The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
BBC names player withdrawn from tournament over high testosterone as Women’s Footballer of the Year
Zambia said after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where Banda scored six goals, that they were aware the player’s testosterone levels exceeded CAF’s maximum levels and that a course of hormone suppression had been offered. But Banda, along with two other members of the starting XI – Racheal Kundananji and Racheal Nacula, both of whom also starred at the Paris Games – were said by the country’s FA to have declined medication amid concerns over potential side-effects.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
You need me for that.
Recently I had a chat about the birds and bees with my eldest, I consider it an utter success because after the chat he agreed to not have sex until he is at least 25 years old on the proviso I never talk about the subject with him ever again.
Meghan Markle has released a statement following her appearance at a Thanksgiving event last week, sans husband Prince Harry.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly in the midst of a professional separation, with reports suggesting that their work relationship is “in a very bad state.”
I'm getting déjà-vu here, sure I've read many similar headlines (as posted on here) before. Surely they must be divorced several times over by now?
Meghan Markle has released a statement following her appearance at a Thanksgiving event last week, sans husband Prince Harry.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly in the midst of a professional separation, with reports suggesting that their work relationship is “in a very bad state.”
I'm getting déjà-vu here, sure I've read many similar headlines (as posted on here) before. Surely they must be divorced several times over by now?
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
Trump has announced he will impose 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. Does this mean NAFTA is dead? How can you impose tariffs on apartner country ina free trade area?
It would be a blatant breach of (Trump's own) treaty, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's dead. What happens next would decide whether it's just in abeyance, or beyond recovery.
NAFTA was superseded by USMCA or CUSMA (if you're Canadian). But yes, tariffs would seem to be a breach.
This is a taste of things to come. You wake up, flick on the radio, and it's "US President Donald Trump has said ..." and there'll be another piece of his wrong-headed spiteful simplistic nonsense dominating the airwaves. It's a technique. Provoke, inflame, intimidate, dominate.
Thank you, circa 250k voters in the RustBelt. You're lovely people.
Works in opposition. Unless he achieves actual dictatorship, I doubt it will for very long, in government.
I take it you were in a coma between 2016 and 2020?
I remember my intense feeling of relief when he finally left the WH.
"Phew, thank goodness that's over. Still, lessons learnt presumably, so perhaps it was worth it. Never again will America shit the bed like that."
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
There was only one Virgin Mary and is only one Christ
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place. Again younger marriage also is a far better alternative
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Trump has announced he will impose 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. Does this mean NAFTA is dead? How can you impose tariffs on apartner country ina free trade area?
It would be a blatant breach of (Trump's own) treaty, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's dead. What happens next would decide whether it's just in abeyance, or beyond recovery.
NAFTA was superseded by USMCA or CUSMA (if you're Canadian). But yes, tariffs would seem to be a breach.
This is a taste of things to come. You wake up, flick on the radio, and it's "US President Donald Trump has said ..." and there'll be another piece of his wrong-headed spiteful simplistic nonsense dominating the airwaves. It's a technique. Provoke, inflame, intimidate, dominate.
Thank you, circa 250k voters in the RustBelt. You're lovely people.
Works in opposition. Unless he achieves actual dictatorship, I doubt it will for very long, in government.
I take it you were in a coma between 2016 and 2020?
It evidently didn't work for him, as he lost in 2020. I think that, if anything, it will be worse for him this time. All but the faithful are bored of his shtick; he won't sell newspapers like he use to (look what's happened to NYT and WaPo subscriptions and CNN viewing figures).
If he implements his policies, he's going to be very unpopular with the majority if the electorate. If he doesn't, he has no more excuses for the faithful.
Right now he's riding on the crest of a wave, with the @williamglenn s cheering him along. It will break, I think.
Meghan Markle has released a statement following her appearance at a Thanksgiving event last week, sans husband Prince Harry.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex are reportedly in the midst of a professional separation, with reports suggesting that their work relationship is “in a very bad state.”
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
You may be out of date.
The only place afaik where you can still experience the Canterbury Tales as a way of life is in groups of people comprising, and adjoining, Choirs of Cathedral and bands of bellringers. Groups on modern pilgrimage may be another, but I have no personal experience of such.
Don't say I told you.
I could recite a few incidents occurring in the Rising Sun on Cloth Fair in Smithfield, involving a choir from a "not quite a cathedral" a decade or two ago, but I desist.
Trump has announced he will impose 25% tariffs on Canada, Mexico and China. Does this mean NAFTA is dead? How can you impose tariffs on apartner country ina free trade area?
It would be a blatant breach of (Trump's own) treaty, but that doesn't necessarily mean it's dead. What happens next would decide whether it's just in abeyance, or beyond recovery.
NAFTA was superseded by USMCA or CUSMA (if you're Canadian). But yes, tariffs would seem to be a breach.
This is a taste of things to come. You wake up, flick on the radio, and it's "US President Donald Trump has said ..." and there'll be another piece of his wrong-headed spiteful simplistic nonsense dominating the airwaves. It's a technique. Provoke, inflame, intimidate, dominate.
Thank you, circa 250k voters in the RustBelt. You're lovely people.
Works in opposition. Unless he achieves actual dictatorship, I doubt it will for very long, in government.
I take it you were in a coma between 2016 and 2020?
I remember my intense feeling of relief when he finally left the WH.
"Phew, thank goodness that's over. Still, lessons learnt presumably, so perhaps it was worth it. Never again will America shit the bed like that."
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place
In an environment where the RCC could hardly have more funding? You did say "give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that".
(I was just reading a book on the archaeology of the C20 mass crimes etc and it was a shock to come across the Tuam home for unmarried mothers and babies and the many who never left. Not the fathers, though ...).
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
54% of US adults have literacy below a 6th-grade* level.
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Doubtful about this. SFAICS on the whole people know fairly early on from very wide publicity that sex and pregnancy are closely linked and that contraception is the remedy for the sexually active who don't wish to be pregnant. I am not sure what more is needed in terms of quantity of information. Are many people getting pregnant out of ignorance? That all went in the 1950s didn't it?
I think that's a rather overly optimistic view. See:
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place. Again younger marriage also is a far better alternative
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
You need me for that.
Recently I had a chat about the birds and bees with my eldest, I consider it an utter success because after the chat he agreed to not have sex until he is at least 25 years old on the proviso I never talk about the subject with him ever again.
The puns were too much for him ?
Apparently I was uncharacteristically unsubtle and graphic which traumatised him.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
I seem to remember you praising Boris's Brexit deal to the rafters because it avoided tariffs.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
The world's oldest living man has died at the age of 112, his family have confirmed. John Alfred Tinniswood died on Monday at the Southport care home where he lived.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place. Again younger marriage also is a far better alternative
How old were you when you got married?
I only met the right person when I was older, doesn't mean we wouldn't ideally have married if we had met younger
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
I seem to remember you praising Boris's Brexit deal to the rafters because it avoided tariffs.
I've since listened to the objections to the Australian free trade deal and realised that allowing tariff-free imports from Europe is undermining our industry and farmers.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place
In an environment where the RCC could hardly have more funding? You did say "give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that".
(I was just reading a book on the archaeology of the C20 mass crimes etc and it was a shock to come across the Tuam home for unmarried mothers and babies and the many who never left. Not the fathers, though ...).
Emphasising even more the need for marriage and families to uphold their responsibilities
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
Perhaps if Starmer wasn't such a globalist pussy with no soul he could threaten tariffs on France unless they stop the boats?
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
It had just over 10 million British app users in October, compared with 4.5 million for Threads and 433,000 for Blue Sky, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb, opens new tab. But usage is dropping, with X's British app users down 19% on a year ago, Similarweb data showed.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place
In an environment where the RCC could hardly have more funding? You did say "give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that".
(I was just reading a book on the archaeology of the C20 mass crimes etc and it was a shock to come across the Tuam home for unmarried mothers and babies and the many who never left. Not the fathers, though ...).
Emphasising even more the need for marriage and families to uphold their responsibilities
The problem is that your way has been tried, and has been shown to fail every time. And the people those failures impacts most are women.
The other day you said something like I wouldn't be welcome in your church. Well, as far as I'm concerned, if your church is filled with people like you, it'd be a Hellish place to be.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place
In an environment where the RCC could hardly have more funding? You did say "give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that".
(I was just reading a book on the archaeology of the C20 mass crimes etc and it was a shock to come across the Tuam home for unmarried mothers and babies and the many who never left. Not the fathers, though ...).
Emphasising even more the need for marriage and families to uphold their responsibilities
Rather tricky when the father of the child is a priest...
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
Implementation of tariffs is generally an acknowledgement that commercial discussions/diplomacy has failed.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
The world's oldest living man has died at the age of 112, his family have confirmed. John Alfred Tinniswood died on Monday at the Southport care home where he lived.
On assisted dying I'm afraid the answer has to be no.
For all the undoubted legitimate cases of people being in pain and about to suffer worse pain, nevertheless the potential for abuse is such that the state should not be sanctioning this.
On the one hand you have the legitimate concerns of biological women to have women-only spaces; while on the other where does a trans woman go if they are being abused by their male partner and other women don't recognise them as women.
I notice that @Cyclefree uses the term "men" to refer to transwomen which illustrates a particular point of view.
The disabled loo.
Basically this is a problem without a solution because while a lot of Trans men are fine the fact is men (of dubious intent) can access women-only spaces by pretending to be trans is problematic given that the reason for women-only spaces is to escape from men
Disabled loos are usually unisex anyway (as are most loos in small firms or households). In any case, since no-one guards loos, would-be rapists do not need to ‘pretend to be trans’ in order to march in and assault women.
Yep that was my point - a place exists there which works for everyone.
Now if you were talking about a hospital ward the choice comes down to who you want to upset more
The women on an all female ward Or the trans woman forced to be in a ward with men
That’s really what this debate boils down to - 2 options neither of which can please everyone
should be the 99.9% of the population not the 0.1% that the mental SNP and their associated nutters wanted
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
Implementation of tariffs is generally an acknowledgement that commercial discussions/diplomacy has failed.
Surely with China that's an overdue realisation and European countries including the UK need to follow suit?
It had just over 10 million British app users in October, compared with 4.5 million for Threads and 433,000 for Blue Sky, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb, opens new tab. But usage is dropping, with X's British app users down 19% on a year ago, Similarweb data showed.
But if you send a dodgy tweet, they will still be straight round to investigate that non-crime hate incident....
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Which is completely irrelevant to the abortion argument which is what this entire discussion was about.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
Scotland created a lot of problems - including generating a significant increase in anti-transgender opinion - with well intentioned but badly thought out legislation.
However this case is decided, it won't much ameliorate that.
I'd query "well intentioned". It's hard to see into a man's heart, but it looks a lot more like "nail your colours to the culture war flagpole". The welfare of the people affected seems at best a marginal concern.
And whatever you think of the SG's legislation, it was no excuse for some of the vitriol directed at trans people in Scotland.
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
Implementation of tariffs is generally an acknowledgement that commercial discussions/diplomacy has failed.
It's silly to regard them that way. States set the framework; they shouldn't be conducting commercial negotiations about importing cars or whatever.
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
Implementation of tariffs is generally an acknowledgement that commercial discussions/diplomacy has failed.
Unfortunately in Trump's world there is no such thing as a win/win deal. He wins if the other side loses, even if he loses as well, as long as the other side loses more. As he can't compare to the win/win deal as it hasn't happened he won't recognise his loss, just that the other guy is suffering.
Eg with tariffs he will see the loss of sales by the exporter to America and the income from tariffs that come in from the fewer imports, but won't see that Americans will pay more (ie the tariff) or go without.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
... and I could go on. Are these all wrong? Is their data all unreliable?
Written with a pre determined left liberal ideology as makes no mention of the role of encouraging people to marry younger and have sex within marriage which goes hand in hand with abstinence for non marrried
On assisted dying I'm afraid the answer has to be no.
For all the undoubted legitimate cases of people being in pain and about to suffer worse pain, nevertheless the potential for abuse is such that the state should not be sanctioning this.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place. Again younger marriage also is a far better alternative
It had just over 10 million British app users in October, compared with 4.5 million for Threads and 433,000 for Blue Sky, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb, opens new tab. But usage is dropping, with X's British app users down 19% on a year ago, Similarweb data showed.
A friend left TwiX last weekend owing to its sustained decline in quality.
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
Implementation of tariffs is generally an acknowledgement that commercial discussions/diplomacy has failed.
Surely with China that's an overdue realisation and European countries including the UK need to follow suit?
See what the impact of Trump's massive tariffs are.
If they lead to restored manufacturing jobs in the US and not massive prices for US consumers maybe, if not then no
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Which is completely irrelevant to the abortion argument which is what this entire discussion was about.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
@Carnyx was just making a joke by pointing out you could get pregnant without having sex via IVF. It was just a joke because you said you couldn't.
We should not encourage people to get married younger so as to have children. That will just lead to more divorces and split families. Lots of people get married believing they love one another, yet many get divorced. So encouraging more to do so, particularly when young, immature and inexperienced will just lead to more broken families and at a time when they financially probably can't cope with a split leading to homelessness, poverty and desperation.
Leave people to get married when they feel it is right. I think people who get married in their early 20s miss out hugely on life.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
I thought, as a good Christian boy, the concept of pregnancy without sex being possible - and indeed having happened - was pretty central to your faith?
Also, the existence of the mass graves at Tuam hardly c onfirms HYUFD's claim that paying money to the RCC works.
If more had attended to Vatican teachings in the pulpit there would have been fewer teenage pregnancies out of wedlock to deal with in the first place
In an environment where the RCC could hardly have more funding? You did say "give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that".
(I was just reading a book on the archaeology of the C20 mass crimes etc and it was a shock to come across the Tuam home for unmarried mothers and babies and the many who never left. Not the fathers, though ...).
Emphasising even more the need for marriage and families to uphold their responsibilities
Rather tricky when the father of the child is a priest...
Cue the old joke about everyone calling the priest Father, apart from his own kids who call him uncle.
On the one hand you have the legitimate concerns of biological women to have women-only spaces; while on the other where does a trans woman go if they are being abused by their male partner and other women don't recognise them as women.
I notice that @Cyclefree uses the term "men" to refer to transwomen which illustrates a particular point of view.
The disabled loo.
Basically this is a problem without a solution because while a lot of Trans men are fine the fact is men (of dubious intent) can access women-only spaces by pretending to be trans is problematic given that the reason for women-only spaces is to escape from men
Disabled loos are usually unisex anyway (as are most loos in small firms or households). In any case, since no-one guards loos, would-be rapists do not need to ‘pretend to be trans’ in order to march in and assault women.
Yep that was my point - a place exists there which works for everyone.
Now if you were talking about a hospital ward the choice comes down to who you want to upset more
The women on an all female ward Or the trans woman forced to be in a ward with men
That’s really what this debate boils down to - 2 options neither of which can please everyone
should be the 99.9% of the population not the 0.1% that the mental SNP and their associated nutters wanted
This points up one of the fundamental contradictions in contemporary moral thinking. Utilitarianism, that most enlightenment of systems, broadly says 'the greatest good for the greatest number' and the individual rights movement basically says 'an identifiable right of a single individual is enforceable against everyone else whether they like it or not'.
These two forces are not compatible. It is helpful in argument to articulate which (or which other) principle you are upholding.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
Social media is of course widely targeted by naughty foreigners jealous of our green and pleasant land. My TwiX account has 133 followers, despite never tweeting. It did lose about half a few weeks ago in a purge of agents.
Meta (ie Facebook, Whatsapp & Instagram) last week removed some 2 million fake accounts linked to pig butchering scams (online romance is fattening the pig, followed by butchering where the victim is asked to make fictitious investments).
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
... and I could go on. Are these all wrong? Is their data all unreliable?
Written with a pre determined left liberal ideology as makes no mention of the role of encouraging people to marry younger and have sex within marriage which goes hand in hand with abstinence for non marrried
The thing is, sex is fun. Consenting adults should fill their boots as much as they can, while they can. And then get married and settle down. If they don’t they will regret it, and I don’t think the marriage will be as stable.
Are we sure it isn't like the Gatwick drones (which may never have existed at all?) On the probability charts, the @WhisperingOracle option of aliens probing the US air bases is rather remote.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
... and I could go on. Are these all wrong? Is their data all unreliable?
Written with a pre determined left liberal ideology as makes no mention of the role of encouraging people to marry younger and have sex within marriage which goes hand in hand with abstinence for non marrried
What about your ideology ? Which appears to have little time for individual autonomy, and places HYUFD's agenda over that of anyone else.
Social media is of course widely targeted by naughty foreigners jealous of our green and pleasant land. My TwiX account has 133 followers, despite never tweeting. It did lose about half a few weeks ago in a purge of agents.
Meta (ie Facebook, Whatsapp & Instagram) last week removed some 2 million fake accounts linked to pig butchering scams (online romance is fattening the pig, followed by butchering where the victim is asked to make fictitious investments).
Bot followers are a norm everywhere, I don't think you having them (I do too) is equated to necessarily very exciting e.g. naughty foreigners jealous of our green and pleasant land. Most of it is just the business of the internet, from all part of the murky world of people wanting fake followers (which need accounts that try to attempt to look more normal) to yes the same scammers who also do email phishing etc.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
It is highly relevant to considering the precision and reliability of your arguments if you can't even get the facts of life right.
No it is completely and utterly irrelevant to an argument about reasons for abortion, an argument you again butted into without checking the context of the discussion first
David Frum @davidfrum.bsky.social · 9h It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
Saying “tariffs are bad” is like saying “taxes are bad”. They’re a perfectly normal policy instrument.
Implementation of tariffs is generally an acknowledgement that commercial discussions/diplomacy has failed.
Unfortunately in Trump's world there is no such thing as a win/win deal. He wins if the other side loses, even if he loses as well, as long as the other side loses more. As he can't compare to the win/win deal as it hasn't happened he won't recognise his loss, just that the other guy is suffering.
Eg with tariffs he will see the loss of sales by the exporter to America and the income from tariffs that come in from the fewer imports, but won't see that Americans will pay more (ie the tariff) or go without.
The way Trump talks about tariffs makes it sound like he thinks the exporting country pays, rather than the importing company. The whole thing is surprising since aiui Americans learn at school about the Smoot-Hawley Act which imposed tariffs a hundred years ago and triggered the Great Depression.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Which is completely irrelevant to the abortion argument which is what this entire discussion was about.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
@Carnyx was just making a joke by pointing out you could get pregnant without having sex via IVF. It was just a joke because you said you couldn't.
We should not encourage people to get married younger so as to have children. That will just lead to more divorces and split families. Lots of people get married believing they love one another, yet many get divorced. So encouraging more to do so, particularly when young, immature and inexperienced will just lead to more broken families and at a time when they financially probably can't cope with a split leading to homelessness, poverty and desperation.
Leave people to get married when they feel it is right. I think people who get married in their early 20s miss out hugely on life.
Yes we should encourage people to get married younger. There is no reason whatsoever it leads to lots of divorces, I know plenty of couples who got married in their 20s, even at 18 now celebrating Golden or Diamond wedding anniversaries.
Telling people they should only have children once they are in their 30s or even 40s is yet another factor in our collapsing birthrates, now down to a fertility rate of just 1.44 and well below replacement level with all the extra costs to support an ageing population with it and decline in economic growth it causes
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
This intrigues me and not something that I had thought about before. A few years ago we were travelling back from Norfolk and noticed about 20 odd people with cameras with enormous telescopic lenses by the side of the road. We stopped and watched US fighter jets take off only a few hundred metres from us through a wire fence.
It was a fantastic sight and the noise was deafening.
It is only since the incident reported about the drones that I realised how easy it would be to do. We had a very clear view of the planes and the buildings and with those lenses they would have seen any details they wanted to and what was to stop anyone launching a drone.
There was no sign of any security. I can only assume that nothing visible was actually secret in any way.
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Given the very wide availability of drones now and most people don't know / don't care about registering, doing proper training courses etc, could be as simple as some dickhead excitedly new sticking their new purchase in the "follow" function as they drive / ride around.
Edit - One report says several small drones. But again, these things are so cheap now, <£200. Every YouTuber seem to own multiple and stick them up where ever they go.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Which is completely irrelevant to the abortion argument which is what this entire discussion was about.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
@Carnyx was just making a joke by pointing out you could get pregnant without having sex via IVF. It was just a joke because you said you couldn't.
We should not encourage people to get married younger so as to have children. That will just lead to more divorces and split families. Lots of people get married believing they love one another, yet many get divorced. So encouraging more to do so, particularly when young, immature and inexperienced will just lead to more broken families and at a time when they financially probably can't cope with a split leading to homelessness, poverty and desperation.
Leave people to get married when they feel it is right. I think people who get married in their early 20s miss out hugely on life.
I was 24 and Mrs Foxy 23 when we married. Seems to have worked well for us.
I didn't intend to get married so young, but when you meet the right person you shouldn't mess around.
Thank you Cyclefree for another thoughtful piece. I will duck the issues, and instead invite comment on a couple of related situations from my own experience.
Many here will be familiar with the fresh water ponds on Hampstead Heath. There are three - mixed, men's and ladies'. I am not aware of any problems at the men's pond, but it is disquieting for the biological ladies at the ladies' pond when trans men turn up and expect to use the same facilities. So far the numbers have been small enough to be handled intelligently and sympathetically by the lifeguards and the pond administrators, but I foresee increasing difficulties in the event of increasing use of certificates.
The other concerns the young boy in the downstairs flat. Sweet kid, but from the age of about five and for no ovious reason his mother decided to change his name to Edwina, dress him as a girl, and present him everywhere as a little female. This caused us and other neighbours some mild embarrassment but the real problem was at the school where there were no special facilities for him. His parents wanted him to use the girls loos, but this met with strong objections. I don't think the matter was ever resolved, and the family has now left the area.
(Fwiw, I think the only explanation for the gender switch was the mother's neurosis. I am pretty damn sure the boy never said to her or anyone else 'I feel like a girl, Mom.' In short, the boy is a victim here, but you can easily see how such hard cases lead to legal and administrative difficulties.)
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
This intrigues me and not something that I had thought about before. A few years ago we were travelling back from Norfolk and noticed about 20 odd people with cameras with enormous telescopic lenses by the side of the road. We stopped and watched US fighter jets take off only a few hundred metres from us through a wire fence.
It was a fantastic sight and the noise was deafening.
It is only since the incident reported about the drones that I realised how easy it would be to do. We had a very clear view of the planes and the buildings and with those lenses they would have seen any details they wanted to and what was to stop anyone launching a drone.
There was no sign of any security. I can only assume that nothing visible was actually secret in any way.
It’s your latter point exactly. It’s one of the benefits of living in a free country. Stand opposite an airbase and try to take photos even in some other NATO powers (Greece, I am looking at you) and you may get arrested. We and the yanks tend to let you carry on and keep the secret stuff out of view.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Which is completely irrelevant to the abortion argument which is what this entire discussion was about.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
@Carnyx was just making a joke by pointing out you could get pregnant without having sex via IVF. It was just a joke because you said you couldn't.
We should not encourage people to get married younger so as to have children. That will just lead to more divorces and split families. Lots of people get married believing they love one another, yet many get divorced. So encouraging more to do so, particularly when young, immature and inexperienced will just lead to more broken families and at a time when they financially probably can't cope with a split leading to homelessness, poverty and desperation.
Leave people to get married when they feel it is right. I think people who get married in their early 20s miss out hugely on life.
I was 24 and Mrs Foxy 23 when we married. Seems to have worked well for us.
I didn't intend to get married so young, but when you meet the right person you shouldn't mess around.
You waited eight years after the minimum age for marriage.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Apparently - it’s hard to be sure - these drones have been seen multiple times now. Fighter jets scrambled etc
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
The DJI Neo is tiny, fits in the palm of your hand, so would be very difficult to get a clear photo of it. And cost £200. So it is perfectly possible some kids have got them bought for them and they are just out their in the fields flying them around without any thought.
Could just be idiots. Though 'unidentified' is a bit odd, as most commercial drones now broadcast an ID and you'd think any air base worth its salt would have a scanner.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Which is completely irrelevant to the abortion argument which is what this entire discussion was about.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
@Carnyx was just making a joke by pointing out you could get pregnant without having sex via IVF. It was just a joke because you said you couldn't.
We should not encourage people to get married younger so as to have children. That will just lead to more divorces and split families. Lots of people get married believing they love one another, yet many get divorced. So encouraging more to do so, particularly when young, immature and inexperienced will just lead to more broken families and at a time when they financially probably can't cope with a split leading to homelessness, poverty and desperation.
Leave people to get married when they feel it is right. I think people who get married in their early 20s miss out hugely on life.
I was 24 and Mrs Foxy 23 when we married. Seems to have worked well for us.
I didn't intend to get married so young, but when you meet the right person you shouldn't mess around.
You waited eight years after the minimum age for marriage.
The assisted dying Bill could be scrapped before it is voted on as a group of cross-party MPs have tabled an amendment to stop it.
MPs are scheduled to vote on the Private Members’ Bill proposed by Kim Leadbeater, the Labour MP, to legalise assisted dying for terminally ill adults on Friday.
But Ben Spencer, the Conservative MP, Munira Wilson, a Liberal Democrat, and Labour’s Anna Dixon have co-sponsored a so-called “fatal motion amendment” that could kill the Bill if enough MPs support it.
The amendment comes amid widespread concern in the Commons that such a significant change was proposed as a Private Members’ Bill, meaning there is limited detailed assessment and analysis of the provisions it includes.
This is opposition in principle dressed up as concern about the detail.
It's a strength that it's a PMB rather than a government (and therefore adversarial party) matter. That is how we created our consensus on abortion, wasn't it? David Steel in 1967.
I am not sure the abortion bill is the best analogy.
It was promised as being safe, rare, and legal and it has proven to be anything but.
I am somebody favourable to assisted dying but this bill doesn’t inspire confidence.
Not rare. But safe and legal.
Legal is a given, of course, if you have a law to make abortion legal!
On rarity, it is quite an eye opening number for abortion - quick Google (Statista) gives me 214k abortions (E&W) in 2021 versus 695k live births (UK). There will be many more pregnancies, of course, which would be a better denominator, but it's a big proportion and slightly underestimated by excluding Scotland and NI, isn't it?
I don't have a problem with abortion - in principle, I don't think I would ever have chosen it personally - but those proportions give me pause for thought. The timings and reasons would merit investigation.
(Interestingly, live births are all over the place, from 670k up to about 812k nd back again in the last twenty years, but abortions are much more static - similar amounts of sex and accidents, I guess, but varying numbers of intentional pregnancies)
I am very much in a minority on PB I think, but it seems to me that in a civilised society with contraception and a welfare state abortion levels really should be quite low, and quite exceptional, and should not be routinely normalised.
I am loads more comfortable about assisted dying than seeing abortion as routine minor procedure; I am puzzled there is not a stronger sense of this in a society which would be generally sympathetic to humanism and with an appreciation of new life for its intrinsic worth.
If you want to reduce abortions, give more support to family planning services and sex education. It's simple to do.
Or abstain from sex until marriage and give funds to the Roman Catholic church and conservative evangelical churches to promote that
Abstention programmes have repeatedly been proven not to work.
Without doubt the most ludicrous post I have ever read on here. Of course they work because by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex.
If more younger people got married earlier it would also mean they could have babies earlier when wanted and would help raise our declining fertility rate as well
HYUFD: by definition you can't get pregnant if you aren't having sex
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
What on earth has that got to do with unintended pregnancies? It is completely irrelevant to an abortion argument
Pointing out you can get pregnant without having sex.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Which is completely irrelevant to the abortion argument which is what this entire discussion was about.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
@Carnyx was just making a joke by pointing out you could get pregnant without having sex via IVF. It was just a joke because you said you couldn't.
We should not encourage people to get married younger so as to have children. That will just lead to more divorces and split families. Lots of people get married believing they love one another, yet many get divorced. So encouraging more to do so, particularly when young, immature and inexperienced will just lead to more broken families and at a time when they financially probably can't cope with a split leading to homelessness, poverty and desperation.
Leave people to get married when they feel it is right. I think people who get married in their early 20s miss out hugely on life.
Yes we should encourage people to get married younger. There is no reason whatsoever it leads to lots of divorces, I know plenty of couples who got married in their 20s, even at 18 now celebrating Golden or Diamond wedding anniversaries.
Telling people they should only have children once they are in their 30s or even 40s is yet another factor in our collapsing birthrates, now down to a fertility rate of just 1.44 and well below replacement level with all the extra costs to support an ageing population with it and decline in economic growth it causes
Well I wasn't saying people 'have' to wait until their 30s or 40s. I was actually saying leave it up to them and not encourage them to get married too young. It is you encouraging the coercion, not me.
Your experience of young people staying together is very different to mine. I am racking my brain and I can't think of a single couple I knew when I was in my teens or early 20s who got married and are still together. Not a single one. Whereas most (not all) who got married in their 30s nearly all are.
I agree re the birthrate, but I am not concerned about that. There are too many humans on the planet anyway and I have no desire to create unhappy marriages or family breakups and consequential unhappiness to solve that problem
“US Air Force 'actively monitors' unidentified drones over UK RAF bases as fighter jets are spotted circling”
“A series of coordinated drone incursions over three US Air Force (USAF) bases in the East of England has prompted ongoing investigations by both American and British defence officials.
The incidents, which occurred between 20 and 25 November, involved multiple drones flying over RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, and Feltwell in eastern England, all located within a few miles of one another…
CNN reported that the drones did not seem to be of the hobbyist variety and, while their origin remains unknown, there is no evidence they collected sensitive intelligence or posed a threat to the installations.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites. This includes counter-drone security capabilities.”
It had just over 10 million British app users in October, compared with 4.5 million for Threads and 433,000 for Blue Sky, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb, opens new tab. But usage is dropping, with X's British app users down 19% on a year ago, Similarweb data showed.
But if you send a dodgy tweet, they will still be straight round to investigate that non-crime hate incident....
Think of the opportunities.
According to serving police officers, getting the CPS to prosecute crimes without CCTV evidence is next to impossible. Which is why online stuff is so good for the stats - CPS doesn’t expect CCTV.
If you declare the entire of Twatter a Hate Zone, then every post ever made there is evidence of a crime. Including in the past. Billions of historic crimes. Already committed. Evidence available.
You could arrest your way to Chief Constable of the Met….
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Apparently - it’s hard to be sure - these drones have been seen multiple times now. Fighter jets scrambled etc
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
The DJI Neo is tiny, fits in the palm of your hand, so would be very difficult to get a clear photo of it. And cost £200. So it is perfectly possible some kids have got them bought for them and they are just out their in the fields flying them around without any thought.
See CNN quoted by LBC. Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones
So then what are they? The USAF/RAF scrambling fighter jets over several days also suggests something more than local kids larking about? 🤷🏼♂️
Personally if I lived anywhere near there I’d be doing my damned best to get images/vids to sell to the Mail
On the one hand you have the legitimate concerns of biological women to have women-only spaces; while on the other where does a trans woman go if they are being abused by their male partner and other women don't recognise them as women.
I notice that @Cyclefree uses the term "men" to refer to transwomen which illustrates a particular point of view.
The disabled loo.
Basically this is a problem without a solution because while a lot of Trans men are fine the fact is men (of dubious intent) can access women-only spaces by pretending to be trans is problematic given that the reason for women-only spaces is to escape from men
Disabled loos are usually unisex anyway (as are most loos in small firms or households). In any case, since no-one guards loos, would-be rapists do not need to ‘pretend to be trans’ in order to march in and assault women.
Yep that was my point - a place exists there which works for everyone.
Now if you were talking about a hospital ward the choice comes down to who you want to upset more
The women on an all female ward Or the trans woman forced to be in a ward with men
That’s really what this debate boils down to - 2 options neither of which can please everyone
should be the 99.9% of the population not the 0.1% that the mental SNP and their associated nutters wanted
This points up one of the fundamental contradictions in contemporary moral thinking. Utilitarianism, that most enlightenment of systems, broadly says 'the greatest good for the greatest number' and the individual rights movement basically says 'an identifiable right of a single individual is enforceable against everyone else whether they like it or not'.
These two forces are not compatible. It is helpful in argument to articulate which (or which other) principle you are upholding.
Although the GGFTGN I think has 'unless it unduly hurts others' in brackets after it.
Thank you Cyclefree for another thoughtful piece. I will duck the issues, and instead invite comment on a couple of related situations from my own experience.
Many here will be familiar with the fresh water ponds on Hampstead Heath. There are three - mixed, men's and ladies'. I am not aware of any problems at the men's pond, but it is disquieting for the biological ladies at the ladies' pond when trans men turn up and expect to use the same facilities. So far the numbers have been small enough to be handled intelligently and sympathetically by the lifeguards and the pond administrators, but I foresee increasing difficulties in the event of increasing use of certificates.
The other concerns the young boy in the downstairs flat. Sweet kid, but from the age of about five and for no ovious reason his mother decided to change his name to Edwina, dress him as a girl, and present him everywhere as a little female. This caused us and other neighbours some mild embarrassment but the real problem was at the school where there were no special facilities for him. His parents wanted him to use the girls loos, but this met with strong objections. I don't think the matter was ever resolved, and the family has now left the area.
(Fwiw, I think the only explanation for the gender switch was the mother's neurosis. I am pretty damn sure the boy never said to her or anyone else 'I feel like a girl, Mom.' In short, the boy is a victim here, but you can easily see how such hard cases lead to legal and administrative difficulties.)
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Apparently - it’s hard to be sure - these drones have been seen multiple times now. Fighter jets scrambled etc
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
The DJI Neo is tiny, fits in the palm of your hand, so would be very difficult to get a clear photo of it. And cost £200. So it is perfectly possible some kids have got them bought for them and they are just out their in the fields flying them around without any thought.
See CNN quoted by LBC. Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones
So then what are they? The USAF/RAF scrambling fighter jets over several days also suggests something more than local kids larking about? 🤷🏼♂️
Personally if I lived anywhere near there I’d be doing my damned best to get images/vids to sell to the Mail
It says, seems not to be. These days, how would you know? Yes it might not be a DJI one, but I have a friend who does research in this area, he has a garage full of drones you will have never seen for sale. I asked him where he got them and he said you can just get everything from China and make all sorts via kits, they are like a bit like a cross between Raspberry Pi and Technic Lego. He has full control of the firmware and software.
It had just over 10 million British app users in October, compared with 4.5 million for Threads and 433,000 for Blue Sky, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb, opens new tab. But usage is dropping, with X's British app users down 19% on a year ago, Similarweb data showed.
But if you send a dodgy tweet, they will still be straight round to investigate that non-crime hate incident....
Think of the opportunities.
According to serving police officers, getting the CPS to prosecute crimes without CCTV evidence is next to impossible. Which is why online stuff is so good for the stats - CPS doesn’t expect CCTV.
If you declare the entire of Twatter a Hate Zone, then every post ever made there is evidence of a crime. Including in the past. Billions of historic crimes. Already committed. Evidence available.
You could arrest your way to Chief Constable of the Met….
The percentage of reported crimes that can be investigated is small. Various factors will come into play in determining which are pursued. One of these is sure to be whether someone with deep pockets and an agenda has friends in the Force.
I suspect this is how the Telegraph lady came to be visited.
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Apparently - it’s hard to be sure - these drones have been seen multiple times now. Fighter jets scrambled etc
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
Many years ago Warminster was the centre of a huge UFO flap. In the mid sixties so many people came to the town on a bank holiday (population under 15k back then) that the towns pubs ran out of beer. People claimed to see all kinds of things. Looking back the whole affair is faintly ridiculous, and it is a much derided flap in serious UFO/UAP circles now. I have one description of oranges flaming balls in the sky that would suddenly jump in space. Almost certainly military flares on Salisbury plain, as I have seen a hundred times, but to someone not from the area, expecting UFO's, something much more significant.
I mention this mainly because at the time believers argued that Warminster was a hot spot as the alien visitors were interested in the military bases round Warminster. It was a ridiculous suggestion. Alien races that had somehow the technology to cross the galaxy or from another dimension were drawn to look at Challenger tanks? I don't think so. Warminster happened for a number of reasons, and at least one very dishonest actor. Not unlike the current shit in the US. For Skinwalker in the states right now, Warminster had Five Ash Lane and the pigeons that (didn't) fall dead to the ground in mid-flight.
Anyone who is interested in the historiography of UFOs and UAPs could do worse than read 'In Alien Heat', a skeptical view of events from people who were there, who 'skywatched' and saw absolutely zip, while all around idiots turned flares, Venus, distant car head-lamps and satellites into alien visitors.
“US Air Force 'actively monitors' unidentified drones over UK RAF bases as fighter jets are spotted circling”
“A series of coordinated drone incursions over three US Air Force (USAF) bases in the East of England has prompted ongoing investigations by both American and British defence officials.
The incidents, which occurred between 20 and 25 November, involved multiple drones flying over RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, and Feltwell in eastern England, all located within a few miles of one another…
CNN reported that the drones did not seem to be of the hobbyist variety and, while their origin remains unknown, there is no evidence they collected sensitive intelligence or posed a threat to the installations.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites. This includes counter-drone security capabilities.”
It's no doubt Russian disruptors, but now of course we'll get a spate of silly copycat attempts from attention-seekers.
“US Air Force 'actively monitors' unidentified drones over UK RAF bases as fighter jets are spotted circling”
“A series of coordinated drone incursions over three US Air Force (USAF) bases in the East of England has prompted ongoing investigations by both American and British defence officials.
The incidents, which occurred between 20 and 25 November, involved multiple drones flying over RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, and Feltwell in eastern England, all located within a few miles of one another…
CNN reported that the drones did not seem to be of the hobbyist variety and, while their origin remains unknown, there is no evidence they collected sensitive intelligence or posed a threat to the installations.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites. This includes counter-drone security capabilities.”
"did not seem to be of the hobbyist variety " fits the model of "not terrorism related" in my eyes. How do they know?
“US Air Force 'actively monitors' unidentified drones over UK RAF bases as fighter jets are spotted circling”
“A series of coordinated drone incursions over three US Air Force (USAF) bases in the East of England has prompted ongoing investigations by both American and British defence officials.
The incidents, which occurred between 20 and 25 November, involved multiple drones flying over RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, and Feltwell in eastern England, all located within a few miles of one another…
CNN reported that the drones did not seem to be of the hobbyist variety and, while their origin remains unknown, there is no evidence they collected sensitive intelligence or posed a threat to the installations.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites. This includes counter-drone security capabilities.”
It's the DHL plane that went down over Lithuania that's worrying me.
If it's proven that Russia is downing planes over NATO countries... how do we respond to that?
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Apparently - it’s hard to be sure - these drones have been seen multiple times now. Fighter jets scrambled etc
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
The DJI Neo is tiny, fits in the palm of your hand, so would be very difficult to get a clear photo of it. And cost £200. So it is perfectly possible some kids have got them bought for them and they are just out their in the fields flying them around without any thought.
See CNN quoted by LBC. Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones
So then what are they? The USAF/RAF scrambling fighter jets over several days also suggests something more than local kids larking about? 🤷🏼♂️
Personally if I lived anywhere near there I’d be doing my damned best to get images/vids to sell to the Mail
How are they DEFINITE? They don't even have pictures.
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Apparently - it’s hard to be sure - these drones have been seen multiple times now. Fighter jets scrambled etc
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
The DJI Neo is tiny, fits in the palm of your hand, so would be very difficult to get a clear photo of it. And cost £200. So it is perfectly possible some kids have got them bought for them and they are just out their in the fields flying them around without any thought.
Unless hacked it would refuse to take off near an airfield.
BREAKING: Multiple unidentified drones have again been spotted over three air bases in Britain that are used by the United States Air Force - Sky News
The 3 airbases are very close to one another, so I wouldn't get too over excited yet. It could be as simple as somebody being a knobhead.
William of Ockham waves
Apparently - it’s hard to be sure - these drones have been seen multiple times now. Fighter jets scrambled etc
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
The DJI Neo is tiny, fits in the palm of your hand, so would be very difficult to get a clear photo of it. And cost £200. So it is perfectly possible some kids have got them bought for them and they are just out their in the fields flying them around without any thought.
See CNN quoted by LBC. Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones
So then what are they? The USAF/RAF scrambling fighter jets over several days also suggests something more than local kids larking about? 🤷🏼♂️
Personally if I lived anywhere near there I’d be doing my damned best to get images/vids to sell to the Mail
It says, seems not to be. But again, I have a friend who does research in this area, he has a garage full of drones you will have never seen for sale. I asked him where he got them and he said you can just get everything from China and make all sorts via kits, they are like a bit like a cross between Raspberry Pi and Technic Lego. He has full control of the firmware and software.
I have one I built in 2013. "Hobby parts". Can lift a DSLR...and fly autonomously without a radio.
In those days the control software was based on Arduino rather than a Pi. These days I think they use a more up to date microcontroller.
Comments
Zambia said after the 2021 Tokyo Olympics, where Banda scored six goals, that they were aware the player’s testosterone levels exceeded CAF’s maximum levels and that a course of hormone suppression had been offered. But Banda, along with two other members of the starting XI – Racheal Kundananji and Racheal Nacula, both of whom also starred at the Paris Games – were said by the country’s FA to have declined medication amid concerns over potential side-effects.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/football/2024/11/26/barbra-banda-bbc-womens-footballer-of-the-year-testosterone/
Sure to stir up controversy. These are the tricky edge cases.
"Phew, thank goodness that's over. Still, lessons learnt presumably, so perhaps it was worth it. Never again will America shit the bed like that."
·
9h
It's disheartening that in an age where knowledge has never been more accessible - the United States is about to be governed by an administration so primitive and ignorant as to believe that tariffs are good and that vaccines are bad.
I think that, if anything, it will be worse for him this time. All but the faithful are bored of his shtick; he won't sell newspapers like he use to (look what's happened to NYT and WaPo subscriptions and CNN viewing figures).
If he implements his policies, he's going to be very unpopular with the majority if the electorate. If he doesn't, he has no more excuses for the faithful.
Right now he's riding on the crest of a wave, with the @williamglenn s cheering him along.
It will break, I think.
The only place afaik where you can still experience the Canterbury Tales as a way of life is in groups of people comprising, and adjoining, Choirs of Cathedral and bands of bellringers. Groups on modern pilgrimage may be another, but I have no personal experience of such.
Don't say I told you.
I could recite a few incidents occurring in the Rising Sun on Cloth Fair in Smithfield, involving a choir from a "not quite a cathedral" a decade or two ago, but I desist.
(I was just reading a book on the archaeology of the C20 mass crimes etc and it was a shock to come across the Tuam home for unmarried mothers and babies and the many who never left. Not the fathers, though ...).
*11-12 years old.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14681810600579121
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0140197119300375
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/09654280610673490/full/html
https://jech.bmj.com/content/61/1/20.short
Sir Patrick Steptoe: hold my syringe
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crk43k54mk0o
Paywall: https://www.reuters.com/technology/uk-police-forces-quietly-withdraw-x-platform-amid-content-concerns-2024-11-26/
Not paywall in a minute or two: https://archive.ph/wip/q8QL4
It had just over 10 million British app users in October, compared with 4.5 million for Threads and 433,000 for Blue Sky, according to data from digital intelligence platform Similarweb, opens new tab.
But usage is dropping, with X's British app users down 19% on a year ago, Similarweb data showed.
https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(17)30297-5/fulltext
https://www.jahonline.org/article/S1054-139X(17)30260-4/fulltext
https://journals.lww.com/co-obgyn/fulltext/2007/10000/abstinence_and_abstinence_only_education.8.aspx
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0024658
https://www.ajpmonline.org/article/S0749-3797(11)00906-8/fulltext
https://www.bmj.com/content/334/7599/867.1
https://hrp.law.harvard.edu/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/sexlies_stereotypes2008.pdf
... and I could go on. Are these all wrong? Is their data all unreliable?
The other day you said something like I wouldn't be welcome in your church. Well, as far as I'm concerned, if your church is filled with people like you, it'd be a Hellish place to be.
But generally speaking I don't think we should encourage people to get married too young. They are usually not mature enough and not experienced enough to do so. I suspect that a number of first loves which end up in marriage and then divorce do so because of this, with one party or other having an affair.
Given our collapsing birthrate we certainly need to encourage more couples to get married younger if they love each other
Eg with tariffs he will see the loss of sales by the exporter to America and the income from tariffs that come in from the fewer imports, but won't see that Americans will pay more (ie the tariff) or go without.
If they lead to restored manufacturing jobs in the US and not massive prices for US consumers maybe, if not then no
We should not encourage people to get married younger so as to have children. That will just lead to more divorces and split families. Lots of people get married believing they love one another, yet many get divorced. So encouraging more to do so, particularly when young, immature and inexperienced will just lead to more broken families and at a time when they financially probably can't cope with a split leading to homelessness, poverty and desperation.
Leave people to get married when they feel it is right. I think people who get married in their early 20s miss out hugely on life.
These two forces are not compatible. It is helpful in argument to articulate which (or which other) principle you are upholding.
Meta (ie Facebook, Whatsapp & Instagram) last week removed some 2 million fake accounts linked to pig butchering scams (online romance is fattening the pig, followed by butchering where the victim is asked to make fictitious investments).
Which appears to have little time for individual autonomy, and places HYUFD's agenda over that of anyone else.
Telling people they should only have children once they are in their 30s or even 40s is yet another factor in our collapsing birthrates, now down to a fertility rate of just 1.44 and well below replacement level with all the extra costs to support an ageing population with it and decline in economic growth it causes
It was a fantastic sight and the noise was deafening.
It is only since the incident reported about the drones that I realised how easy it would be to do. We had a very clear view of the planes and the buildings and with those lenses they would have seen any details they wanted to and what was to stop anyone launching a drone.
There was no sign of any security. I can only assume that nothing visible was actually secret in any way.
Edit - One report says several small drones. But again, these things are so cheap now, <£200. Every YouTuber seem to own multiple and stick them up where ever they go.
I didn't intend to get married so young, but when you meet the right person you shouldn't mess around.
Many here will be familiar with the fresh water ponds on Hampstead Heath. There are three - mixed, men's and ladies'. I am not aware of any problems at the men's pond, but it is disquieting for the biological ladies at the ladies' pond when trans men turn up and expect to use the same facilities. So far the numbers have been small enough to be handled intelligently and sympathetically by the lifeguards and the pond administrators, but I foresee increasing difficulties in the event of increasing use of certificates.
The other concerns the young boy in the downstairs flat. Sweet kid, but from the age of about five and for no ovious reason his mother decided to change his name to Edwina, dress him as a girl, and present him everywhere as a little female. This caused us and other neighbours some mild embarrassment but the real problem was at the school where there were no special facilities for him. His parents wanted him to use the girls loos, but this met with strong objections. I don't think the matter was ever resolved, and the family has now left the area.
(Fwiw, I think the only explanation for the gender switch was the mother's neurosis. I am pretty damn sure the boy never said to her or anyone else 'I feel like a girl, Mom.' In short, the boy is a victim here, but you can easily see how such hard cases lead to legal and administrative difficulties.)
Yet not one photo or video?! Slightly odd
Your experience of young people staying together is very different to mine. I am racking my brain and I can't think of a single couple I knew when I was in my teens or early 20s who got married and are still together. Not a single one. Whereas most (not all) who got married in their 30s nearly all are.
I agree re the birthrate, but I am not concerned about that. There are too many humans on the planet anyway and I have no desire to create unhappy marriages or family breakups and consequential unhappiness to solve that problem
“A series of coordinated drone incursions over three US Air Force (USAF) bases in the East of England has prompted ongoing investigations by both American and British defence officials.
The incidents, which occurred between 20 and 25 November, involved multiple drones flying over RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, and Feltwell in eastern England, all located within a few miles of one another…
https://www.lbc.co.uk/news/drones-over-raf-bases-england-f15-jets/
CNN reported that the drones did not seem to be of the hobbyist variety and, while their origin remains unknown, there is no evidence they collected sensitive intelligence or posed a threat to the installations.
A spokesperson for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said: “We take threats seriously and maintain robust measures at defence sites. This includes counter-drone security capabilities.”
According to serving police officers, getting the CPS to prosecute crimes without CCTV evidence is next to impossible. Which is why online stuff is so good for the stats - CPS doesn’t expect CCTV.
If you declare the entire of Twatter a Hate Zone, then every post ever made there is evidence of a crime. Including in the past. Billions of historic crimes. Already committed. Evidence available.
You could arrest your way to Chief Constable of the Met….
So then what are they? The USAF/RAF scrambling fighter jets over several days also suggests something more than local kids larking about? 🤷🏼♂️
Personally if I lived anywhere near there I’d be doing my damned best to get images/vids to sell to the Mail
I’m shocked, shocked I tell you…..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_U6SAKxxnBA
Is there substance to this?
This is a bit more than gossip, but perhaps not that much more.
Source, "Bowler Hat Man": https://youtu.be/e_NnF4j_UUs?t=732
Tom Manning: I have a question. Why is it, in these pictures, pictures of aliens, UFOs, the yeti, Hellboy, why is it they're always out of focus?
I suspect this is how the Telegraph lady came to be visited.
I mention this mainly because at the time believers argued that Warminster was a hot spot as the alien visitors were interested in the military bases round Warminster. It was a ridiculous suggestion. Alien races that had somehow the technology to cross the galaxy or from another dimension were drawn to look at Challenger tanks? I don't think so. Warminster happened for a number of reasons, and at least one very dishonest actor. Not unlike the current shit in the US. For Skinwalker in the states right now, Warminster had Five Ash Lane and the pigeons that (didn't) fall dead to the ground in mid-flight.
Anyone who is interested in the historiography of UFOs and UAPs could do worse than read 'In Alien Heat', a skeptical view of events from people who were there, who 'skywatched' and saw absolutely zip, while all around idiots turned flares, Venus, distant car head-lamps and satellites into alien visitors.
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alien-Heat-Warminster-Mystery-Revisited/dp/1933665025
Read it - its great.
If it's proven that Russia is downing planes over NATO countries... how do we respond to that?
In those days the control software was based on Arduino rather than a Pi. These days I think they use a more up to date microcontroller.
https://ardupilot.org/
I have retired my contraption for a more convenient commercial craft.