Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Not sure I like the sound of it suddenly becoming hard.
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I can believe that. Some people just want the party.
Most memorable bits of my wedding were us sneaking off for a bonk between the wedding and the reception.
Also the total love by guests for the pork dripping sarnies during the disco
Stay classy, BJO!
You didn't have Hugh Grant hiding in a wardrobe, did you?
No but my wife wasn't overly impressed when one of our guests who was a fellow accountancy student who I was studying with tried to snog me at the reception and was even less impressed when I asked Mrs if it was too early to ask for a divorce.
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Come back when you're 15 years in.
That's exactly why I'm worried!
Enjoy it while it lasts. The first 35 years are the hardest in my experience.
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Come back when you're 15 years in.
Pah! You're just a starter - 43 years and counting for me and Mrs P.
I used to do my late Mum's online Tesco order every week, getting her shopping list from her via Facetime.
I never convinced her that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not, in fact, butter. "It's even got butter in the title" she'd say.
On topic, honestly more of a concern to me is the philistines that don't realise that lurpak spreadable is not, in fact, only butter (lurpak light isn't either, but I'll let it off for being just water as an extra ingredient; DO NOT CONFUSE WITH lurpak light spreadble).
I had crumpets the other day on LNER. And they provided spreadable. What's the point in that? Won't eat it.
I used to do my late Mum's online Tesco order every week, getting her shopping list from her via Facetime.
I never convinced her that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not, in fact, butter. "It's even got butter in the title" she'd say.
At least they are upfront about that, where as a significant proportion of vanilla ice cream, has no cream, no fresh milk, and no vanilla. Crazily, even in the US you can't do that and still call it ice cream.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I can believe that. Some people just want the party.
Most memorable bits of my wedding were us sneaking off for a bonk between the wedding and the reception.
Also the total love by guests for the pork dripping sarnies during the disco
You didn't have Hugh Grant hiding in a wardrobe, did you?
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
Yes, there are few too many Murial's Weddings out there where the whole point is the wedding not the marriage.
One of the nicest weddings I ever went to, the wedding dinner was BYOB and a big pot of lentil curry at the (student) couple's terrace house.
They're still together almost half a centiry later.
My husband and I will celebrate our 10th anniversary next month. We had drinks in the pub next to the registry office after our Civil Partnership and everyone back round to ours for nibbles afterwards. It was wonderfully low stress. We plan to have a full wedding ceremony when we make our fortune and can do it lavishly without bankrupting ourselves.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
Apparently I was the most enthusiastic user of gas & air SAS had ever come across. I was chuffing away on it like a steam train until they knocked me out with ket.
I'm not sure what point I'm making *stares wistfully*.
All the talk of multi-flight long haul travel is giving me a headache. I used to have to fly to Washington 3-4 times a year and even though comparatively short, just used to be a right pain alongside other flights during the year. The worst though was Belfast-Heathrow-Heathrow-LA-LA-Auckland and Auckland to Christchurch. Longest stay was Heathrow for 4 hours. When I arrived in Auckland I found that the most important person at the airport was the woman who ran the the flower/nick nack shop who also sold access to shower cubicles and the necessary towels.
Is flying ever any fun anymore?
I will go to great lengths to avoid it, now, preferring trains and boats, preferably where I don't have to transit central London.
Agree about flying - best answer is never. Transiting London on a journey is OK.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
There have been several bomb alert and other potentially terror related incidents around England in the last few days.
Whos responsible?
Russia?
Suspect objects at Euston, Gatwick, Runcorn bus station and American Embassy in London. Not to forget the fire in North East London at a warehouse connected to Ukraine, suspicious cargo recently at Stansted and the fire at the submarine factory in Barrow (about which there seems to have been a news blackout) Plus the major cyber attack on hospitals in central London
I used to do my late Mum's online Tesco order every week, getting her shopping list from her via Facetime.
I never convinced her that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not, in fact, butter. "It's even got butter in the title" she'd say.
On topic, honestly more of a concern to me is the philistines that don't realise that lurpak spreadable is not, in fact, only butter (lurpak light isn't either, but I'll let it off for being just water as an extra ingredient).
I had crumpets the other day on LNER. And they provided spreadable. What's the point in that? Won't eat it.
Lurpak spreadable is horrible oily stuff. As it Anchor spreadable. President spreadable is at least soften with cream which seems ok-ish.
Loseley Butter used to do a pure butter spreadable from the fridge (something to do with the type of cows and that way it was churned) but AFAIK they no longer make it.
I keep meaning to try putting butter in the wine cave at 12°C to see if it stays spreadable at that temperature.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
Without the ethics of 'double effect' the world would be simpler place, but not much would get done. SFAICS it has been routine to use the doctrine in medicine - enough of X to ease the pain may also by the way kill you and you are in a terminal state - but more recently medics have become more fearful of litigation and consequences.
Double effect is also crucial to the ethics of war. Hence the lively debate about Israel's tactics.
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Come back when you're 15 years in.
We're not that far in it's 8 years for us in April but there are events (like two miscarriages for us in a row in fairly short succession) that can be very tough on both people and you feel as though you have no one to turn to. In the end my best friend and his wife came over helped us have a "clear the air" evening where we both just let it all out and communicated properly for what felt like the first time in a few months. I think if it hadn't been for that we'd have been on the fast track to divorceville. What's completely wild is that fundamentally we were both on the same page, that we wanted to keep trying, that neither of us blamed the other one (especially me, I absolutely didn't blame her though somehow she felt that I did) and because my best friend and his wife had been through a very similar situation they were speaking to us both from experience.
It really, really helped to have that support from our friends and I think that's where religion used to play a big role in marriages which was probably a really big net positive that people are missing.
Now, more than ever, pollsters & reporters have a responsibility to go deeper. In polling this year there has been high support for “mass deportations”… and low support for deporting long-established immigrants (ie most of the undoc). https://x.com/carlosodio/status/1860773379197849641
Such contradictions don’t matter when you’re promising simple solutions to complex problems, while in opposition. I don’t see how it will work in government.
There have been several bomb alert and other potentially terror related incidents around England in the last few days.
Whos responsible?
Russia?
Suspect objects at Euston, Gatwick, Runcorn bus station and American Embassy in London. Not to forget the fire in North East London at a warehouse connected to Ukraine, suspicious cargo recently at Stansted and the fire at the submarine factory in Barrow (about which there seems to have been a news blackout) Plus the major cyber attack on hospitals in central London
There is no doubt that we are under attack
Also the drones over Lakenheath, Mildenhall and other bases,although they may also have been either classified tech, or UAPs.
All the talk of multi-flight long haul travel is giving me a headache. I used to have to fly to Washington 3-4 times a year and even though comparatively short, just used to be a right pain alongside other flights during the year. The worst though was Belfast-Heathrow-Heathrow-LA-LA-Auckland and Auckland to Christchurch. Longest stay was Heathrow for 4 hours. When I arrived in Auckland I found that the most important person at the airport was the woman who ran the the flower/nick nack shop who also sold access to shower cubicles and the necessary towels.
I just did Siargao island, the Philippines, to Heathrow
There have been several bomb alert and other potentially terror related incidents around England in the last few days.
Whos responsible?
Russia?
Suspect objects at Euston, Gatwick, Runcorn bus station and American Embassy in London. Not to forget the fire in North East London at a warehouse connected to Ukraine, suspicious cargo recently at Stansted and the fire at the submarine factory in Barrow (about which there seems to have been a news blackout) Plus the major cyber attack on hospitals in central London
There is no doubt that we are under attack
There was also a friendly fire incident in Edinburgh:
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Not sure I like the sound of it suddenly becoming hard.
If you have kids, it’s enormous fun, but it’s also definitely hard work, if you take the responsibility seriously.
All the talk of multi-flight long haul travel is giving me a headache. I used to have to fly to Washington 3-4 times a year and even though comparatively short, just used to be a right pain alongside other flights during the year. The worst though was Belfast-Heathrow-Heathrow-LA-LA-Auckland and Auckland to Christchurch. Longest stay was Heathrow for 4 hours. When I arrived in Auckland I found that the most important person at the airport was the woman who ran the the flower/nick nack shop who also sold access to shower cubicles and the necessary towels.
Is flying ever any fun anymore?
I will go to great lengths to avoid it, now, preferring trains and boats, preferably where I don't have to transit central London.
Agree about flying - best answer is never. Transiting London on a journey is OK.
Back in the day, the oil company I worked for used a couple of the company jets as a shuttle service between its two European headquarters - carrying internal mail, mostly.
Then some bright spark realised that the seats could be used - they were burning fuel, so why not use it? So if you need to make that trip, it came up as an option.
So I flew on a business jet, moderately regularly. The main thing is the lack of bullshit at either end. Security? Next to none. No bullshit about arriving x hours early.
At the other end, they would meet the plane with one of those vans turned into 10 seater. Straight from the tarmac to HQ - your luggage loaded in with the mail.
My wife's extended family is spread across Ireland and the US, and so a family wedding is the perfect opportunity to get everyone together. This meant we ended up with a bit more than 100 guests - way more than I was comfortable with and insanely expensive - with numbers only kept under control because my half of the family only contributed seven people.
One of my brother-in-laws said that a larger wedding in Ireland can end up cheaper, because the custom in Ireland is to give cash as wedding gifts, and so the more people you invite, the more you receive in gifts, which as well as covering the per head cost per guest, will then contribute to the fixed costs.
Bearing that in mind, and that we reduced costs because I knitted the wedding dress and baked the cake, we were only a couple of thousand short of break-even, and I could see how it wouldn't have cost us anything net if I'd had an Irish family.
Don't ask me how much we've spent on gifts and attending other weddings in the family.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
I used to do my late Mum's online Tesco order every week, getting her shopping list from her via Facetime.
I never convinced her that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not, in fact, butter. "It's even got butter in the title" she'd say.
On topic, honestly more of a concern to me is the philistines that don't realise that lurpak spreadable is not, in fact, only butter (lurpak light isn't either, but I'll let it off for being just water as an extra ingredient).
I had crumpets the other day on LNER. And they provided spreadable. What's the point in that? Won't eat it.
Lurpak spreadable is horrible oily stuff. As it Anchor spreadable. President spreadable is at least soften with cream which seems ok-ish.
Loseley Butter used to do a pure butter spreadable from the fridge (something to do with the type of cows and that way it was churned) but AFAIK they no longer make it.
I keep meaning to try putting butter in the wine cave at 12°C to see if it stays spreadable at that temperature.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Not sure I like the sound of it suddenly becoming hard.
If you have kids, it’s enormous fun, but it’s also definitely hard work, if you take the responsibility seriously.
I also think bad marriages don't survive more than one kid. If your marriage is already rocky then oy have one kid, two is fucking stressful. Having a united front parenting is also really, really important. My parents did it and now I realise why.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I’ve certainly dispensed the sort of “medication” Dr F describes. In one case, a family friend, the spouse used to ask me to confirm that the amount of analgesic was reducing, as he wanted to believe his wife was recovering.
Must admit it always worries me when people say stuff like this. I'm only six years and in only one kid, but tbh it's been piss easy so far. Don't piss on the floor, don't fuck a co-worker, don't be a raging alcoholic, job's a good un.
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Come back when you're 15 years in.
That's exactly why I'm worried!
Enjoy it while it lasts. The first 35 years are the hardest in my experience.
The projection suggests it is going to be close. Surprised at level of Labour MPs against.
Yes - very depressing. Current projection For 296, Against 301.
I have not followed it in detail but, if I have understood correctly, it fails to cover the most important and urgent cases - the small number where life is objectively and subjectively intolerable beyond measure but the circumstances are not terminal.
I support the bill but only reluctantly. We need a better one, dealing with the most urgent cases, and where the SC has indicated that they sympathise but it is a matter for parliament.
I agree the bill is far from perfect in its scope. But it is step in the right direction. Let not the perfect drive out the good.
On the other hand we have been cursed with plenty ill thought out legislation.
If the bill is narrowly defeated, this suggests a better one would pass.
Parliament doing its job, for a change.
They have 3rd reading, Committee stage, to improve it. If they kill it now, they won't have a chance. It will be into the long grass.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
“…. 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.
More than six out of 10 of those trusts - just over half of the total - have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million.”
Now, more than ever, pollsters & reporters have a responsibility to go deeper. In polling this year there has been high support for “mass deportations”… and low support for deporting long-established immigrants (ie most of the undoc). https://x.com/carlosodio/status/1860773379197849641
Such contradictions don’t matter when you’re promising simple solutions to complex problems, while in opposition. I don’t see how it will work in government.
I don't think you get it.
The goal isn't to deport people, it's to make the Democrats oppose the will of the people, and therefore to ensure your reelection.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
All the talk of multi-flight long haul travel is giving me a headache. I used to have to fly to Washington 3-4 times a year and even though comparatively short, just used to be a right pain alongside other flights during the year. The worst though was Belfast-Heathrow-Heathrow-LA-LA-Auckland and Auckland to Christchurch. Longest stay was Heathrow for 4 hours. When I arrived in Auckland I found that the most important person at the airport was the woman who ran the the flower/nick nack shop who also sold access to shower cubicles and the necessary towels.
I just did Siargao island, the Philippines, to Heathrow
28 fucking hours. With no fucking
Hideous
Siargao - Manila - Abu Dhabi - LHR
All stopovers 3 hours plus
You had three hours at every connection: there was plenty of time for fucking if you'd put your mind to it.
All the talk of multi-flight long haul travel is giving me a headache. I used to have to fly to Washington 3-4 times a year and even though comparatively short, just used to be a right pain alongside other flights during the year. The worst though was Belfast-Heathrow-Heathrow-LA-LA-Auckland and Auckland to Christchurch. Longest stay was Heathrow for 4 hours. When I arrived in Auckland I found that the most important person at the airport was the woman who ran the the flower/nick nack shop who also sold access to shower cubicles and the necessary towels.
I just did Siargao island, the Philippines, to Heathrow
28 fucking hours. With no fucking
Hideous
Siargao - Manila - Abu Dhabi - LHR
All stopovers 3 hours plus
You had three hours at every connection: there was plenty of time for fucking if you'd put your mind to it.
Yeah it's almost a certainty that Manila airport has some kind of service for that...
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
We could reduce divorce rates by abolishing marriage its a pretty useless institution these days
We have over 60 years marriage and of course there were up and downs but we have never been closer and one thing that binds us together is a good sense of humour, and of course the family and our grandchildren
I think marriage is a wonderful institution but there are times couples grow apart and they move on
My imputation was more marriage is a useless institution when it is transient. There are people like you however the average marriage I believe lasts about 7 years. It is now merely a contract for most not a life long commitment. For those that marriage has worked I salute you but there are not many now and getting fewer
I would say the polar opposite.
That marriages survive only when they are fit for purpose is a good thing, not a bad one, and makes the surviving marriages more not less meaningful.
Having healthy and happy marriages between equal partners is better than having people stuck in relationships with people they can't stand but for whom there is no choice but to remain with them.
We've been married 11 years. We married because we love each other, we remain married as we still love each other. I have friends who got married and divorced in that time, I do not look down on them, if it doesn't work it doesn't work and there's no harm in trying again.
Divorce rates have been falling, not increasing. It’s hard to find stats on the number of marriages which are lifelong, but I get the impression it’s quite high.
I'd be curious the reason why that is though?
I suspect it could be because people are less likely to prematurely rush into marriage now, so are less likely to make a mistake.
My advice to any young couple would be to live together before you get married. You learn a lot from living with someone. Of course the advice used to be the opposite and some still cling to those outdated views.
One of the golden rules in politics is always reject fashionable/mode-ish ideas. Assisted dying is one such proposal. Therefore reject it. That tends to be my way of thinking.
Now, more than ever, pollsters & reporters have a responsibility to go deeper. In polling this year there has been high support for “mass deportations”… and low support for deporting long-established immigrants (ie most of the undoc). https://x.com/carlosodio/status/1860773379197849641
Such contradictions don’t matter when you’re promising simple solutions to complex problems, while in opposition. I don’t see how it will work in government.
I don't think you get it.
The goal isn't to deport people, it's to make the Democrats oppose the will of the people, and therefore to ensure your reelection.
Tell that to Stephen Miller.
I get the idea of Trump Mk II reneging on his campaign promises (which would be sensible of him). I just don't think it particularly likely.
All the talk of multi-flight long haul travel is giving me a headache. I used to have to fly to Washington 3-4 times a year and even though comparatively short, just used to be a right pain alongside other flights during the year. The worst though was Belfast-Heathrow-Heathrow-LA-LA-Auckland and Auckland to Christchurch. Longest stay was Heathrow for 4 hours. When I arrived in Auckland I found that the most important person at the airport was the woman who ran the the flower/nick nack shop who also sold access to shower cubicles and the necessary towels.
I just did Siargao island, the Philippines, to Heathrow
28 fucking hours. With no fucking
Hideous
Siargao - Manila - Abu Dhabi - LHR
All stopovers 3 hours plus
You had three hours at every connection: there was plenty of time for fucking if you'd put your mind to it.
I have a friend who claims he can do this, and has proved it. eg three hour stopover in Singapore? Find the famous "ten floors of whores" - 30 mins drive from the airport. 20 minutes on the task. 30 mins back. It can be done with enough time for a gin and tonic
Never tried it myself. I am sufficed with the G&T. Also if I want to enjoy myself I make my stopovers last a few days and blag a nice hotel....
My first marriage... The wedding cost less than £1k. We got everyone to take the bus back home where we'd had a local deli provide us with food. The people of Exeter were a bit surprised to see a crowd of people in their wedding finest on a Stagecoach Exeter service.
Separated 15 months later.
The bit where my first wife told the registrar, "no need for any of that," halfway through the vows wasn't perhaps the best omen.
My first marriage... The wedding cost less than £1k. We got everyone to take the bus back home where we'd had a local deli provide us with food. The people of Exeter were a bit surprised to see a crowd of people in their wedding finest on a Stagecoach Exeter service.
Separated 15 months later.
The bit where my first wife told the registrar, "no need for any of that," halfway through the vows wasn't perhaps the best omen.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
“…. 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.
More than six out of 10 of those trusts - just over half of the total - have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million.”
Be an NHS target. In two senses.
Yes, though like the pain relief that I mentioned before, it is not nessicarily bad practice in terminal care, indeed we used it for some of my dying relatives.
A lot of this practice does require careful and sensitive discussion between clinicians, patients and relatives. It all hinges on people being correct that the situation is genuinely terminal and all are acting in good faith for the best outcome for the patient. The thing is that people acting in bad faith are not that unusual.
For my wedding we didn’t even send invitations—just screamed the date and time out the window and hoped word got around.
The ceremony? Held in the staff canteen at my cousin’s job down the industrial estate because the fluorescent lighting “set the vibe.” The registrar did the nuptials on one of those plastic trays you slide round the rails, and then chucked it back in the trolley rack, whilst some of my mates threw ripped tissues at us and cheered Oi! Oi!
For food, we raided the vending machines but only gave our twelve guests 75p each and called it a lucky dip. The cake was a stack of pancakes we pilfered from Tesco and topped with a tealight. Our rings? Stolen coke can tabs. And for the honeymoon? We took the bus to the next town and walked around the petrol station car park, sharing a single bottle of White Lightning, before I slashed in the Car Wash, she vommed into the plastic bin, and then I tupped her behind the kebab van before grabbing a bag of chips from Mustafa and then staggering back home.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
We could reduce divorce rates by abolishing marriage its a pretty useless institution these days
We have over 60 years marriage and of course there were up and downs but we have never been closer and one thing that binds us together is a good sense of humour, and of course the family and our grandchildren
I think marriage is a wonderful institution but there are times couples grow apart and they move on
My imputation was more marriage is a useless institution when it is transient. There are people like you however the average marriage I believe lasts about 7 years. It is now merely a contract for most not a life long commitment. For those that marriage has worked I salute you but there are not many now and getting fewer
I would say the polar opposite.
That marriages survive only when they are fit for purpose is a good thing, not a bad one, and makes the surviving marriages more not less meaningful.
Having healthy and happy marriages between equal partners is better than having people stuck in relationships with people they can't stand but for whom there is no choice but to remain with them.
We've been married 11 years. We married because we love each other, we remain married as we still love each other. I have friends who got married and divorced in that time, I do not look down on them, if it doesn't work it doesn't work and there's no harm in trying again.
Divorce rates have been falling, not increasing. It’s hard to find stats on the number of marriages which are lifelong, but I get the impression it’s quite high.
I'd be curious the reason why that is though?
I suspect it could be because people are less likely to prematurely rush into marriage now, so are less likely to make a mistake.
My advice to any young couple would be to live together before you get married. You learn a lot from living with someone. Of course the advice used to be the opposite and some still cling to those outdated views.
I think in addition people are meeting on apps and online match making services rather than organically. Realistically you are going to have much better compatibility with someone you've been matched to by a service than someone who you've met in a bar and invested too much time into to turn back.
I think there's a much lower success rate for proper relationship starts today (not counting one night hookups through whatever app gen z use these days) but a much higher proportion of the successes lead to successful marriages. I also think this is one of the reasons the birth rate has dropped. The 6/10 relationship doesn't exist any more and probably something like 0.2-0.3 of the fertility rate came from those 6/10 relationships that inevitably ended in divorce. Everyone wants an 8/10 compatibility match or higher according to my younger cousins who are still on the dating scene.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
“…. 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.
More than six out of 10 of those trusts - just over half of the total - have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million.”
Be an NHS target. In two senses.
Yes, though like the pain relief that I mentioned before, it is not nessicarily bad practice in terminal care, indeed we used it for some of my dying relatives.
A lot of this practice does require careful and sensitive discussion between clinicians, patients and relatives. It all hinges on people being correct that the situation is genuinely terminal and all are acting in good faith for the best outcome for the patient. The thing is that people acting in bad faith are not that unusual.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
Yes, same for me
Not only are the smaller weddings a lot cheaper, with a lot less pressure on everyone, they are usually more FUN
A friend of mine had his at a lovely little civic place on Richmond Hill, after a tiny chapel service. Maybe 50 people. Not tiny but surely much less than £10k. It was.... idyllic
The weather was perfect and at least four couples - some impromptu - had al fresco sex in the bushes, such was the genial atmosphere of hedonism. IIt became a kind of joke - guess who's having sex in the shubbery now?! I can still remember the amusing speeches to this day. And they are still married, 30 years later, with a very bonny daughter now grown up, and he's one of my best friends
One of my top five weddings. intimate, gleeful and unforgettable
For my wedding we didn’t even send invitations—just screamed the date and time out the window and hoped word got around.
The ceremony? Held in the staff canteen at my cousin’s job down the industrial estate because the fluorescent lighting “set the vibe.” The registrar did the nuptials on one of those plastic trays you slide round the rails, and then chucked it back in the trolley rack, whilst some of my mates threw ripped tissues at us and cheered Oi! Oi!
For food, we raided the vending machines but only gave our twelve guests 75p each and called it a lucky dip. The cake was a stack of pancakes we pilfered from Tesco and topped with a tealight. Our rings? Stolen coke can tabs. And for the honeymoon? We took the bus to the next town and walked around the petrol station car park, sharing a single bottle of White Lightning, before I slashed in the Car Wash, she vommed into the plastic bin, and then I tupped her behind the kebab van before grabbing a bag of chips from Mustafa and then staggering back home.
For my wedding we didn’t even send invitations—just screamed the date and time out the window and hoped word got around.
The ceremony? Held in the staff canteen at my cousin’s job down the industrial estate because the fluorescent lighting “set the vibe.” The registrar did the nuptials on one of those plastic trays you slide round the rails, and then chucked it back in the trolley rack, whilst some of my mates threw ripped tissues at us and cheered Oi! Oi!
For food, we raided the vending machines but only gave our twelve guests 75p each and called it a lucky dip. The cake was a stack of pancakes we pilfered from Tesco and topped with a tealight. Our rings? Stolen coke can tabs. And for the honeymoon? We took the bus to the next town and walked around the petrol station car park, sharing a single bottle of White Lightning, before I slashed in the Car Wash, she vommed into the plastic bin, and then I tupped her behind the kebab van before grabbing a bag of chips from Mustafa and then staggering back home.
Best day of my life.
lol. Superb riff!
I was actually nodding along, believing you, until the vending machines
I've never seen anything like it - only 4 days and already 1.7 million signatures. It has 6 months.
Can't see Parliament debating it though as turkeys don't voluntarily debate Christmas. Strange as the Prime Minister and at least one opposition party used to believe in rerunning democratic votes ...
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
“…. 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.
More than six out of 10 of those trusts - just over half of the total - have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million.”
Be an NHS target. In two senses.
Yes, though like the pain relief that I mentioned before, it is not nessicarily bad practice in terminal care, indeed we used it for some of my dying relatives.
A lot of this practice does require careful and sensitive discussion between clinicians, patients and relatives. It all hinges on people being correct that the situation is genuinely terminal and all are acting in good faith for the best outcome for the patient. The thing is that people acting in bad faith are not that unusual.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
Yes, same for me
Not only are the smaller weddings a lot cheaper, with a lot less pressure on everyone, they are usually more FUN
A friend of mine had his at a lovely little civic place on Richmond Hill, after a tiny chapel service. Maybe 50 people. Not tiny but surely much less than £10k. It was.... idyllic
The weather was perfect and at least four couples - some impromptu - had al fresco sex in the bushes, such was the genial atmosphere of hedonism. IIt became a kind of joke - guess who's having sex in the shubbery now?! I can still remember the amusing speeches to this day. And they are still married, 30 years later, with a very bonny daughter now grown up, and he's one of my best friends
One of my top five weddings. intimate, gleeful and unforgettable
Yes one of the best I went to was a close friend of mine, this is back before I'd met my wife too. Neither of them had a pot to piss in but he'd managed to get her pregnant so they got married as her family was/is pretty traditional. Registry with about 40ish people, a really nice dinner at a gastropub nearby and then they had set up a marquee in the pub garden for an evening of dancing with a live covers band. Absolutely magical, I even managed to snag one of the bridesmaids for a dance and then a memorable evening.
On Topic: No spread. I eat nice bread because I love bread, usually homemade and I don't want a spread to spoil it. Only exception is toast and then it is butter.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
We could reduce divorce rates by abolishing marriage its a pretty useless institution these days
We have over 60 years marriage and of course there were up and downs but we have never been closer and one thing that binds us together is a good sense of humour, and of course the family and our grandchildren
I think marriage is a wonderful institution but there are times couples grow apart and they move on
My imputation was more marriage is a useless institution when it is transient. There are people like you however the average marriage I believe lasts about 7 years. It is now merely a contract for most not a life long commitment. For those that marriage has worked I salute you but there are not many now and getting fewer
I would say the polar opposite.
That marriages survive only when they are fit for purpose is a good thing, not a bad one, and makes the surviving marriages more not less meaningful.
Having healthy and happy marriages between equal partners is better than having people stuck in relationships with people they can't stand but for whom there is no choice but to remain with them.
We've been married 11 years. We married because we love each other, we remain married as we still love each other. I have friends who got married and divorced in that time, I do not look down on them, if it doesn't work it doesn't work and there's no harm in trying again.
Divorce rates have been falling, not increasing. It’s hard to find stats on the number of marriages which are lifelong, but I get the impression it’s quite high.
I'd be curious the reason why that is though?
I suspect it could be because people are less likely to prematurely rush into marriage now, so are less likely to make a mistake.
My advice to any young couple would be to live together before you get married. You learn a lot from living with someone. Of course the advice used to be the opposite and some still cling to those outdated views.
I think in addition people are meeting on apps and online match making services rather than organically. Realistically you are going to have much better compatibility with someone you've been matched to by a service than someone who you've met in a bar and invested too much time into to turn back.
I think there's a much lower success rate for proper relationship starts today (not counting one night hookups through whatever app gen z use these days) but a much higher proportion of the successes lead to successful marriages. I also think this is one of the reasons the birth rate has dropped. The 6/10 relationship doesn't exist any more and probably something like 0.2-0.3 of the fertility rate came from those 6/10 relationships that inevitably ended in divorce. Everyone wants an 8/10 compatibility match or higher according to my younger cousins who are still on the dating scene.
I used online dating for twelve months. Then met my wife. Hope not to use it again.
It's a terrible business model. The better you are at matching people, the fewer repeat customers you have.
Perhaps the government should pay a bonus to the online dating companies for every wedding, every child born, every 10th anniversary, and provide better incentives for the online dating apps/websites.
I've never seen anything like it - only 4 days and already 1.7 million signatures. It has 6 months.
Can't see Parliament debating it though as turkeys don't voluntarily debate Christmas. Strange as the Prime Minister and at least one opposition party used to believe in rerunning democratic votes ...
It may get debated for 30 seconds.
There will be another election in 2029, just have to be patient.
I've never seen anything like it - only 4 days and already 1.7 million signatures. It has 6 months.
Can't see Parliament debating it though as turkeys don't voluntarily debate Christmas. Strange as the Prime Minister and at least one opposition party used to believe in rerunning democratic votes ...
It may get debated for 30 seconds.
There will be another election in 2029, just have to be patient.
You think Labour are going to remain that unpopular?
If the government is popular there'll be an election in 2028, if not 2029.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
Yes, same for me
Not only are the smaller weddings a lot cheaper, with a lot less pressure on everyone, they are usually more FUN
A friend of mine had his at a lovely little civic place on Richmond Hill, after a tiny chapel service. Maybe 50 people. Not tiny but surely much less than £10k. It was.... idyllic
The weather was perfect and at least four couples - some impromptu - had al fresco sex in the bushes, such was the genial atmosphere of hedonism. IIt became a kind of joke - guess who's having sex in the shubbery now?! I can still remember the amusing speeches to this day. And they are still married, 30 years later, with a very bonny daughter now grown up, and he's one of my best friends
One of my top five weddings. intimate, gleeful and unforgettable
Yes one of the best I went to was a close friend of mine, this is back before I'd met my wife too. Neither of them had a pot to piss in but he'd managed to get her pregnant so they got married as her family was/is pretty traditional. Registry with about 40ish people, a really nice dinner at a gastropub nearby and then they had set up a marquee in the pub garden for an evening of dancing with a live covers band. Absolutely magical, I even managed to snag one of the bridesmaids for a dance and then a memorable evening.
I think the key, probably, is that if a wedding is trying to impress, it is much more likely to fail. Those are the gaudy expensive ones, generally
If a wedding is simply there to celebrate or solemnise a love match, and the couple want to share their happiness with close friends and fam, it will succeed. Also the food in smaller weddings is often better, because it's far easier to cater for 30 than 300
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
I've never seen anything like it - only 4 days and already 1.7 million signatures. It has 6 months.
Can't see Parliament debating it though as turkeys don't voluntarily debate Christmas. Strange as the Prime Minister and at least one opposition party used to believe in rerunning democratic votes ...
It may get debated for 30 seconds.
There will be another election in 2029, just have to be patient.
You think Labour are going to remain that unpopular?
If the government is popular there'll be an election in 2028, if not 2029.
My forecast is that Starmer steps down in summer of 2028, and hands over the reins to a fresh PM who then goes to GE in May 2029
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
My wedding was lovely - happiest day of my life - but for the purposes of this discussion neither small nor lavish so not particularly interesting.
I want to tell you instead about a friend of mine who had a surprise wedding. His family situation was difficult - both his parents and his other half's parents had had acrimonious divorces and could barely bring themselves to refer to the other party by name, let alone share any civillity. Any attempt at negotiating some sort of wedding arrangement had for this reason floundered before it started. Meanwhile, their relationship had plodded happily along and they'd had a daughter. When the daughter was one year old, they combined a Christening with her first birthday party - and most of their famillies, including all parents had swallowed any differences and turned up (a Christening being a rather less socially demanding occasion than a wedding), along a thoroughly satisfying nnumber of friends. The daughter was Christened, and the vicar gave a little homily, which touched briefly - to some worried and disapproving noises in the congregation - on the fact that the parents weren't married and that the church had traditionally disapproved of that sort of thing. On this - which was of course a pre-arranged cue - my friend and his partner looked at each other thoughtfully for a beat, before he went down on one knee and whipped out a ring - to more gasps and cheers from the congregation. The vicar (who was completely loving this) then gave her next line of the performance, which was "we've got 25 minutes now, if you want", to which the couple of course assented, and the bride then beckoned her father, whipped off her coat to reveal a wedding dress underneath, and the confused but happy congregation headed down to the other end of the church to witness the unexpected wedding. It was all done so quickly none of the warring parents had a chance to fall out with one another. There then followed a slightly confused but delightfully happy party at a village hall with a buffet and a children's entertainer (for of course it was also a one year old's birthday party), before the couple waved everyone off at 6pm in order to take their daughter home for bath and bed, before settling down to watch Sunday night telly, still in their wedding gear. It was about as cheap a wedding that it was possible to have. But more memorable than most, and brought the couple no less happiness than a wedding of ten times the cost. Happy to report they are still happily married 12 years later.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
My wedding was lovely - happiest day of my life - but for the purposes of this discussion neither small nor lavish so not particularly interesting.
I want to tell you instead about a friend of mine who had a surprise wedding. His family situation was difficult - both his parents and his other half's parents had had acrimonious divorces and could barely bring themselves to refer to the other party by name, let alone share any civillity. Any attempt at negotiating some sort of wedding arrangement had for this reason floundered before it started. Meanwhile, their relationship had plodded happily along and they'd had a daughter. When the daughter was one year old, they combined a Christening with her first birthday party - and most of their famillies, including all parents had swallowed any differences and turned up (a Christening being a rather less socially demanding occasion than a wedding), along a thoroughly satisfying nnumber of friends. The daughter was Christened, and the vicar gave a little homily, which touched briefly - to some worried and disapproving noises in the congregation - on the fact that the parents weren't married and that the church had traditionally disapproved of that sort of thing. On this - which was of course a pre-arranged cue - my friend and his partner looked at each other thoughtfully for a beat, before he went down on one knee and whipped out a ring - to more gasps and cheers from the congregation. The vicar (who was completely loving this) then gave her next line of the performance, which was "we've got 25 minutes now, if you want", to which the couple of course assented, and the bride then beckoned her father, whipped off her coat to reveal a wedding dress underneath, and the confused but happy congregation headed down to the other end of the church to witness the unexpected wedding. It was all done so quickly none of the warring parents had a chance to fall out with one another. There then followed a slightly confused but delightfully happy party at a village hall with a buffet and a children's entertainer (for of course it was also a one year old's birthday party), before the couple waved everyone off at 6pm in order to take their daughter home for bath and bed, before settling down to watch Sunday night telly, still in their wedding gear. It was about as cheap a wedding that it was possible to have. But more memorable than most, and brought the couple no less happiness than a wedding of ten times the cost. Happy to report they are still happily married 12 years later.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
Yes, same for me
Not only are the smaller weddings a lot cheaper, with a lot less pressure on everyone, they are usually more FUN
A friend of mine had his at a lovely little civic place on Richmond Hill, after a tiny chapel service. Maybe 50 people. Not tiny but surely much less than £10k. It was.... idyllic
The weather was perfect and at least four couples - some impromptu - had al fresco sex in the bushes, such was the genial atmosphere of hedonism. IIt became a kind of joke - guess who's having sex in the shubbery now?! I can still remember the amusing speeches to this day. And they are still married, 30 years later, with a very bonny daughter now grown up, and he's one of my best friends
One of my top five weddings. intimate, gleeful and unforgettable
Yes one of the best I went to was a close friend of mine, this is back before I'd met my wife too. Neither of them had a pot to piss in but he'd managed to get her pregnant so they got married as her family was/is pretty traditional. Registry with about 40ish people, a really nice dinner at a gastropub nearby and then they had set up a marquee in the pub garden for an evening of dancing with a live covers band. Absolutely magical, I even managed to snag one of the bridesmaids for a dance and then a memorable evening.
I think the key, probably, is that if a wedding is trying to impress, it is much more likely to fail. Those are the gaudy expensive ones, generally
If a wedding is simply there to celebrate or solemnise a love match, and the couple want to share their happiness with close friends and fam, it will succeed. Also the food in smaller weddings is often better, because it's far easier to cater for 30 than 300
Haggis out of a van that at arrived at 11pm was genius at my friend's wedding. Kept us all going to 4am, smashed through a kitchen counter top (apparently weight limit is something around 400kg).
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
Yes, same for me
Not only are the smaller weddings a lot cheaper, with a lot less pressure on everyone, they are usually more FUN
A friend of mine had his at a lovely little civic place on Richmond Hill, after a tiny chapel service. Maybe 50 people. Not tiny but surely much less than £10k. It was.... idyllic
The weather was perfect and at least four couples - some impromptu - had al fresco sex in the bushes, such was the genial atmosphere of hedonism. IIt became a kind of joke - guess who's having sex in the shubbery now?! I can still remember the amusing speeches to this day. And they are still married, 30 years later, with a very bonny daughter now grown up, and he's one of my best friends
One of my top five weddings. intimate, gleeful and unforgettable
Yes one of the best I went to was a close friend of mine, this is back before I'd met my wife too. Neither of them had a pot to piss in but he'd managed to get her pregnant so they got married as her family was/is pretty traditional. Registry with about 40ish people, a really nice dinner at a gastropub nearby and then they had set up a marquee in the pub garden for an evening of dancing with a live covers band. Absolutely magical, I even managed to snag one of the bridesmaids for a dance and then a memorable evening.
I think the key, probably, is that if a wedding is trying to impress, it is much more likely to fail. Those are the gaudy expensive ones, generally
If a wedding is simply there to celebrate or solemnise a love match, and the couple want to share their happiness with close friends and fam, it will succeed. Also the food in smaller weddings is often better, because it's far easier to cater for 30 than 300
Yes, that's not to say I haven't been to memorable bug bash weddings, I have but they really do have to try a lot harder to stand out from the crowd. One we went to last summer was brilliant, they know that a lot of the guests have young kids so they had a kids entertainer and a nursery service for parents that were comfortable with their kids sleeping at the venue until closing time overseen by nursery staff they'd got from one of the local ones. We're quite close to the couple and they told us putting on that service for the ~25 or so kids that were attending cost them £900 but it made the world of difference for all the parents of those kids who were comfortable with professionals in charge for the evening and not having to worry about leaving because of bed time or their kid staying up to late or drinking from some random glass thinking it's juice but it's actually a vodka something.
Fundamentally, I think it's thinking about the guests and it being a celebration of love everyone can take part in. It doesn't need to be gaudy and in your face about it, but I think some people forget about what a wedding is for.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
My wedding was lovely - happiest day of my life - but for the purposes of this discussion neither small nor lavish so not particularly interesting.
I want to tell you instead about a friend of mine who had a surprise wedding. His family situation was difficult - both his parents and his other half's parents had had acrimonious divorces and could barely bring themselves to refer to the other party by name, let alone share any civillity. Any attempt at negotiating some sort of wedding arrangement had for this reason floundered before it started. Meanwhile, their relationship had plodded happily along and they'd had a daughter. When the daughter was one year old, they combined a Christening with her first birthday party - and most of their famillies, including all parents had swallowed any differences and turned up (a Christening being a rather less socially demanding occasion than a wedding), along a thoroughly satisfying nnumber of friends. The daughter was Christened, and the vicar gave a little homily, which touched briefly - to some worried and disapproving noises in the congregation - on the fact that the parents weren't married and that the church had traditionally disapproved of that sort of thing. On this - which was of course a pre-arranged cue - my friend and his partner looked at each other thoughtfully for a beat, before he went down on one knee and whipped out a ring - to more gasps and cheers from the congregation. The vicar (who was completely loving this) then gave her next line of the performance, which was "we've got 25 minutes now, if you want", to which the couple of course assented, and the bride then beckoned her father, whipped off her coat to reveal a wedding dress underneath, and the confused but happy congregation headed down to the other end of the church to witness the unexpected wedding. It was all done so quickly none of the warring parents had a chance to fall out with one another. There then followed a slightly confused but delightfully happy party at a village hall with a buffet and a children's entertainer (for of course it was also a one year old's birthday party), before the couple waved everyone off at 6pm in order to take their daughter home for bath and bed, before settling down to watch Sunday night telly, still in their wedding gear. It was about as cheap a wedding that it was possible to have. But more memorable than most, and brought the couple no less happiness than a wedding of ten times the cost. Happy to report they are still happily married 12 years later.
That sounds absolutely lovely! What a great idea by the couple and good on the vicar for playing his part too.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
I've often thought the history of Homo Sapiens was literally the quest to get out of our trees.
No it looks like they agree with me. To get olive oil or avocado oil, you just need a press. It's not the same as the process to get seed oils that involves using solvents.
If you honestly believe that supermarket olive oil is solely press extracted, then I have a bridge to sell you.
No it looks like they agree with me. To get olive oil or avocado oil, you just need a press. It's not the same as the process to get seed oils that involves using solvents.
If you honestly believe that supermarket olive oil is solely press extracted, then I have a bridge to sell you.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Completely agree. The absence of this - even an attempt at it - entirely mystifies me. It must be some residual quasi-religious resistance to the idea of psychoactive substances in themselves. It is absurd
eg the best way to beat Fentanyl and Tranq is for Big Pharma to invent an even better high, which is entirely safe, and can be given away for pennies. Thus displacing the demand for the nasty illegal drugs and allowing people to get high but still function and not sleep on hard sidewalks and ending up with multiple amputations
That also screws the dealers and the cartels. Just Fucking Do It
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Because drugs are bad, m’kay?
We do have a real issue with attitudes to drugs in this country (we are not alone in this). And politicians are usually complete dunces with respect to statistics about risk and harm. David Nutt is bang right about much of this.
I also think there is something rather puritanical about it - if there was a perfectly safe drug that gave unbelievable highs, no risk at all, many would still want it banned.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Completely agree. The absence of this - even an attempt at it - entirely mystifies me. It must be some residual quasi-religious resistance to the idea of psychoactive substances in themselves. It is absurd
eg the best way to beat Fentanyl and Tranq is for Big Pharma to invent an even better high, which is entirely safe, and can be given away for pennies. Thus displacing the demand for the nasty illegal drugs and allowing people to get high but still function and not sleep on hard sidewalks and ending up with multiple amputations
That also screws the dealers and the cartels. Just Fucking Do It
I think it is a religious hangover. The idea that the path to salvation is through abstinence and self-denial, that anything fun is sinful.
To take a drug to feel good would be cheating, when one should find spiritual peace through prayer and penance.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
The posrlt-1960's stigma has not really fully worn off. There was a also then a more wholesale reorientation towards a more puritanical social and economic ethic during the 1980's that would make this is a very unlikely topic of research in academic scientific institutions.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Because drugs are bad, m’kay?
We do have a real issue with attitudes to drugs in this country (we are not alone in this). And politicians are usually complete dunces with respect to statistics about risk and harm. David Nutt is bang right about much of this.
I also think there is something rather puritanical about it - if there was a perfectly safe drug that gave unbelievable highs, no risk at all, many would still want it banned.
Like ecstasy.
One downside...would we get ads like Jaguar one? Cos they definitely were on something.
I do wish people would lay off @HYUFD and the abuse. Yes, he likes to post slightly dogmatic highly traditionalist High Tory views, and then stubbornly digs in when challenged, but that's no reason to be nasty.
I'd say the best way to lower divorce rates would be more marriage courses and marriage counselling.
Marriage is hard and we've had some tough moments. We still hark back to the all weekend marriage course the CofE ran for us before we got hitched in our local church, which we still find useful.
Apprently the way to reduce divorce is to have less lavish and expensive weddings based on a US study. 'According to the data, women who spent more than $20,000 on their wedding were 1.6 times more likely to eventually divorce than women who spent between $5,000 and $10,000'
The logic is apprently twofold, 1 Finances are prominent reason for divorce so starting off with a financial millstone of paying for the wedding and everything around it is not a good start and 2. its been theorised if you are that concerned about impressing everyone else with a lavish do maybe you havent quite got the focus on the relationship itself.
I think it's a case of correlation not being causation here. People who want lavish weddings are more likely to get divorced, the lavish wedding is part and parcel of the personality of the people in question.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Yes, ignore these fools
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Ours was £9k, we didn't have an official photographer just got people to add their snaps to a shared album and printed the best ones. Some of our friends are brilliant artists and took some amazing pictures and one of my uncles is a camera enthusiast so he had an amazing Leica film camera which he used for some portraits later in the day after the ceremony out in the grounds of the venue, those are absolutely incredible.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
oh god yes. I WEEP at the money spunked on insane gaudy weddings, £50k and up, and then I hear they've split within a yearor two
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
What I really didn't like about the wedding is how formulaic it was. I've been to more weddings than probably most people in the country that aren't priests of some kind (seriously there was a summer a few years ago where we went to 16 weddings in 9 weeks) and they all fall into three categories - the first is the big lavish do with ~500 people, the guests are looked after but it's clear they've spent upwards of £50k on it and it's down to familial pressure as you say. The second is the big, cheap chaotic wedding where they've got a small budget but weren't able to tell their parents "no we don't know who that is so we're not inviting them" or "we haven't seen that uncle and aunt for 10 years so we're not inviting them". The final is the smaller event which varies from 20 people in a registry hall and then dinner/drinks at the pub nearby or 50-100 people at a church and nearby venue in the evening. By far the third category always has the most memorable weddings (for the right reasons). It's not even close.
Yes, same for me
Not only are the smaller weddings a lot cheaper, with a lot less pressure on everyone, they are usually more FUN
A friend of mine had his at a lovely little civic place on Richmond Hill, after a tiny chapel service. Maybe 50 people. Not tiny but surely much less than £10k. It was.... idyllic
The weather was perfect and at least four couples - some impromptu - had al fresco sex in the bushes, such was the genial atmosphere of hedonism. IIt became a kind of joke - guess who's having sex in the shubbery now?! I can still remember the amusing speeches to this day. And they are still married, 30 years later, with a very bonny daughter now grown up, and he's one of my best friends
One of my top five weddings. intimate, gleeful and unforgettable
Yes one of the best I went to was a close friend of mine, this is back before I'd met my wife too. Neither of them had a pot to piss in but he'd managed to get her pregnant so they got married as her family was/is pretty traditional. Registry with about 40ish people, a really nice dinner at a gastropub nearby and then they had set up a marquee in the pub garden for an evening of dancing with a live covers band. Absolutely magical, I even managed to snag one of the bridesmaids for a dance and then a memorable evening.
I remember a dear friend of mine's wedding. Nothing too ostentatious. But for a few people... we knew. She had bought a pair of shoes made by the son of the guy who made the original 'Ruby Slippers' from the Wizard of Oz. Exact copies of the originals.
And as she walked down the isle, with a little glint and a little skip - those few of us knew just how madly in love she was.
I loved my wedding but would not say it was the happiest day of my life, nor should it be in my view.
Birth of my children would get that title I think.
The birth of my children were happy days, but also stressful days, spent mainly in hospitals, and all brought a promise of years of hard work and worry. In all honesty, none of them really come in my top 50. I love my kids, but every day I've spent with the kids in the past year has been happier than the first day I had them. 8-14 year olds are in my view much more enjoyable company than newborn babies.
Whereas my wedding - just implausibly perfect. All my friends and family there, all happy for me. An unbelievably beautiful day. Standing there with the woman I loved and would love forever, promising our lives to each other. And as we walked out of the ceremony, the feeling of getting away with something ridiculously audacious. There has never been a high like it. And then, the best party I have ever had (not least, it should be said, because for the only time in my life I had got to choose the entire playlist for the whole day. Wife had right of veto, obviously, but there was no letting the DJ or venue have their own interpretation of what we might want to listen to).
Has anything ever useful come out of that petition site?
Don't think so. I'm totally against a petition asking for a general election because it undermines parliamentary democracy which should all be supporting.
I loved my wedding but would not say it was the happiest day of my life, nor should it be in my view.
Birth of my children would get that title I think.
Happiest day of one's life is a toughie
It was neither my wedding nor the birth of my children, nor the day my best flint became the number one seller in the UK. They were all standouts but not the happiest.....
But what was it?
Fuck. I dunno.
Actually, it MIGHT have been the day I keyed the door to my own property. At the late age of about 42, after a wastrel life of fun and partying that turned into drug addiction and near-death. Then I got clean, but it was still hard, but then my flints made money, and finally I bought a really nice flat, my first, where I sit now, where I have had a lot of great times, and it is all I ever wanted. My own place. A room of one's own. In a fine location in the city I love (for all its flaws). And 2 minutes from Regents Park
Yes, that's probably it. The day I turned the lock on this flat and stepped inside and thought "I own this. I bought it with hard work. No one can throw me out"
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Completely agree. The absence of this - even an attempt at it - entirely mystifies me. It must be some residual quasi-religious resistance to the idea of psychoactive substances in themselves. It is absurd
eg the best way to beat Fentanyl and Tranq is for Big Pharma to invent an even better high, which is entirely safe, and can be given away for pennies. Thus displacing the demand for the nasty illegal drugs and allowing people to get high but still function and not sleep on hard sidewalks and ending up with multiple amputations
That also screws the dealers and the cartels. Just Fucking Do It
History is full of these attempts.
Heroin was invented as safer, better morphine.
The Sacklers initially believed their hype that Oxy was non-addictive.
The real issue is the legalisation of drugs. When they were legal and prescribed by doctors, there were few deaths.
Most of the deaths from drugs come from wildly varying strengths, horrifying adulterants and hideous new drugs to beat drug enforcement. Fentanyl packs very small… Skunk was largely invented to make smuggling easier.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I have a Brompton, and my wife is convinced it's going to polish me off.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Because drugs are bad, m’kay?
We do have a real issue with attitudes to drugs in this country (we are not alone in this). And politicians are usually complete dunces with respect to statistics about risk and harm. David Nutt is bang right about much of this.
I also think there is something rather puritanical about it - if there was a perfectly safe drug that gave unbelievable highs, no risk at all, many would still want it banned.
Like ecstasy.
I can't remember which Iain M. Banks novel it was - but he had the idea of getting massively, massively wrecked on anything you wanted, but then when you got a bit bored/hungover/withdrawn just kinda pressing "off" and being entirely back to yourself again. We need this tech.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Because drugs are bad, m’kay?
We do have a real issue with attitudes to drugs in this country (we are not alone in this). And politicians are usually complete dunces with respect to statistics about risk and harm. David Nutt is bang right about much of this.
I also think there is something rather puritanical about it - if there was a perfectly safe drug that gave unbelievable highs, no risk at all, many would still want it banned.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Because drugs are bad, m’kay?
We do have a real issue with attitudes to drugs in this country (we are not alone in this). And politicians are usually complete dunces with respect to statistics about risk and harm. David Nutt is bang right about much of this.
I also think there is something rather puritanical about it - if there was a perfectly safe drug that gave unbelievable highs, no risk at all, many would still want it banned.
Like ecstasy.
I can't remember which Iain M. Banks novel it was - but he had the idea of getting massively, massively wrecked on anything you wanted, but then when you got a bit bored/hungover/withdrawn just kinda pressing "off" and being entirely back to yourself again. We need this tech.
Isn't that just binge drinking? I did about 6 years of it through uni, my gap year and the first couple of years of work.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I have a Brompton, and my wife is convinced it's going to polish me off.
Can people who are dying and in severe pain not just be given control of the pain medication switch, with a warnings not to risk going too high, along with a theatrical wink? If the pain gets too much, do what feels right. I know that's oversimplified but it seems more British than hospitals DISPENSING DEATH. I don't think we want doctors given the power to even suggest it to be honest.
It's a fairly normal approach in the UK to crank up pain medication if someone is dying in pain, even if it speeds the end. Similarly sedation for respiratory distress.
This is done as symptom control rather than euthanasia, but I can see why some might think that distinction isn't really genuine.
So you’re saying euthanasia is OK, so long as doctors call it something else ?
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
I am not sure that it is OK, but it is normal practice.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
When Gosport comes to trial there is going to be have to heavy reliance on the memories of elderly professionals.
One of my pharmacist colleagues tells of the Brompton cocktail, which was a lethal mix of something to finish you off delivered in a delicious single malt.
Uhm, no, not really. I have written quite often of the Brompton
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
I make the same point about mind-altering drugs. Why is there not research into drugs that would provide a safe high that could then become a legal alternative to heroin/cocaine/cannabis/etc?
Completely agree. The absence of this - even an attempt at it - entirely mystifies me. It must be some residual quasi-religious resistance to the idea of psychoactive substances in themselves. It is absurd
eg the best way to beat Fentanyl and Tranq is for Big Pharma to invent an even better high, which is entirely safe, and can be given away for pennies. Thus displacing the demand for the nasty illegal drugs and allowing people to get high but still function and not sleep on hard sidewalks and ending up with multiple amputations
That also screws the dealers and the cartels. Just Fucking Do It
History is full of these attempts.
Heroin was invented as safer, better morphine.
The Sacklers initially believed their hype that Oxy was non-addictive.
The real issue is the legalisation of drugs. When they were legal and prescribed by doctors, there were few deaths.
Most of the deaths from drugs come from wildly varying strengths, horrifying adulterants and hideous new drugs to beat drug enforcement. Fentanyl packs very small… Skunk was largely invented to make smuggling easier.
There's two different issues there ; new painkilling pharmaceutics and the now much more restricted research into new psychoactive substances, except for microdoses. Before the switch to moral puritanism in the 1980's, institutions like the CIA were still.suppporting it, as well as researching psychic phenomena ; all for nefarious reasons, in their case, ofcourse.
Comments
(Also those three are only guidelines)
Not sure I like the sound of it suddenly becoming hard.
I never convinced her that I Can't Believe It's Not Butter is not, in fact, butter. "It's even got butter in the title" she'd say.
I had crumpets the other day on LNER. And they provided spreadable. What's the point in that? Won't eat it.
So it's possible
I'm not sure what point I'm making *stares wistfully*.
I think the best advice I had about weddings was from my dad - if you make your wedding day the best day of your life by spending all this money and effort everything afterwards is destined to disappoint.
My wife and I had a very small (by Indian standards) ceremony with close friends and family. Neither of us wanted a big to do and the thought of doing so still gives me cold sweats. I think in total there were about 50 day guests and an additional 20 evening guests. My mum was worried about people in our extended family being offended but almost everyone understands that some couples want their weddings to be personal to them, I think we had one distant aunt who was upset enough to phone my mum and have a moan.
Not to forget the fire in North East London at a warehouse connected to Ukraine, suspicious cargo recently at Stansted and the fire at the submarine factory in Barrow (about which there seems to have been a news blackout)
Plus the major cyber attack on hospitals in central London
There is no doubt that we are under attack
Loseley Butter used to do a pure butter spreadable from the fridge (something to do with the type of cows and that way it was churned) but AFAIK they no longer make it.
I keep meaning to try putting butter in the wine cave at 12°C to see if it stays spreadable at that temperature.
Double effect is also crucial to the ethics of war. Hence the lively debate about Israel's tactics.
It really, really helped to have that support from our friends and I think that's where religion used to play a big role in marriages which was probably a really big net positive that people are missing.
Now, more than ever, pollsters & reporters have a responsibility to go deeper. In polling this year there has been high support for “mass deportations”… and low support for deporting long-established immigrants (ie most of the undoc).
https://x.com/carlosodio/status/1860773379197849641
Such contradictions don’t matter when you’re promising simple solutions to complex problems, while in opposition.
I don’t see how it will work in government.
classified tech, or UAPs.
Quite uncertain times, we're living in, for sure.
28 fucking hours. With no fucking
Hideous
Siargao - Manila - Abu Dhabi - LHR
All stopovers 3 hours plus
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c93753q5qkyo
Reminds me of the time security got shirty when I tried to take a box of xmas crackers to NYC.
I’d prefer something explicit, and capable of regulation.
Then some bright spark realised that the seats could be used - they were burning fuel, so why not use it? So if you need to make that trip, it came up as an option.
So I flew on a business jet, moderately regularly. The main thing is the lack of bullshit at either end. Security? Next to none. No bullshit about arriving x hours early.
At the other end, they would meet the plane with one of those vans turned into 10 seater. Straight from the tarmac to HQ - your luggage loaded in with the mail.
This is what private planes are about.
One of my brother-in-laws said that a larger wedding in Ireland can end up cheaper, because the custom in Ireland is to give cash as wedding gifts, and so the more people you invite, the more you receive in gifts, which as well as covering the per head cost per guest, will then contribute to the fixed costs.
Bearing that in mind, and that we reduced costs because I knitted the wedding dress and baked the cake, we were only a couple of thousand short of break-even, and I could see how it wouldn't have cost us anything net if I'd had an Irish family.
Don't ask me how much we've spent on gifts and attending other weddings in the family.
It can get out of control, as it did at Gosport some years ago.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/health/gosport-inquiry-nhs-hospitals-650-deaths-patients-lethal-opiate-doctor-jane-barton-a8407686.html
If you absolutely insist on spending 20-30k on a wedding (why???) spend 5-10k on the ceremony - find a nice civil place, a decent gastropub, serve curry and wine and make sure everyone has enough booze. Then spend 20k on a magnificent honeymoon
Better still spend a lot lot less
My wedding cost about £700, and most of that was oysters and champagne for five at Sheekeys, and my marriage was blissful, and only ended by the age-gap, there was no acrimony and no lack of love. Happily our honeymoon came free, courtesy of the Knappers Gazette sending us to several Anantara and Aman hotels in Oman
Just passed that mark.
If they kill it now, they won't have a chance.
It will be into the long grass.
https://web.archive.org/web/20121031234651/http://www.telegraph.co.uk/health/healthnews/9644287/NHS-millions-for-controversial-care-pathway.html
“…. 85 per cent of trusts have now adopted the regime, which can involve the removal of hydration and nutrition from dying patients.
More than six out of 10 of those trusts - just over half of the total - have received or are due to receive financial rewards for doing so amounting to at least £12million.”
Be an NHS target. In two senses.
The goal isn't to deport people, it's to make the Democrats oppose the will of the people, and therefore to ensure your reelection.
In comparison one of my cousins had a £75k giant wedding, divorced 3 years later.
All that time and effort...
There must be a cause-and-effect at work here, indeed several. If a wedding is massive and insanely pricey it suggests there is a lot of familial and social investment in that wedding, as a statement, and it may not speak of true love at the core
If the couple has the guts to say No, we want a small wedding, and they bring it in under 10k or even under 5 or 1k, that means they are really committed, all that matters to them is their love (and their close friends and family) and that's why they last
I suspect it could be because people are less likely to prematurely rush into marriage now, so are less likely to make a mistake.
My advice to any young couple would be to live together before you get married. You learn a lot from living with someone. Of course the advice used to be the opposite and some still cling to those outdated views.
I get the idea of Trump Mk II reneging on his campaign promises (which would be sensible of him).
I just don't think it particularly likely.
Never tried it myself. I am sufficed with the G&T. Also if I want to enjoy myself I make my stopovers last a few days and blag a nice hotel....
Separated 15 months later.
The bit where my first wife told the registrar, "no need for any of that," halfway through the vows wasn't perhaps the best omen.
Touche
A lot of this practice does require careful and sensitive discussion between clinicians, patients and relatives. It all hinges on people being correct that the situation is genuinely terminal and all are acting in good faith for the best outcome for the patient. The thing is that people acting in bad faith are not that unusual.
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/305912403714
"THAT ECONOMY IN THE CONSUMPTION & USE OF FOOD IN THIS COUNTRY IS A MATTER OF THE GREATEST POSSIBLE IMPORTANCE TO THE EMPIPE AT THE PRESENT TIME"
The ceremony? Held in the staff canteen at my cousin’s job down the industrial estate because the fluorescent lighting “set the vibe.” The registrar did the nuptials on one of those plastic trays you slide round the rails, and then chucked it back in the trolley rack, whilst some of my mates threw ripped tissues at us and cheered Oi! Oi!
For food, we raided the vending machines but only gave our twelve guests 75p each and called it a lucky dip. The cake was a stack of pancakes we pilfered from Tesco and topped with a tealight. Our rings? Stolen coke can tabs. And for the honeymoon? We took the bus to the next town and walked around the petrol station car park, sharing a single bottle of White Lightning, before I slashed in the Car Wash, she vommed into the plastic bin, and then I tupped her behind the kebab van before grabbing a bag of chips from Mustafa and then staggering back home.
Best day of my life.
I think there's a much lower success rate for proper relationship starts today (not counting one night hookups through whatever app gen z use these days) but a much higher proportion of the successes lead to successful marriages. I also think this is one of the reasons the birth rate has dropped. The 6/10 relationship doesn't exist any more and probably something like 0.2-0.3 of the fertility rate came from those 6/10 relationships that inevitably ended in divorce. Everyone wants an 8/10 compatibility match or higher according to my younger cousins who are still on the dating scene.
I think I quite frightened her, though.
Not only are the smaller weddings a lot cheaper, with a lot less pressure on everyone, they are usually more FUN
A friend of mine had his at a lovely little civic place on Richmond Hill, after a tiny chapel service. Maybe 50 people. Not tiny but surely much less than £10k. It was.... idyllic
The weather was perfect and at least four couples - some impromptu - had al fresco sex in the bushes, such was the genial atmosphere of hedonism. IIt became a kind of joke - guess who's having sex in the shubbery now?! I can still remember the amusing speeches to this day. And they are still married, 30 years later, with a very bonny daughter now grown up, and he's one of my best friends
One of my top five weddings. intimate, gleeful and unforgettable
I was actually nodding along, believing you, until the vending machines
Petition Call a General Election
I would like there to be another General Election.
I believe the current Labour Government have gone back on the promises they laid out in the lead up to the last election.
https://petition.parliament.uk/petitions/700143
I've never seen anything like it - only 4 days and already 1.7 million signatures. It has 6 months.
Can't see Parliament debating it though as turkeys don't voluntarily debate Christmas. Strange as the Prime Minister and at least one opposition party used to believe in rerunning democratic votes ...
No advice on marriage. Just passed 30 years.
It's a terrible business model. The better you are at matching people, the fewer repeat customers you have.
Perhaps the government should pay a bonus to the online dating companies for every wedding, every child born, every 10th anniversary, and provide better incentives for the online dating apps/websites.
There will be another election in 2029, just have to be patient.
If the government is popular there'll be an election in 2028, if not 2029.
If a wedding is simply there to celebrate or solemnise a love match, and the couple want to share their happiness with close friends and fam, it will succeed. Also the food in smaller weddings is often better, because it's far easier to cater for 30 than 300
I want to tell you instead about a friend of mine who had a surprise wedding.
His family situation was difficult - both his parents and his other half's parents had had acrimonious divorces and could barely bring themselves to refer to the other party by name, let alone share any civillity. Any attempt at negotiating some sort of wedding arrangement had for this reason floundered before it started. Meanwhile, their relationship had plodded happily along and they'd had a daughter. When the daughter was one year old, they combined a Christening with her first birthday party - and most of their famillies, including all parents had swallowed any differences and turned up (a Christening being a rather less socially demanding occasion than a wedding), along a thoroughly satisfying nnumber of friends. The daughter was Christened, and the vicar gave a little homily, which touched briefly - to some worried and disapproving noises in the congregation - on the fact that the parents weren't married and that the church had traditionally disapproved of that sort of thing. On this - which was of course a pre-arranged cue - my friend and his partner looked at each other thoughtfully for a beat, before he went down on one knee and whipped out a ring - to more gasps and cheers from the congregation. The vicar (who was completely loving this) then gave her next line of the performance, which was "we've got 25 minutes now, if you want", to which the couple of course assented, and the bride then beckoned her father, whipped off her coat to reveal a wedding dress underneath, and the confused but happy congregation headed down to the other end of the church to witness the unexpected wedding. It was all done so quickly none of the warring parents had a chance to fall out with one another.
There then followed a slightly confused but delightfully happy party at a village hall with a buffet and a children's entertainer (for of course it was also a one year old's birthday party), before the couple waved everyone off at 6pm in order to take their daughter home for bath and bed, before settling down to watch Sunday night telly, still in their wedding gear.
It was about as cheap a wedding that it was possible to have. But more memorable than most, and brought the couple no less happiness than a wedding of ten times the cost.
Happy to report they are still happily married 12 years later.
It was a mix of heroin and cocaine in brandy. It was devised by an end-of-life doctor as part of palliative care, a pick-me-up for the doomed, and he noticed that it made his patients "notably sociable" and apparently happier
It was discontinued, probably on the grounds that dying people should be MISERABLE as well as dying
I despair of this attitude. We have advanced pharmacology, we could invent amazing drugs that would not only make dying painless but positively gladsome. We refuse to do so, I have no idea why other than some lingering religious ascetic weirdness
Guy knows whereof he speaks.
In the nearest future we expect a massive and, in my humble opinion, successful Russian advance at my flank in Kursk region.
Two Russian VDV divisions, one VDV brigade and one marine brigade will launch an assault with a lot of manoeuvres.
https://x.com/OSINTua/status/1860742055300903054
I am almost tearful!
Bravo to all, and thankyou for that
Fundamentally, I think it's thinking about the guests and it being a celebration of love everyone can take part in. It doesn't need to be gaudy and in your face about it, but I think some people forget about what a wedding is for.
Birth of my children would get that title I think.
eg the best way to beat Fentanyl and Tranq is for Big Pharma to invent an even better high, which is entirely safe, and can be given away for pennies. Thus displacing the demand for the nasty illegal drugs and allowing people to get high but still function and not sleep on hard sidewalks and ending up with multiple amputations
That also screws the dealers and the cartels. Just Fucking Do It
We do have a real issue with attitudes to drugs in this country (we are not alone in this). And politicians are usually complete dunces with respect to statistics about risk and harm. David Nutt is bang right about much of this.
I also think there is something rather puritanical about it - if there was a perfectly safe drug that gave unbelievable highs, no risk at all, many would still want it banned.
Like ecstasy.
To take a drug to feel good would be cheating, when one should find spiritual peace through prayer and penance.
There was a also then a more wholesale reorientation towards a more puritanical social and economic ethic during the 1980's that would make this is a very unlikely topic of research in academic scientific institutions.
And as she walked down the isle, with a little glint and a little skip - those few of us knew just how madly in love she was.
Whereas my wedding - just implausibly perfect. All my friends and family there, all happy for me. An unbelievably beautiful day. Standing there with the woman I loved and would love forever, promising our lives to each other. And as we walked out of the ceremony, the feeling of getting away with something ridiculously audacious. There has never been a high like it. And then, the best party I have ever had (not least, it should be said, because for the only time in my life I had got to choose the entire playlist for the whole day. Wife had right of veto, obviously, but there was no letting the DJ or venue have their own interpretation of what we might want to listen to).
It was neither my wedding nor the birth of my children, nor the day my best flint became the number one seller in the UK. They were all standouts but not the happiest.....
But what was it?
Fuck. I dunno.
Actually, it MIGHT have been the day I keyed the door to my own property. At the late age of about 42, after a wastrel life of fun and partying that turned into drug addiction and near-death. Then I got clean, but it was still hard, but then my flints made money, and finally I bought a really nice flat, my first, where I sit now, where I have had a lot of great times, and it is all I ever wanted. My own place. A room of one's own. In a fine location in the city I love (for all its flaws). And 2 minutes from Regents Park
Yes, that's probably it. The day I turned the lock on this flat and stepped inside and thought "I own this. I bought it with hard work. No one can throw me out"
Heroin was invented as safer, better morphine.
The Sacklers initially believed their hype that Oxy was non-addictive.
The real issue is the legalisation of drugs. When they were legal and prescribed by doctors, there were few deaths.
Most of the deaths from drugs come from wildly varying strengths, horrifying adulterants and hideous new drugs to beat drug enforcement. Fentanyl packs very small… Skunk was largely invented to make smuggling easier.
Before the switch to moral puritanism in the 1980's, institutions like the CIA were still.suppporting it, as well as researching psychic phenomena ; all for nefarious reasons, in their case, ofcourse.