least in a small part, be non-religious.
As such, you are, it seems, in fact accepting the central argument others are making about marraige, but trying to do so without being too obvious about it.
You are always very careful with your words as you like to make clear, and would not have said primarily (definition - for the most part; mainly) if you meant something else, so it is no accidental inclusion.
Well done.
Pray for me.
Interesting.
The minute a politician proposes to move funds to social care from NHS the massive briefing war starts.
Truly, social care is the cinderella service:
Allie Hodgkins-Brown
@AllieHBNews
·
55m
Thursday’s TIMES: “Alarm over Truss raid on NHS” #TomorrowsPapersToday
https://twitter.com/AllieHBNews/status/1562550000248184832
So no thanks, civil partnerships are not the same, when people want civil marriage. Try again.
A friend of mine had an ultra-posh girlfriend with a mad uncle in the family. The uncle was about 40 years old and thought he was a horse. He used to "canter" around the grounds of the ancestral pile while banging together coconut shells to make clip-clop noises, like the knights in Python's Holy Grail
As a result the family called him Uncle Hoof
Uncle Hoof was accepted as an eccentric part of the extended posho family, when I went to visit I saw him "galloping" about the lawns, leaping the ha-ha like Red Rum, etc
However, even though the Madness of Uncle Hoof was woven into the dynastic tapestry, it was still hoped that one day Uncle Hoof would somehow "get better". Thus, there was serious delight when Uncle Hoof sat down to a family Sunday lunch and announced to everyone that he'd met someone special and wanted to get married
Yay, Uncle Hoof is better!
Only problem: it turned out Uncle Hoof had fallen deeply in love: with a tree. And so they gave him a wedding in the orchard, and he got married to an apple tree. I'm not sure where the church stands on such an alliance, perhaps @HYUFD can illuminate
'He said to them, “Have you not read that He Who made them in the first place made them man and woman? 5 It says, ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and his mother and will live with his wife. The two will become one.’ 6 So they are no longer two but one. Let no man divide what God has put together.”
https://www.biblegateway.com/passage/?search=Matthew 19:1-12&version=NLV
What the Church does is up to the Church. What Parliament does, is for the State, not the Church.
Have your Anglican communion determine whatever laws the Church does or does not want to state for religious marriages. Civil marriages pre-date the Church.
(Though I don't know how/why the tree of knowledge got associated with apples.)
Now, you may say that that is not the same thing, that believing marriage is between one man and one woman is not equivalent to believing it is ok to enslave others, and I would agree with you on that point.
However, your logic is that 'People thought it was ok before, so it cannot be called purveying hatred now', and that is one of the most ridiculous arguments people employ in these situations, when you extend that logic to things beyond the one thing that people are arguing is ok because it was that way in the past.
I don't think holding a traditional view on marriage is in itself purveying hatred (though some who are traditional may act in a hateful way as well), but the idea it cannot be because most people used to think that way is just plain wrong. IMO.
There's evidence for same sex unions in Rome, Greece, Mesopotamia, China and more. Multiple Roman Emperors had same-sex marriages including Nero.
But either way, same sex love has been legal for fifty years. Denying those who love each other, in committed and legal relationships, the right of marriage, is hatred.
There is a stage at which ignorance and stupidity become moral faults and serious sins, and you are well past it.
Mine is a civil marriage thank you very much. The law is to determine civil marriages, not religious ones, as the law has been involved in for many thousands of years.
You can keep your religious claptrap to your Church. Pray to whatever God you want, I don't seek to deny you that right, but don't seek to deny me a marriage.
Marriage pre-dates your religion.
In Roman times, when you think Jesus was born, marriage was a civil union between families. It is not religious.
So the tree of knowledge was just a fruit tree.
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/aug/24/five-predictions-for-the-next-six-months-in-the-war-in-ukraine
If marriage were a religious construct then Churches that wanted to allow gay marriages (which did exist) could have done so without a change in the law, but they couldn't, because marriage is legal not religious.
You can have religious regulations on top of the legal commitment. That's between you, your Church and your God. Not Parliament.
Bizarrely, the hospital rang her before the GP. When she asked them what the referral was for ie why they said they couldn't tell her as the GP had to. Then the GP rang her and asked what the problem was. So she had to tell him that he was meant to be telling her the result of her tests. He knew nothing about this but eventually managed to locate her notes and tell her that the test results meant she was being referred to hospital.
At this point Daughter decided that playing footsie with Dr Kafka was more than she could bear and came home. She's just relieved to have been referred to a specialist department. As am I. Let's hope they get to the bottom of what's ailing her.
What is your problem or has it just dawned on you tonight that I was right last night. It seems everyone else on here is the same as me and you are alone in your mad ideas. Tonight's conversations have nothing to do with politics and you are being ridiculed by what you described as the handful of true conservatives on here and I have not been involved.
Is it just dawning on you that it is you that has the problems here?
Unions under civil law which linked in with the definition of marriage under the Bible, Koran and Torah were one thing, unions which redefined the definition of marriage to suit their agenda quite another. So no, civil partnerships and marriage can be kept separate.
And given you earlier were advocating abortion until birth for both the disabled and not I don't need to be made to feel morally inferior by you!!!
They are providing a bus service from Albania to the inflatable dinghy though, which is not on. The evil traffickers should stop piddling around now, they have amply demonstrated they could run a travel company to rival the best. Give them a rail franchise and a free port in return for stopping the channel crossings.
Hyufd wants to keep it religious.
Otherwise you'd be executing doctors for working on the Sabbath.
What irritates me is HYUFD's shameless ignorance and incuriosity about 1. Everything which is not Christianity, and 2. Christianity.
Are you trying to deny that the Romans had marriages? Their marriages were civil, not religious, constructs and that is what marriage was for thousands of years before the supposed birth of Christ.
So don't try and hijack marriage and steal it for your religion. Its secular and available to all whether religious or not.
You can add on whatever religious trimmings you want and keep to them if you please, nobody wants to deny you that right, but that is on top of civil marriage, not instead of it.
Yet millions if not billions globally would still define marriage as a term to define a lifelong union between a man and woman only
I can't agree with the way you've phrased your sentence, because it's a blank cheque. How much aid? 'As much as it takes.' - well 'No' then. Anyone who says 'as much as it takes' when British subjects are choosing between heating and eating, is the real traitor.
You really have gone off the deep end. You make the Mullahs of Afghanistan look moderate.
“Liverpool shooting: former drug dealer Joseph Nee was targeted in shooting of Olivia Pratt-Korbel”
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/a754bbe6-238b-11ed-83fa-560ae4fda953?shareToken=4694413a73263578f076d04596b98b8f
I really don’t give a fuck about these vermin. Execute them. Clean up our streets
I want to bring forward the end of the war by providing Ukraine with the weaponry they need to expel the Russians. You want the war to drag on.
I think this is wrong Bart, marriage in the polytheistic Greek and Roman religions was religious. Juno played the part of presiding over the marriage.
This is where you are confusing a philosophical concept with a religious one, for example Juno presiding over the marriage does make it religious, just as much as God presiding in a Christian one.
The other point I would make is you are both making the same mistake in calling Christianity so Jewish, Christianity is more Greek at the start than Jewish before evolving over centuries into something more original than its roots.
My question was one that was reasonable and could have led to a civilised discussion. It is an interesting philosophical question. I'm genuinely interested in the potential conflict here for a religious person who accepts evolution.
PS what has marriage got to do with my question? I haven't commented on the marriage discussion at all. I'm not involved in that all. I haven't expressed a view. So what on earth did your last para mean in reply to me?