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.
Unless it’s flying in prohibited airspace, detecting anything in U.K. airspace that isn’t using a transponder is unlikely. Which suggests visual reports. Which suggests unreliable witnesses.
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
As was the case at Gatwick.
Yes, whole thing could be a mass delusion. Which would explain lack of imagery
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?
One quite valid answer to that - these days - is that when a clear picture DOES emerge, everyone shrugs and says “fake”, “AI”, “CGI”
Sadly this is true. Except that in the modern age there ought to not be one, but hundreds. An actual alien space craft over London? How many cameras would that 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.
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.
Quite - "you do what, with what in where? That's gross Daddy, I'm never doing that..."
When I was about 13 I swore that I would never drink alcohol, didn't see the point.
I do now.
I think I only ever had one chat with my father about the birds and bees, it was on the drive to university where he reminded me that I was a good Muslim and I shouldn’t try any of the local delicacies which I took I mean to stick to a halal diet and not to drink alcohol, something which I’ve stuck to.
It turns out he may have been talking about females where I spectacularly failed to be a good Muslim.
I must have been asking questions at some point because my mum gave me a book to read. I don't recall the details. That was it. I attended an all boys grammar school and we didn't get much guidance there either.
My father was too embarrassed to talk to me about sex and delegated the task to my mother when I was about 14. I had to correct her on a few technical details and we had a good laugh together.
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.
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.)
In the first case, send the trans men to the Lido and tell them to get changed before they go. In the second, call the social services.
You have to book in advance to swim in the ponds these days, I think. When I was a kid you could just turn up and it was free. My grandad was a member of the Highgate Diving Club which used the men's' pond when there was the big diving board there. Very depressing to hear they have become a culture wars battleground.
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.
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.
Quite - "you do what, with what in where? That's gross Daddy, I'm never doing that..."
When I was about 13 I swore that I would never drink alcohol, didn't see the point.
I do now.
I think I only ever had one chat with my father about the birds and bees, it was on the drive to university where he reminded me that I was a good Muslim and I shouldn’t try any of the local delicacies which I took I mean to stick to a halal diet and not to drink alcohol, something which I’ve stuck to.
It turns out he may have been talking about females where I spectacularly failed to be a good Muslim.
I must have been asking questions at some point because my mum gave me a book to read. I don't recall the details. That was it. I attended an all boys grammar school and we didn't get much guidance there either.
My father was too embarrassed to talk to me about sex and delegated the task to my mother when I was about 14. I had to correct her on a few technical details and we had a good laugh together.
When I was 16 my mum told me not to get any of the local girls pregnant.
I didn't know how Maths homework could lead to that but I nodded anyway.
@Leon once again showing his incredible credulousness credentials.
Point me to one singing credulous remark I’ve made today. The furthest I’ve gone is “it’s slightly odd there are no images” - given the ubiquity of phone cameras
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
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.
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, eh?
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
And here is the map distribution of the petition, from the petitions.gov website. 5949 signatures from Newark, for example.
I would be quite interested to see some polling, even Yougov (which has its own biases), as to whether this amount of signatures is credible - 2.5 million from 67 million is 3.5%+ of population.
We have seen these numbers before, though not on the official site. In 2014 4-5% of the Scottish population signed, on the numbers, petitions about the intelligence service having manipulated the Referendum.
I'm interested to know what are the online sources driving this - there's some encouragement from somewhere. I might take a look at the Leeanderthal Man's social media later.
It is kind of weird to see calls for a new election from places that elected a Tory MP. Maybe Newark wants rid of Jenrick
Interesting that so many places that elected LibDems are some of the highest calls. Buyers' remorse?
Are you suggesting that Russian financed Nigerian bots are hostile in particular to the Lib Dems?
In better news the DEI grift is coming to an end. Wal-Mart has announced the end of all DEI programmes and initiatives and it is banning the sale if transgender propaganda books aimed at children along with breast binders. Bravo. Trump is already getting those big wins without even having to be in office.
Hopefully by the end of next year all companies will have dumped this shit and both DEI and ESG will be a thing of the past. Companies should focus on making money not playing politics.
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.
Those aliens did make some great crop circles though.
Only after 10 pints in the pub on the way...
Which makes them even more impressive tbf:
The weird thing is the more complicated they became the more likely they became to be man made, but as pieces of art they are stunning. I recall that the early ones had people like Terrence Meaden believing in air vortices etc as a mode of creation. The pranksters then showed just why this wouldn't work... I also love the fact that some people persist in trying to separate the 'faked' ones from the 'real' ones, even now. If you haven't been there is a brilliant exhibit near Honey Street (Pewsey way) on this. Its very much a believers exhibit, but fun to visit.
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, eh?
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
It is given the big tax rises and longer time working younger people will otherwise have to do if less of them.
Maintaining the population also ensures strong families and the continuation of the nation and human race and ensures a more cohesive nation which doesn't need as much immigration.
It is interesting that the right now increasingly doesn't give a toss about net zero, from Trump to Le Pen to Farage to Polievre to Dutton and Bolsanoro and Meloni and Netanyahu and Musk and even many Tories they are increasingly concerned about lower birth rates and resultant rising immigation more instead.
Left liberals still prioritise net zero over birthrates and cutting immigration but voters increasingly don't
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.
Nice. From that link: "Their cause is unknown. Many theories exist, ranging from science-based physical explanations such as the "plasma vortex" theory based on the phenomenon of electrohydrodynamics (EHD) to unorthodox suggestions that they are created by extraterrestrial intelligences. "
Or... just maybe... local pissheads having a laugh?
The ponds are still wonderful, although the booking system (which was first introduced during Covid and has become permanent) does take some of the spontaneity out of it. Apparently the high boards blew down in a gale long ago and were never replaced, probably on the entirely reasonable grounds that they were a bit dangerous. There is a decent spring board though.
As for your two comments, I think sending them to the lido just wouldn't work, and whilst I agree in principle with your Social Services advice we are talking Camden Council here. It's basically child abuse, but they ain't gonna touch it with a bargepole.
For an example of a relatively clear shot of a UFO, this incident over Tehran has not - AFAIK - been debunked. I’ve no idea what it is
What makes it intriguing is that the same object was seen and filmed by multiple people from different angles. So if it’s a hoax it’s seriously clever - which of course is quite possible
If it’s DEM ALIENS they’re not scared about being seen as it’s got flashing green lights
In better news the DEI grift is coming to an end. Wal-Mart has announced the end of all DEI programmes and initiatives and it is banning the sale if transgender propaganda books aimed at children along with breast binders. Bravo. Trump is already getting those big wins without even having to be in office.
Hopefully by the end of next year all companies will have dumped this shit and both DEI and ESG will be a thing of the past. Companies should focus on making money not playing politics.
It will still survive in the public sector and Silicon Valley and Hollywood companies but is on the decline
@Leon once again showing his incredible credulousness credentials.
Point me to one singing credulous remark I’ve made today. The furthest I’ve gone is “it’s slightly odd there are no images” - given the ubiquity of phone cameras
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
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?
I think it's more that @MarqueeMark (think it was him) was absolutely right when he said they were living separate lives, and it's just taken this long to drop the facade.
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.)
@Leon once again showing his incredible credulousness credentials.
Point me to one singing credulous remark I’ve made today. The furthest I’ve gone is “it’s slightly odd there are no images” - given the ubiquity of phone cameras
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
In better news the DEI grift is coming to an end. Wal-Mart has announced the end of all DEI programmes and initiatives and it is banning the sale if transgender propaganda books aimed at children along with breast binders. Bravo. Trump is already getting those big wins without even having to be in office.
Hopefully by the end of next year all companies will have dumped this shit and both DEI and ESG will be a thing of the past. Companies should focus on making money not playing politics.
It will still survive in the public sector and Silicon Valley and Hollywood companies but is on the decline
I don't think it will, I'm told that Disney is having a very big internal review of it's projects at the moment to remove DEI and wokeness as it has hurt their bottom line a lot over the past two or three years. If Disney are doing it then the rest of Hollywood will as well. As for tech companies, they'll follow the money, when woke helped them make money they did it, now that it doesn't they'll stop doing woke shit. Amazon can't afford to lose ground to Wal-Mart, there's no money in principles, especially when they don't even care about those principles.
For an example of a relatively clear shot of a UFO, this incident over Tehran has not - AFAIK - been debunked. I’ve no idea what it is
What makes it intriguing is that the same object was seen and filmed by multiple people from different angles. So if it’s a hoax it’s seriously clever - which of course is quite possible
If it’s DEM ALIENS they’re not scared about being seen as it’s got flashing green lights
I think the saucer shape is the giveaway. Back in the days people saw things in the sky (see balloon flaps in the late victorian era and into the early 20th C). When the UFO age began with Arnold's sighting he didn't say that he saw flaying saucers. He said that the things he saw "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." And yet this story became that the objects were saucer shaped and there we have it. Flying saucers became the thing to see (or claim to see) and has stuck ever since.
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, eh?
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
Although it's generally accepted by geography that one of the reasons for high birth rates in agrarian societies was the motivation to have someone to look after you in your old age. So for most of history, it has been. We've just socialised that responsibility.
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, eh?
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
It is given the big tax rises and longer time working younger people will otherwise have to do if less of them.
Maintaining the population also ensures strong families and the continuation of the nation and human race and ensures a more cohesive nation which doesn't need as much immigration.
It is interesting that the right now increasingly doesn't give a toss about net zero, from Trump to Le Pen to Farage to Polievre to Dutton and Bolsanoro and Meloni and Netanyahu and Musk and even many Tories they are increasingly concerned about lower birth rates and resultant rising immigation more instead.
Left liberals still prioritise net zero over birthrates and cutting immigration but voters increasingly don't
The right had better drop its gerontocratic neo-feudalism pronto then.
That means prioritising stuff that's important to people in their 20s and 30s. Given the Tories got 8 - 12% in those age groups, rather an uphill battle.
4x as many young women voted Green as voted Tory. Maybe a strong environmental policy might help?
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?
I think it's more that @MarqueeMark (think it was him) was absolutely right when he said they were living separate lives, and it's just taken this long to drop the facade.
That's a Phil Collins song, Separate Lives.
Well I held on to let you go And if you lost your love for me, well you never let it show There was no way to compromise So now we're living (living) Separate lives
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?
I think it's more that @MarqueeMark (think it was him) was absolutely right when he said they were living separate lives, and it's just taken this long to drop the facade.
I almost feel sorry for Harry. I wonder if he has any friends left? He always had people to do his thinking for him. If he now has to do it for himself I don't hold out much hope for 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
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, eh?
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
Although it's generally accepted by geography that one of the reasons for high birth rates in agrarian societies was the motivation to have someone to look after you in your old age. So for most of history, it has been. We've just socialised that responsibility.
Well, yes, that definitely has been part of the motivation. Whatever old age meant in 2000BC.
I just question whether it is a good one given the implications.
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.
Quite - "you do what, with what in where? That's gross Daddy, I'm never doing that..."
When I was about 13 I swore that I would never drink alcohol, didn't see the point.
I do now.
I think I only ever had one chat with my father about the birds and bees, it was on the drive to university where he reminded me that I was a good Muslim and I shouldn’t try any of the local delicacies which I took I mean to stick to a halal diet and not to drink alcohol, something which I’ve stuck to.
It turns out he may have been talking about females where I spectacularly failed to be a good Muslim.
I must have been asking questions at some point because my mum gave me a book to read. I don't recall the details. That was it. I attended an all boys grammar school and we didn't get much guidance there either.
My father was too embarrassed to talk to me about sex and delegated the task to my mother when I was about 14. I had to correct her on a few technical details and we had a good laugh together.
When I was 16 my mum told me not to get any of the local girls pregnant.
I didn't know how Maths homework could lead to that but I nodded anyway.
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.)
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
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.)
In the first case, send the trans men to the Lido and tell them to get changed before they go. In the second, call the social services.
You have to book in advance to swim in the ponds these days, I think. When I was a kid you could just turn up and it was free. My grandad was a member of the Highgate Diving Club which used the men's' pond when there was the big diving board there. Very depressing to hear they have become a culture wars battleground.
I think it might be useful background here to remember that the Ladies Pond was regarded as a Lesbian "safe space" for decades.
And that this year the constitution was changed to welcome "transwomen" - whatever that means.
For an example of a relatively clear shot of a UFO, this incident over Tehran has not - AFAIK - been debunked. I’ve no idea what it is
What makes it intriguing is that the same object was seen and filmed by multiple people from different angles. So if it’s a hoax it’s seriously clever - which of course is quite possible
If it’s DEM ALIENS they’re not scared about being seen as it’s got flashing green lights
I think the saucer shape is the giveaway. Back in the days people saw things in the sky (see balloon flaps in the late victorian era and into the early 20th C). When the UFO age began with Arnold's sighting he didn't say that he saw flaying saucers. He said that the things he saw "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." And yet this story became that the objects were saucer shaped and there we have it. Flying saucers became the thing to see (or claim to see) and has stuck ever since.
Doesn’t look small, more like 15m across? The throbbing noise is weird and sounds uncanny, maybe it’s been added on
Here’s a YouTube video discussing it in a bit more detail
He concludes, like you, that it’s a “custom drone”
But my overarching point is the same. Underneath the YouTube vid there are loads of people saying “looks too real, so it must be fake”. “No UFOs are that clear, so it’s CGI”
Which means we are beyond the point when any visual evidence will prove anything. We are almost beyond an Agreed Truth
Which is simultaneously quite sad and very interesting
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....
I don't think the issue is with a dodgy tweet, it was with an amateurish approach to investigation, and the interminable gormless politically-driven flapping from Allison Pearson afterwards.
For an example of a relatively clear shot of a UFO, this incident over Tehran has not - AFAIK - been debunked. I’ve no idea what it is
What makes it intriguing is that the same object was seen and filmed by multiple people from different angles. So if it’s a hoax it’s seriously clever - which of course is quite possible
If it’s DEM ALIENS they’re not scared about being seen as it’s got flashing green lights
I think the saucer shape is the giveaway. Back in the days people saw things in the sky (see balloon flaps in the late victorian era and into the early 20th C). When the UFO age began with Arnold's sighting he didn't say that he saw flaying saucers. He said that the things he saw "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." And yet this story became that the objects were saucer shaped and there we have it. Flying saucers became the thing to see (or claim to see) and has stuck ever since.
Doesn’t look small, more like 15m across? The throbbing noise is weird and sounds fake, maybe it’s been added on
Here’s a YouTube video discussing it in a bit more detail
He concludes, like you, that it’s a “custom drone”
But my overarching point is the same. Underneath the YouTube vid there are loads of people saying “looks too real, so it must be fake”. “No UFOs are that clear, so it’s CGI”
Which means we are beyond the point when any visual evidence will prove anything. We are almost beyond an Agreed Truth
Which is simultaneously quite sad and very interesting
I do share this concern, that we would automatically now assume clear evidence is fake. But I contend that this example is not that. In the UK we have vast numbers of cameras running all the time. Doorbell cams, traffic cams etc. When a meteor burns up its captured multiple times over from many different angles, Hundreds, thousands see it. We do not have that with UAPs. We have those released videos in the states that have been widely debunked, at least to the satisfaction of anyone who doesn't simply want to believe.
I hear all kinds of bullshit. Like pilots are trained observers, they won't be fooled, yet many are (by Starlink recently). Policemen are others who people credit with being reliable witnesses, but why? They are just as liable to misinterpret something odd that they see as the next person.
That is sad. It was the first big Audit I ran - Vauxhall Motors. Team of six, eight weeks in a hotel in Luton. Breakfast together, off to work and back, unwind over drinks and dinner, bed. Pretty intense. Talk about "relationship management". It was a bit like being in Fleetwood Mac.
That is sad. It was the first big Audit I ran - Vauxhall Motors. Team of six, eight weeks in a hotel in Luton. Breakfast together, off to work and back, unwind over drinks and dinner, bed. Pretty intense. Talk about "relationship management". It was a bit like being in Fleetwood Mac.
You were sent to Luton for eight weeks? Is that lawful?
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.)
In the first case, send the trans men to the Lido and tell them to get changed before they go. In the second, call the social services.
You have to book in advance to swim in the ponds these days, I think. When I was a kid you could just turn up and it was free. My grandad was a member of the Highgate Diving Club which used the men's' pond when there was the big diving board there. Very depressing to hear they have become a culture wars battleground.
I think it might be useful background here to remember that the Ladies Pond was regarded as a Lesbian "safe space" for decades.
And that this year the constitution was changed to welcome "transwomen" - whatever that means.
I think in practice they are encouraged to be discreet and that has worked ok so far. The problem will arise, if it has not already, when the privilege is abused.
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.
I wonder what they have to say about West Lothian? Which has a great big oil refinery, great big bridges, an airport and so on ...
Back in the 1970s and 1980s there was a lot of Loch Ness Monster hysteria. There was a conference about 1981 and the Scottish Naturalist devoted a couple of special issues to the resulting papers. Fascinating stuff, all pretty serious and balanced. Thumbs down for an actual monster, and a particuarly memorable paper showing that flying saucerism tended to go with a belief in the Monster ...
After the Norwegian opposition called for a tripling of Norway's support for Ukraine, the government is now proposing to double it.
I think it's important that Britain follows suit. How could we make this a live political issue to put pressure onto Starmer to act? I feel that he needs to be prodded on this, as I don't think he's going to take a lead on his own.
After the Norwegian opposition called for a tripling of Norway's support for Ukraine, the government is now proposing to double it.
I think it's important that Britain follows suit. How could we make this a live political issue to put pressure onto Starmer to act? I feel that he needs to be prodded on this, as I don't think he's going to take a lead on his own.
That might actually be a meaningful petition if it got a few million.
Speaking of Loch Ness monsters, I recall seeing this guy on a programme many years ago and it seems he has carried on just watching the Loch in hope. Thirty-two years and nothing. Is it a waste of a life? Or does he have inner calm? Who knows?
After the Norwegian opposition called for a tripling of Norway's support for Ukraine, the government is now proposing to double it.
I think it's important that Britain follows suit. How could we make this a live political issue to put pressure onto Starmer to act? I feel that he needs to be prodded on this, as I don't think he's going to take a lead on his own.
Brave move for a country that has a land border with Russia.
Trans people exist. Transmen are not deluded or confused lesbians; transwomen are not mutilated men. People can believe they are trans from a young age. (At least, the ones I have known). They are not criminals, and mean no harm to women.
These are all beliefs I have from personal experience of having known, and been friends, with some.
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
If "gender identity" is meaningless it follows that "transgender" is not a valid thing to be (other than a pretence to be tolerated for politeness sake) and the Gender Recognition Act (indeed all references to gender in the law as distinct to birth sex) should be repealed/removed.
This is a perfectly clear position to have but why do those holding it bridle at being described as "anti trans"?
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
For someone so woke its a bit much to see you misgender our beloved Cyclefree. For shame.
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
For someone so woke its a bit much to see you misgender our beloved Cyclefree. For shame.
Whoosh. That one went right over your head, I take it.
Of course, our beloved cyclefree would never deliberately misgender anyone to make a political point.
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
Careful, ‘he’ might throw you under a train. Literally.
@Leon once again showing his incredible credulousness credentials.
Point me to one singing credulous remark I’ve made today. The furthest I’ve gone is “it’s slightly odd there are no images” - given the ubiquity of phone cameras
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
"Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones"
I was quoting the USAF via CNN
You might have believed that but no you weren't. You were quoting LBC quoting CNN quoting 'a source'.
"There were about five to six drones, and their activity appeared coordinated, according to a source familiar with the matter. US defense officials are still investigating their origin, but they did not appear to be hobbyist drones, the source said. At no point did they pose a threat to the bases, and there is no evidence they were able to collect any sensitive intelligence, the source added."
Maybe only of interest (other than myself) to @Leon but it's very sad news. The Groucho is one of the last bits of old Soho still around.
I got the email. Praying it’s very temporary
Amen to that. I had a look at the licencing documents but all of the details of the serious crime or disorder are redacted.
A mystery. Could it be a crime scene for something like rape? - but then surely that would be public news? Unless it’s all injuncted
Fraud? Seems unlikely
Violence would have been witnessed unless it was after hours
Drug dealing? I know that goes on in every club that has ever existed, but if it was *really* blatant then that might have caught the police's attention.
@Leon once again showing his incredible credulousness credentials.
Point me to one singing credulous remark I’ve made today. The furthest I’ve gone is “it’s slightly odd there are no images” - given the ubiquity of phone cameras
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
"Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones"
I was quoting the USAF via CNN
You might have believed that but no you weren't. You were quoting LBC quoting CNN quoting 'a source'.
"There were about five to six drones, and their activity appeared coordinated, according to a source familiar with the matter. US defense officials are still investigating their origin, but they did not appear to be hobbyist drones, the source said. At no point did they pose a threat to the bases, and there is no evidence they were able to collect any sensitive intelligence, the source added."
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
For someone so woke its a bit much to see you misgender our beloved Cyclefree. For shame.
Whoosh. That one went right over your head, I take it.
Of course, our beloved cyclefree would never deliberately misgender anyone to make a political point.
Which bit is intended as the political point? Do you really think she is a 'nasty piece of work' because she has a different opinion to you?
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
For someone so woke its a bit much to see you misgender our beloved Cyclefree. For shame.
Whoosh. That one went right over your head, I take it.
Of course, our beloved cyclefree would never deliberately misgender anyone to make a political point.
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.
Quite - "you do what, with what in where? That's gross Daddy, I'm never doing that..."
When I was about 13 I swore that I would never drink alcohol, didn't see the point.
I do now.
I think I only ever had one chat with my father about the birds and bees, it was on the drive to university where he reminded me that I was a good Muslim and I shouldn’t try any of the local delicacies which I took I mean to stick to a halal diet and not to drink alcohol, something which I’ve stuck to.
It turns out he may have been talking about females where I spectacularly failed to be a good Muslim.
I must have been asking questions at some point because my mum gave me a book to read. I don't recall the details. That was it. I attended an all boys grammar school and we didn't get much guidance there either.
My father was too embarrassed to talk to me about sex and delegated the task to my mother when I was about 14. I had to correct her on a few technical details and we had a good laugh together.
I must say that discovering my son's porn stash in about 2000 was very different from discovering my dad's porn stash in about 1970.
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.
Quite - "you do what, with what in where? That's gross Daddy, I'm never doing that..."
When I was about 13 I swore that I would never drink alcohol, didn't see the point.
I do now.
I think I only ever had one chat with my father about the birds and bees, it was on the drive to university where he reminded me that I was a good Muslim and I shouldn’t try any of the local delicacies which I took I mean to stick to a halal diet and not to drink alcohol, something which I’ve stuck to.
It turns out he may have been talking about females where I spectacularly failed to be a good Muslim.
I must have been asking questions at some point because my mum gave me a book to read. I don't recall the details. That was it. I attended an all boys grammar school and we didn't get much guidance there either.
My father was too embarrassed to talk to me about sex and delegated the task to my mother when I was about 14. I had to correct her on a few technical details and we had a good laugh together.
I must say that discovering my son's porn stash in about 2000 was very different from discovering my dad's porn stash in about 1970.
@Leon once again showing his incredible credulousness credentials.
Point me to one singing credulous remark I’ve made today. The furthest I’ve gone is “it’s slightly odd there are no images” - given the ubiquity of phone cameras
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
"Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones"
I was quoting the USAF via CNN
You might have believed that but no you weren't. You were quoting LBC quoting CNN quoting 'a source'.
"There were about five to six drones, and their activity appeared coordinated, according to a source familiar with the matter. US defense officials are still investigating their origin, but they did not appear to be hobbyist drones, the source said. At no point did they pose a threat to the bases, and there is no evidence they were able to collect any sensitive intelligence, the source added."
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
For someone so woke its a bit much to see you misgender our beloved Cyclefree. For shame.
Whoosh. That one went right over your head, I take it.
Of course, our beloved cyclefree would never deliberately misgender anyone to make a political point.
And has she done what you allege?
Literally in the comment I was replying to.
Describing trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice". So, yes, literally the post I was replying to.
In fact I think I will continue to refer to Cyclefree as 'he' for as long as he continues insisting on using male pronouns to describe trans women.
That is sad. It was the first big Audit I ran - Vauxhall Motors. Team of six, eight weeks in a hotel in Luton. Breakfast together, off to work and back, unwind over drinks and dinner, bed. Pretty intense. Talk about "relationship management". It was a bit like being in Fleetwood Mac.
You were sent to Luton for eight weeks? Is that lawful?
Rite of passage. The alternative was 6 weeks in Grimsby doing a frozen fish conglomerate. You had to suck it up and survive. Not everyone did. It's why Chartered Accountants tend to be tough cookies.
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.
Quite - "you do what, with what in where? That's gross Daddy, I'm never doing that..."
When I was about 13 I swore that I would never drink alcohol, didn't see the point.
I do now.
I think I only ever had one chat with my father about the birds and bees, it was on the drive to university where he reminded me that I was a good Muslim and I shouldn’t try any of the local delicacies which I took I mean to stick to a halal diet and not to drink alcohol, something which I’ve stuck to.
It turns out he may have been talking about females where I spectacularly failed to be a good Muslim.
I must have been asking questions at some point because my mum gave me a book to read. I don't recall the details. That was it. I attended an all boys grammar school and we didn't get much guidance there either.
My father was too embarrassed to talk to me about sex and delegated the task to my mother when I was about 14. I had to correct her on a few technical details and we had a good laugh together.
When I was 16 my mum told me not to get any of the local girls pregnant.
I didn't know how Maths homework could lead to that but I nodded anyway.
Multiplication...
Ah yes, Bobby Darin! They don't write them like that anymore.
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, eh?
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
It is given the big tax rises and longer time working younger people will otherwise have to do if less of them.
Maintaining the population also ensures strong families and the continuation of the nation and human race and ensures a more cohesive nation which doesn't need as much immigration.
It is interesting that the right now increasingly doesn't give a toss about net zero, from Trump to Le Pen to Farage to Polievre to Dutton and Bolsanoro and Meloni and Netanyahu and Musk and even many Tories they are increasingly concerned about lower birth rates and resultant rising immigation more instead.
Left liberals still prioritise net zero over birthrates and cutting immigration but voters increasingly don't
The right had better drop its gerontocratic neo-feudalism pronto then.
That means prioritising stuff that's important to people in their 20s and 30s. Given the Tories got 8 - 12% in those age groups, rather an uphill battle.
4x as many young women voted Green as voted Tory. Maybe a strong environmental policy might help?
The right doesn't need to win most under 40s, even Harris won them this month but Trump won overall still, it needs to win over 40s as Boris did here too despite losing under 30s.
Trump anyway won 43% of 18-29 year olds and 47% of 30-44s with a platform of not giving a toss about net zero but fighting woke and cutting immigration, a platform not far from that Kemi and Farage are pushing here now
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
For someone so woke its a bit much to see you misgender our beloved Cyclefree. For shame.
Whoosh. That one went right over your head, I take it.
Of course, our beloved cyclefree would never deliberately misgender anyone to make a political point.
And has she done what you allege?
Literally in the comment I was replying to.
Describing trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice". So, yes, literally the post I was replying to.
In fact I think I will continue to refer to Cyclefree as 'he' for as long as he continues insisting on using male pronouns to describe trans women.
Sauce for the goose and all that.
So she has not misgendered an actual person, just a concept. As is her right. And yours to call her a man for your own reasons.
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
If "gender identity" is meaningless it follows that "transgender" is not a valid thing to be (other than a pretence to be tolerated for politeness sake) and the Gender Recognition Act (indeed all references to gender in the law as distinct to birth sex) should be repealed/removed.
This is a perfectly clear position to have but why do those holding it bridle at being described as "anti trans"?
Well because the implication is that "you're only saying that because you hate group x" tends to sting. Hence the tactic of e.g. "why does the government hate old people".
It's not that I think there are exactly two genders and I hate anyone who claims to be in a different category. It's that I don't think there are genders at all - in the sense that I don't think there is a 'real you' inside you - tantamount to a soul; you ARE the real you - just a bundle of biology. You can't be born in the wrong sex, any more than you can be born with the wrong coloured eyes.
You can, if you like, behave in a manner more usually characteristic of the opposite sex, within the context of societal acceptability (this is the toilets issue, and there will be many shades of grey in terms of societal acceptability). You can also have surgery in order to have the physical characteristics of the opposite sex. My view is that this is an odd route to happiness - in most other cases of unhappiness we tend to advocate changing the perception to match the reality, rather than the other way around - but clearly in some cases it works. But I don't believe there is a little 'real you' somewhere inside you which usually, but not always, matches the sex of the physical you. That sounds too much like religion for me.
'Gender' is also often a euphemism for 'sex' - a useful one, since sex also means something else. I suppose I'm happy to use it in that context.
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
In the thread header, we see how cyclefree goes to great lengths to appear neutral and unbiased.
But in the comments, his mask slips, and we can see the hatred dripping from his mouth when he describes trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice".
What a genuinely nasty piece of work he is.
For someone so woke its a bit much to see you misgender our beloved Cyclefree. For shame.
Whoosh. That one went right over your head, I take it.
Of course, our beloved cyclefree would never deliberately misgender anyone to make a political point.
And has she done what you allege?
Literally in the comment I was replying to.
Describing trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice". So, yes, literally the post I was replying to.
In fact I think I will continue to refer to Cyclefree as 'he' for as long as he continues insisting on using male pronouns to describe trans women.
Sauce for the goose and all that.
So she has not misgendered an actual person, just a concept. As is her right. And yours to call her a man for your own reasons.
After the Norwegian opposition called for a tripling of Norway's support for Ukraine, the government is now proposing to double it.
I think it's important that Britain follows suit. How could we make this a live political issue to put pressure onto Starmer to act? I feel that he needs to be prodded on this, as I don't think he's going to take a lead on his own.
That might actually be a meaningful petition if it got a few million.
You need six people to start a petition, willing to share their email address with one of their number.
But it's very hard for any petition to gain traction.
For an example of a relatively clear shot of a UFO, this incident over Tehran has not - AFAIK - been debunked. I’ve no idea what it is
What makes it intriguing is that the same object was seen and filmed by multiple people from different angles. So if it’s a hoax it’s seriously clever - which of course is quite possible
If it’s DEM ALIENS they’re not scared about being seen as it’s got flashing green lights
I think the saucer shape is the giveaway. Back in the days people saw things in the sky (see balloon flaps in the late victorian era and into the early 20th C). When the UFO age began with Arnold's sighting he didn't say that he saw flaying saucers. He said that the things he saw "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." And yet this story became that the objects were saucer shaped and there we have it. Flying saucers became the thing to see (or claim to see) and has stuck ever since.
Doesn’t look small, more like 15m across? The throbbing noise is weird and sounds uncanny, maybe it’s been added on
Here’s a YouTube video discussing it in a bit more detail
He concludes, like you, that it’s a “custom drone”
But my overarching point is the same. Underneath the YouTube vid there are loads of people saying “looks too real, so it must be fake”. “No UFOs are that clear, so it’s CGI”
Which means we are beyond the point when any visual evidence will prove anything. We are almost beyond an Agreed Truth
Which is simultaneously quite sad and very interesting
If it's over Tehran are we sure it's not Israel related ?
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
One of my best friends from school got married at 23, has 3 children and still happily married today. My grandparents got married at 20 and were together the rest of their lives.
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Got to keep the Ponzi scheme going, eh?
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
It is given the big tax rises and longer time working younger people will otherwise have to do if less of them.
Maintaining the population also ensures strong families and the continuation of the nation and human race and ensures a more cohesive nation which doesn't need as much immigration.
It is interesting that the right now increasingly doesn't give a toss about net zero, from Trump to Le Pen to Farage to Polievre to Dutton and Bolsanoro and Meloni and Netanyahu and Musk and even many Tories they are increasingly concerned about lower birth rates and resultant rising immigation more instead.
Left liberals still prioritise net zero over birthrates and cutting immigration but voters increasingly don't
The right had better drop its gerontocratic neo-feudalism pronto then.
That means prioritising stuff that's important to people in their 20s and 30s. Given the Tories got 8 - 12% in those age groups, rather an uphill battle.
4x as many young women voted Green as voted Tory. Maybe a strong environmental policy might help?
The right doesn't need to win most under 40s, even Harris won them this month but Trump won overall still, it needs to win over 40s as Boris did here too despite losing under 30s.
Trump anyway won 43% of 18-29 year olds and 47% of 30-44s with a platform of not giving a toss about net zero but fighting woke and cutting immigration, a platform not far from that Kemi and Farage are pushing here now
Age groups aren't FPTP constituencies though. You can't write off whole demographics. A vote from a 25 year old is just as good as a vote from a 75 year old. You don't need to win among young people. But I'd argue you won't win overall if you continue to lose so heavily among young people.
Good header - I don’t agree with all of it and certainly don’t agree with tone of the author’s latest comment. But that is life. We don’t have to agree.
I remain of the view that gender norms are a construct, sex is biological. Not everyone will agree with me on that one - and there is always going to be edge cases or awful people doing awful things. If you’ve gone to the trouble of changing your gender legally (under the current laws - not self-ID) it seems a bit churlish to say go in the gents. Albeit I do think there is an argument to maintain some sex specific services - which could include refuges and other protections for vulnerable women.
What I find interesting is that this is a very western focused discussion. I seem to remember that Samoan cultures have a sort of concept of “trans” and it is seen as perfectly normal. Indeed I believe one the Tuilagi family identifies as such.
If other societies have managed to find a way to acceptance and to manage risks and issues why can’t we?
@Leon once again showing his incredible credulousness credentials.
Point me to one singing credulous remark I’ve made today. The furthest I’ve gone is “it’s slightly odd there are no images” - given the ubiquity of phone cameras
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
"Definitely NOT domestic hobbyist drones"
I was quoting the USAF via CNN
You might have believed that but no you weren't. You were quoting LBC quoting CNN quoting 'a source'.
"There were about five to six drones, and their activity appeared coordinated, according to a source familiar with the matter. US defense officials are still investigating their origin, but they did not appear to be hobbyist drones, the source said. At no point did they pose a threat to the bases, and there is no evidence they were able to collect any sensitive intelligence, the source added."
Biology is complicated. There are always edge cases. There are a small number of people who don't fit into a biological male v. biological female category. That makes me suspicious of any arguments that talk about a reality of a biological male v. biological female category. Life is complicated: we should try to find ways to accommodate that complexity.
I suggest that most people are accepting that some people are, in some sense, "born in the wrong body" and should be supported through a gender transition. I suggest that most people are also accepting that some transgendered individuals really have altered sex and should be treated as such for most purposes.
If I was in hospital on a male ward and Kim Petras was put in the bed next to me, I would be confused and perturbed. I imagine if you were a woman on a female ward and Balian Buschbaum was put in the bed next to you, you might feel similarly.
The question is where to draw the line. Activists who argue that no-one should be allowed to change sex, as is Cyclefree's position, and those who argue that it should be trivially simple to do so, as is Scottish Greens' position, are both taking stances that may run contrary to public support for some sort of compromise, middling way. Will this Supreme Court decision allow for some middle way?
It's not a question of "being allowed to change sex". It is not physically possible.
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
If "gender identity" is meaningless it follows that "transgender" is not a valid thing to be (other than a pretence to be tolerated for politeness sake) and the Gender Recognition Act (indeed all references to gender in the law as distinct to birth sex) should be repealed/removed.
This is a perfectly clear position to have but why do those holding it bridle at being described as "anti trans"?
Well because the implication is that "you're only saying that because you hate group x" tends to sting. Hence the tactic of e.g. "why does the government hate old people".
It's not that I think there are exactly two genders and I hate anyone who claims to be in a different category. It's that I don't think there are genders at all - in the sense that I don't think there is a 'real you' inside you - tantamount to a soul; you ARE the real you - just a bundle of biology. You can't be born in the wrong sex, any more than you can be born with the wrong coloured eyes.
You can, if you like, behave in a manner more usually characteristic of the opposite sex, within the context of societal acceptability (this is the toilets issue, and there will be many shades of grey in terms of societal acceptability). You can also have surgery in order to have the physical characteristics of the opposite sex. My view is that this is an odd route to happiness - in most other cases of unhappiness we tend to advocate changing the perception to match the reality, rather than the other way around - but clearly in some cases it works. But I don't believe there is a little 'real you' somewhere inside you which usually, but not always, matches the sex of the physical you. That sounds too much like religion for me.
'Gender' is also often a euphemism for 'sex' - a useful one, since sex also means something else. I suppose I'm happy to use it in that context.
"Anti trans" doesn't have to mean hate. It also covers scorn, pity, and denial of (real) existence. The latter is the Gender Critical position (which is yours). As against that there is a small but not insignificant number of people who in order to have a shot at a decent life need to live as (ie 'be' not pretend to be) male/female having been born female/male. So along with several other (I think most?) developed countries we allow this via a legally recognized gender transition process. The logic of the Gender Critical position is that we shouldn't allow it. This is the essence of the argument when you boil it right down.
(Ah, the thread has gone, I see. Never mind. No doubt we'll revisit)
Comments
I had to correct her on a few technical details and we had a good laugh together.
Is it coincidence that God stopped performing miracles around the time humans could take photographs of those miracles?
You have to book in advance to swim in the ponds these days, I think. When I was a kid you could just turn up and it was free. My grandad was a member of the Highgate Diving Club which used the men's' pond when there was the big diving board there. Very depressing to hear they have become a culture wars battleground.
I didn't know how Maths homework could lead to that but I nodded anyway.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KnLDsq4XXA
That suggests that perhaps they are too small and whizzy to photograph? Well, maybe. But then they’re significant enough to be public news in the UK and USA and fighter jets are being scrambled, over several days
It is an intriguing puzzle. That’s as far as my credulity goes
https://www.sciencephoto.com/media/177576/view/crop-formation-in-form-of-mandelbrot-set
Collapsing fertility is one of the biggest problems effecting most of the western world and Far East today, as Musk correctly states. It will have huge negative effects in terms of funding an ageing population and our economy
Funding elderly people is not a good reason to have children.
I remember that @HYFUD once admitted that he had got something wrong.
Hopefully by the end of next year all companies will have dumped this shit and both DEI and ESG will be a thing of the past. Companies should focus on making money not playing politics.
Maintaining the population also ensures strong families and the continuation of the nation and human race and ensures a more cohesive nation which doesn't need as much immigration.
It is interesting that the right now increasingly doesn't give a toss about net zero, from Trump to Le Pen to Farage to Polievre to Dutton and Bolsanoro and Meloni and Netanyahu and Musk and even many Tories they are increasingly concerned about lower birth rates and resultant rising immigation more instead.
Left liberals still prioritise net zero over birthrates and cutting immigration but voters increasingly don't
Or... just maybe... local pissheads having a laugh?
The ponds are still wonderful, although the booking system (which was first introduced during Covid and has become permanent) does take some of the spontaneity out of it. Apparently the high boards blew down in a gale long ago and were never replaced, probably on the entirely reasonable grounds that they were a bit dangerous. There is a decent spring board though.
As for your two comments, I think sending them to the lido just wouldn't work, and whilst I agree in principle with your Social Services advice we are talking Camden Council here. It's basically child abuse, but they ain't gonna touch it with a bargepole.
What makes it intriguing is that the same object was seen and filmed by multiple people from different angles. So if it’s a hoax it’s seriously clever - which of course is quite possible
If it’s DEM ALIENS they’re not scared about being seen as it’s got flashing green lights
https://x.com/ovnichile1/status/1795251491621724537?s=46
https://x.com/__northx/status/1800027146163036438?s=46
I feel it helps to remember that our Leon presents as a hybrid of Engelbert Humperdinck and Max Miller.
I think the saucer shape is the giveaway. Back in the days people saw things in the sky (see balloon flaps in the late victorian era and into the early 20th C). When the UFO age began with Arnold's sighting he didn't say that he saw flaying saucers. He said that the things he saw "they flew erratic, like a saucer if you skip it across the water." And yet this story became that the objects were saucer shaped and there we have it. Flying saucers became the thing to see (or claim to see) and has stuck ever since.
That means prioritising stuff that's important to people in their 20s and 30s. Given the Tories got 8 - 12% in those age groups, rather an uphill battle.
4x as many young women voted Green as voted Tory. Maybe a strong environmental policy might help?
Well I held on to let you go
And if you lost your love for me, well you never let it show
There was no way to compromise
So now we're living (living)
Separate lives
There's always a Phil Collins song.
I just question whether it is a good one given the implications.
More robots required...
People can have all sorts of surgeries and are free to do so. But they remain - whatever their outward and bodily appearance - the sex they were born as.
A mutilated man - however much it may help him live his life as he wants, and good luck to him if that's his choice - is not and can never be a woman. He is not of the female sex. So if a single sex space is to be meaningful, he - along with every other man, has to be kept out.
The alternative is that "woman" becomes a meaningless category and therefore women's rights are meaningless. The rights women need are because of their sex. And are needed because it is their sex that puts them at a disadvantage in pretty much every area of life by comparison with the male sex. When you mix these together you make it impossible to deal meaningfully with women's disadvantages or the behaviour of men which harms women.
The people who benefit from pretending that woman is a category men can opt in and out of are men. Not those who are or claim to be trans. But every man because it makes it impossible to protect women from men or to address male behaviour.
Bluntly, if men can go into women's changing rooms, what is the point of having the criminal offences of voyeurism or indecent exposure or upskirting? You are not only making this inevitable. You are encouraging it. You are creating a bloody enormous loophole and this will be taken advantage of by men. What is the point of women's sport if men can participate in it? You may as well abolish it. What is the point of having offences against sexual assault if you make it easier for men to access women in places where they are vulnerable?
What is the point of a campaign which says "No means No" when women can't even say No to a man coming into a woman's loo. If she can't say No to that, what else can't she say No to?
Women's rights should not be contingent on whether men agree with them or what men will allow. No. We should not have to negotiate with men what we can do, or even how we can describe ourselves, where we can go and be safe or private and how safe and private we are allowed by men to be. Just No.
And that this year the constitution was changed to welcome "transwomen" - whatever that means.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-68494843
Here’s a YouTube video discussing it in a bit more detail
https://youtu.be/oXmfEySLbSA
He concludes, like you, that it’s a “custom drone”
But my overarching point is the same. Underneath the YouTube vid there are loads of people saying “looks too real, so it must be fake”. “No UFOs are that clear, so it’s CGI”
Which means we are beyond the point when any visual evidence will prove anything. We are almost beyond an Agreed Truth
Which is simultaneously quite sad and very interesting
https://www.standard.co.uk/going-out/bars/soho-groucho-club-licence-review-closes-b1196353.html
Maybe only of interest (other than myself) to @Leon but it's very sad news. The Groucho is one of the last bits of old Soho still around.
I hear all kinds of bullshit. Like pilots are trained observers, they won't be fooled, yet many are (by Starlink recently). Policemen are others who people credit with being reliable witnesses, but why? They are just as liable to misinterpret something odd that they see as the next person.
Back in the 1970s and 1980s there was a lot of Loch Ness Monster hysteria. There was a conference about 1981 and the Scottish Naturalist devoted a couple of special issues to the resulting papers. Fascinating stuff, all pretty serious and balanced. Thumbs down for an actual monster, and a particuarly memorable paper showing that flying saucerism tended to go with a belief in the Monster ...
I think it's important that Britain follows suit. How could we make this a live political issue to put pressure onto Starmer to act? I feel that he needs to be prodded on this, as I don't think he's going to take a lead on his own.
"Angela Merkel: German reliance on Russian gas was necessity" (£)
https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/angela-merkel-german-reliance-on-russian-gas-was-necessity-bw3kvj7mg
https://www.nessiehunter.co.uk/
These are all beliefs I have from personal experience of having known, and been friends, with some.
This is a perfectly clear position to have but why do those holding it bridle at being described as "anti trans"?
Fraud? Seems unlikely
Violence would have been witnessed unless it was after hours
Of course, our beloved cyclefree would never deliberately misgender anyone to make a political point.
"There were about five to six drones, and their activity appeared coordinated, according to a source familiar with the matter. US defense officials are still investigating their origin, but they did not appear to be hobbyist drones, the source said. At no point did they pose a threat to the bases, and there is no evidence they were able to collect any sensitive intelligence, the source added."
https://edition.cnn.com/2024/11/24/uk/us-air-force-raf-base-drones-gbr-intl/index.html
Where will it bottom out?
Describing trans women as "mutilated men" and "good luck to him if that's his choice". So, yes, literally the post I was replying to.
In fact I think I will continue to refer to Cyclefree as 'he' for as long as he continues insisting on using male pronouns to describe trans women.
Sauce for the goose and all that.
Trump anyway won 43% of 18-29 year olds and 47% of 30-44s with a platform of not giving a toss about net zero but fighting woke and cutting immigration, a platform not far from that Kemi and Farage are pushing here now
It's not that I think there are exactly two genders and I hate anyone who claims to be in a different category. It's that I don't think there are genders at all - in the sense that I don't think there is a 'real you' inside you - tantamount to a soul; you ARE the real you - just a bundle of biology. You can't be born in the wrong sex, any more than you can be born with the wrong coloured eyes.
You can, if you like, behave in a manner more usually characteristic of the opposite sex, within the context of societal acceptability (this is the toilets issue, and there will be many shades of grey in terms of societal acceptability). You can also have surgery in order to have the physical characteristics of the opposite sex. My view is that this is an odd route to happiness - in most other cases of unhappiness we tend to advocate changing the perception to match the reality, rather than the other way around - but clearly in some cases it works. But I don't believe there is a little 'real you' somewhere inside you which usually, but not always, matches the sex of the physical you. That sounds too much like religion for me.
'Gender' is also often a euphemism for 'sex' - a useful one, since sex also means something else. I suppose I'm happy to use it in that context.
But it's very hard for any petition to gain traction.
You don't need to win among young people. But I'd argue you won't win overall if you continue to lose so heavily among young people.
NEW THREAD
I remain of the view that gender norms are a construct, sex is biological. Not everyone will agree with me on that one - and there is always going to be edge cases or awful people doing awful things. If you’ve gone to the trouble of changing your gender legally (under the current laws - not self-ID) it seems a bit churlish to say go in the gents. Albeit I do think there is an argument to maintain some sex specific services - which could include refuges and other protections for vulnerable women.
What I find interesting is that this is a very western focused discussion. I seem to remember that Samoan cultures have a sort of concept of “trans” and it is seen as perfectly normal. Indeed I believe one the Tuilagi family identifies as such.
If other societies have managed to find a way to acceptance and to manage risks and issues why can’t we?
(Ah, the thread has gone, I see. Never mind. No doubt we'll revisit)