Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
Another interesting poll from the often-overlooked Red Box series (no paywall) - people now mostly blame the Coalition rather than the last government for failing to resolve economic difficulties:
A lot of that is simply a pragmatic observation, I think - the Government's been in for nearly 5 years and they say we're still in difficulties. Ergo, they haven't solved the difficulties. A lot of people don't bother to dig deeper than that.
It's always hard to disentangle cause and effect here, but I think part of it is contagion from general VI: Looking at the YouGov time series the coalition parties hardly ever get above 40% between them nowadays. They were routinely above 50% until 2011.
Mr. Divvie, I forget, was that something Wendy Alexander said?
Yep, when the SNP brought forward legislation for a referendum during their 2007-2011 tenure, that was Wendy's response before Gordon put her brutally in her place. How Unionists must wish they'd grabbed that opportunity, might well have been a 2-1 win for No then.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Thats a stupid answer @antifrank. Most people cannot afford to lose a job on conscience and are forced to submit to immoral laws. Shakespeare was so right when he wrote. "conscience doth make cowards of us all". The only answer is to vote UKIP in for a massive change in the game.
Christians' willingness to endure martyrdom seems to have declined greatly since the days when they were fed to lions or flayed alive.
But once again we see the authoritarian kippers telling me who I may or may not marry.
Antifrank.. you dismiss religion if it means progress for your purpose. I am not terribly religious myself nor am I a kipper but I have always believed marriage is between a man and a woman, and just because the law says it isn't any more doesn't mean its right, Sometimes the law is an ass.
I don't dismiss religion. I dismiss the idea that the religious should be able to have their cake and eat it, refusing to perform duties they are required to perform and retaining their jobs. If they disapprove that strongly, they should find alternative employment.
Oh goody! Can I play this game as well?
I don't dismiss gay rights, I dismiss the idea that gays should be able to have their cake and have someone else bake it, refusing to abstain from sex in order to retain their jobs. If they are unable to restrain themselves, they should find alternative employment, although they have been trained in an occupation where the State is the only employer.
In the liberal society we live in, gay men can have sex and marry. And poor confused Neanderthal kippers just have to suck it up.
The religious are entitled to their views up to the point they affect other people who don't share their beliefs. When they presume to tell other people who they can and can't marry, they can crawl back under their rock again.
So you would ban the Burka?
How does that affect other people? I wouldn't change nuns' habits either.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
Ironic that, in this debate, the right-wingers on this board are arguing for an extension of the concept of reasonable accommodation in human rights/EU law!
We almost all have to do things in our job we disagree with. If we disagree strongly enough, we can leave. I appreciate it isn't costless, but there are jobs out there.
If an employer is forcing an employee to carry out duties they strongly object to on moral grounds when the employee's beliefs could easily and cheaply be accommodated, that's one thing. It's plainly unnecessary and ludicrous to reallocate a nurse who strongly objects to abortion from, say, a geriatric ward to a role involving assisting in abortions.
But it just piles costs on the business (or taxpayer as the case may be) if there is a general right to refuse to do things on moral grounds. For marriage registration, you essentially need to duplicate the employee if that employee refuses to register a proportion of marriages.
I would be interested if those arguing for the employee in that situation would take the same view of a feminist WH Smith employee who routinely refused to serve customers buying Nuts magazine (you may assume the magazine was not sold when they took the job)? Or a Muslim corner-shop employee who refuses to sell booze and fags when they start being stocked?
In the case of a racist law passed requiring deportation... if I were a civil servant in a job where I was required to implement it, I'd resign and campaign strongly for the removal of that law. I wouldn't seek to sue my employer for requiring me to do my duties of employment.
I wouldn't be sympathetic to a Muslim employee who went to work in shop that sold booze and fags, and then raised a moral objection to handling them. OTOH, I'd be a good deal more sympathetic to a Muslim employee who went to work for a shop that didn't sell such things, and was then subsequently told he had to handle them, or get fired.
Your first point is well-taken, but we've moved a very long way from being a society where employers can hire and fire at will. Making a purist argument for that seems pointless now.
Mr. Divvie, it's a good attitude for the LD candidate. Better to go down fighting, and it may improve her chances of a surprise victory.
Its the logical viewpoint. All that happened in Gordon yesterday was that a celebrity become the SNP candidate. I'm sure that it will encourage a few undecideds to vote SNP but I doubt there are enough of them to truly make the SNP 1/7 favourites...
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
You are starting to sound like a robot @JackW, it doesn't become you.
The vast majority of the public servants in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia did "nothing more than obey the law"; see where that got them and their societies.
I would hate to see our public servants obey laws they despise through gritted teeth.
I'm not too sure I'd classify the Nazis or Communists are standard bearers of modern liberal democracies as I advocated earlier.
It surely isn't too difficult to grasp the concept of British citizens obeying the laws as set down by our own Parliament ?
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
You are starting to sound like a robot @JackW, it doesn't become you.
The vast majority of the public servants in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia did "nothing more than obey the law"; see where that got them and their societies.
I would hate to see our public servants obey laws they despise through gritted teeth.
I'm not too sure I'd classify the Nazis or Communists are standard bearers of modern liberal democracies as I advocated earlier.
It surely isn't too difficult to grasp the concept of British citizens obeying the laws as set down by our own Parliament ?
You mean like they did with the Poll Tax.. Sometimes JackW the law is an ass, and politicians definitely are arses.. That's the way it is, we should not blindly obey any law.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Thats a stupid answer @antifrank. Most people cannot afford to lose a job on conscience and are forced to submit to immoral laws. Shakespeare was so right when he wrote. "conscience doth make cowards of us all". The only answer is to vote UKIP in for a massive change in the game.
Christians' willingness to endure martyrdom seems to have declined greatly since the days when they were fed to lions or flayed alive.
But once again we see the authoritarian kippers telling me who I may or may not marry.
Antifrank.. you dismiss religion if it means progress for your purpose. I am not terribly religious myself nor am I a kipper but I have always believed marriage is between a man and a woman, and just because the law says it isn't any more doesn't mean its right, Sometimes the law is an ass.
I don't dismiss religion. I dismiss the idea that the religious should be able to have their cake and eat it, refusing to perform duties they are required to perform and retaining their jobs. If they disapprove that strongly, they should find alternative employment.
Oh goody! Can I play this game as well?
I don't dismiss gay rights, I dismiss the idea that gays should be able to have their cake and have someone else bake it, refusing to abstain from sex in order to retain their jobs. If they are unable to restrain themselves, they should find alternative employment, although they have been trained in an occupation where the State is the only employer.
In the liberal society we live in, gay men can have sex and marry. And poor confused Neanderthal kippers just have to suck it up.
The religious are entitled to their views up to the point they affect other people who don't share their beliefs. When they presume to tell other people who they can and can't marry, they can crawl back under their rock again.
So you would ban the Burka?
Only if Nigel Farage decides to wear a union flag burka, unless of course he's not too ostentatious and is happy to do so in a corner.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
You are starting to sound like a robot @JackW, it doesn't become you.
The vast majority of the public servants in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia did "nothing more than obey the law"; see where that got them and their societies.
I would hate to see our public servants obey laws they despise through gritted teeth.
I'm not too sure I'd classify the Nazis or Communists are standard bearers of modern liberal democracies as I advocated earlier.
It surely isn't too difficult to grasp the concept of British citizens obeying the laws as set down by our own Parliament ?
You mean like they did with the Poll Tax.. Sometimes JackW the law is an ass, and politicians definitely are arses.. That's the way it is, we should not blindly obey any law.
Then you have the opportunity to remove those politicians you and sufficient others determine as "arses".
The "Poll Tax" was approved by one parliament and repealed by another. Perfectly simple.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Thats a stupid answer @antifrank. Most people cannot afford to lose a job on conscience and are forced to submit to immoral laws. Shakespeare was so right when he wrote. "conscience doth make cowards of us all". The only answer is to vote UKIP in for a massive change in the game.
Christians' willingness to endure martyrdom seems to have declined greatly since the days when they were fed to lions or flayed alive.
But once again we see the authoritarian kippers telling me who I may or may not marry.
Antifrank.. you dismiss religion if it means progress for your purpose. I am not terribly religious myself nor am I a kipper but I have always believed marriage is between a man and a woman, and just because the law says it isn't any more doesn't mean its right, Sometimes the law is an ass.
I don't dismiss religion. I dismiss the idea that the religious should be able to have their cake and eat it, refusing to perform duties they are required to perform and retaining their jobs. If they disapprove that strongly, they should find alternative employment.
Oh goody! Can I play this game as well?
I don't dismiss gay rights, I dismiss the idea that gays should be able to have their cake and have someone else bake it, refusing to abstain from sex in order to retain their jobs. If they are unable to restrain themselves, they should find alternative employment, although they have been trained in an occupation where the State is the only employer.
In the liberal society we live in, gay men can have sex and marry. And poor confused Neanderthal kippers just have to suck it up.
The religious are entitled to their views up to the point they affect other people who don't share their beliefs. When they presume to tell other people who they can and can't marry, they can crawl back under their rock again.
So you would ban the Burka?
Only if Nigel Farage decides to wear a union flag burka, unless of course he's not too ostentatious and is happy to do so in a corner.
How sad when people have to peddle a lie to make a point
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
You mean like refusing to treat people because they are very fat or because they smoke.. The NHS now does this, and it rations treatment too. Soon you too will be old and you will feel the full effect of the NHS refusing to treat people because it costs too much.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
You are starting to sound like a robot @JackW, it doesn't become you.
The vast majority of the public servants in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia did "nothing more than obey the law"; see where that got them and their societies.
I would hate to see our public servants obey laws they despise through gritted teeth.
I'm not too sure I'd classify the Nazis or Communists are standard bearers of modern liberal democracies as I advocated earlier.
It surely isn't too difficult to grasp the concept of British citizens obeying the laws as set down by our own Parliament ?
You mean like they did with the Poll Tax.. Sometimes JackW the law is an ass, and politicians definitely are arses.. That's the way it is, we should not blindly obey any law.
In general, everyone should obey the law of the land, unless it's completely outrageous (including Registrars). My own job requires me to uphold laws that I disagree with. The issue is really what *ought* to be the law of the land. I'm sympathetic to the view that serving registrars ought to have been allowed to opt out, but Parliament disagreed.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
How does that affect other people? I wouldn't change nuns' habits either.
I think it's bloody rude to cover your face when speaking to other people, but I don't think that's justification to ban the burka, seeing that it's a fairly mild effect. There's a stronger case that it should be done because the majority of women wearing it are being pressured into doing so.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
So when the Supreme Court allows their appeal as they almost certainly will, since it has been allowed by all other courts through the process. We will then have the position that nurses peripheral to the procedure can act in accordance with their conscience, but say North Irish Cake bakers and Civil Registrars are not, I doubt things will rest there some how.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Thats a stupid answer @antifrank. Most people cannot afford to lose a job on conscience and are forced to submit to immoral laws. Shakespeare was so right when he wrote. "conscience doth make cowards of us all". The only answer is to vote UKIP in for a massive change in the game.
Christians' willingness to endure martyrdom seems to have declined greatly since the days when they were fed to lions or flayed alive.
But once again we see the authoritarian kippers telling me who I may or may not marry.
Antifrank.. you dismiss religion if it means progress for your purpose. I am not terribly religious myself nor am I a kipper but I have always believed marriage is between a man and a woman, and just because the law says it isn't any more doesn't mean its right, Sometimes the law is an ass.
I don't dismiss religion. I dismiss the idea that the religious should be able to have their cake and eat it, refusing to perform duties they are required to perform and retaining their jobs. If they disapprove that strongly, they should find alternative employment.
Oh goody! Can I play this game as well?
I don't dismiss gay rights, I dismiss the idea that gays should be able to have their cake and have someone else bake it, refusing to abstain from sex in order to retain their jobs. If they are unable to restrain themselves, they should find alternative employment, although they have been trained in an occupation where the State is the only employer.
So you would ban the Burka?
Only if Nigel Farage decides to wear a union flag burka, unless of course he's not too ostentatious and is happy to do so in a corner.
How sad when people have to peddle a lie to make a point
Clearly your chortle by-pass operation was a success.
Lighten up a wee bit. We will presumably be able to make light of Farage under a Ukip government or will gentle joshing of the Great Thanet South one and the burka be banned in the same Act of Parliament ?
How does that affect other people? I wouldn't change nuns' habits either.
I think it's bloody rude to cover your face when speaking to other people, but I don't think that's justification to ban the burka, seeing that it's a fairly mild effect. There's a stronger case that it should be done because the majority of women wearing it are being pressured into doing so.
Motorcyclists are not allowed to wear helmets into a bank because the bank wants their face visible for security cameras. A lot of places currently gloss over people wearing a burka having their id checked because it would require them to show their face. Fundamentally not being able to visually identify someone is a security risk. This tolerance of face covering will evaporate very fast the first time there is a terrorist incident in which the suspect while present could not be identified because they were wearing a burka.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
So when the Supreme Court allows their appeal as they almost certainly will, since it has been allowed by all other courts through the process. We will then have the position that nurses peripheral to the procedure can act in accordance with their conscience, but say North Irish Cake bakers and Civil Registrars are not, I doubt things will rest there some how.
The northern Ireland cake case was utterly outrageous. The guy is being prosecuted for refusing to make a cake with a pressure groups campaigning slogan campaigning for something that is not permitted by law in Northern Ireland
How does that affect other people? I wouldn't change nuns' habits either.
I think it's bloody rude to cover your face when speaking to other people, but I don't think that's justification to ban the burka, seeing that it's a fairly mild effect. There's a stronger case that it should be done because the majority of women wearing it are being pressured into doing so.
Motorcyclists are not allowed to wear helmets into a bank because the bank wants their face visible for security cameras. A lot of places currently gloss over people wearing a burka having their id checked because it would require them to show their face. Fundamentally not being able to visually identify someone is a security risk. This tolerance of face covering will evaporate very fast the first time there is a terrorist incident in which the suspect while present could not be identified because they were wearing a burka.
Yes, I agree that security also has a good case for it. The overall case isn't quite strong enough for me to support banning the burkha, but I am sympathetic.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
So when the Supreme Court allows their appeal as they almost certainly will, since it has been allowed by all other courts through the process. We will then have the position that nurses peripheral to the procedure can act in accordance with their conscience, but say North Irish Cake bakers and Civil Registrars are not, I doubt things will rest there some how.
The Supreme Court will have to determine these issues on a case by case basis and provide the clarity that Parliament may not have allowed for.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
That is pretty much what I proposed at the time the law was being changed. It also has the effect of making scrutiny of marriages a civil matter rather than a religious one, important when considering forced marriage/cousin marriage etc.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
Seems like an entirely unnecessary bureaucracy to me. Organising a marriage is stressful enough - why should you also have to do an additional ceremony and level of paperwork? Right now, no one is being forced to do anything they don't believe in: churches that don't like the gays aren't forced to conduct such marriages, while those that believe in equality do.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
You are starting to sound like a robot @JackW, it doesn't become you.
The vast majority of the public servants in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia did "nothing more than obey the law"; see where that got them and their societies.
I would hate to see our public servants obey laws they despise through gritted teeth.
I'm not too sure I'd classify the Nazis or Communists are standard bearers of modern liberal democracies as I advocated earlier.
It surely isn't too difficult to grasp the concept of British citizens obeying the laws as set down by our own Parliament ?
I agree we need some Scottish Westminster VI polls or Scottish constituency polls.
Perhaps I could mention Northern Ireland. Does anyone know if both unionist parties are challenging all seats or may there be a few agreed candidates? Could the marginal seat of Belfast N fall to Nationalists please?
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
Eminently sensible solution.
Would this not be the case now if the CofE were not the established church and so it's priest can act in effect as Registrar's, I was under the impression that most if not all other denominations needed to use the Registry Office, and then solemnize it at a church appropriate to their faith ?
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
Eminently sensible solution.
Would this not be the case now if the CofE were not the established church and so it's priest can act in effect as Registrar's, I was under the impression that most if not all other denominations needed to use the Registry Office, and then solemnize it at a church appropriate to their faith ?
I'm pretty sure other churches can register as registrars.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
You mean like refusing to treat people because they are very fat or because they smoke.. The NHS now does this, and it rations treatment too. Soon you too will be old and you will feel the full effect of the NHS refusing to treat people because it costs too much.
That would be an example; though I think that the NHS Trust concerned has laid down these rules for clinical rather than judgemental reasons.
Obese people and smokers requiring General Anaesthesia have significantly higher risk of complications, including fatal ones. Similarly joint replacements in obese people are technically more difficult and early mobilisation much harder. Simply put: people who have addressed their health issues have better outcomes.
In an insurance based system they may not get covered at all...
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
That is pretty much what I proposed at the time the law was being changed. It also has the effect of making scrutiny of marriages a civil matter rather than a religious one, important when considering forced marriage/cousin marriage etc.
My view is that they should have abolished marriage, made civil partnership available to heterosexuals, and then renamed civil partnership "marriage".
Instead we have a strange situation where there are three forms of state-sponsored marriage, all with slightly different rules, and where for some reason gays have access to two of them and straights only one.
To stop people having to get married twice - I would abolish the need for civil wedding ceremonies, instead you would be able to make an appointment with your witnesses and simply sign the register.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
Eminently sensible solution.
Would this not be the case now if the CofE were not the established church and so it's priest can act in effect as Registrar's, I was under the impression that most if not all other denominations needed to use the Registry Office, and then solemnize it at a church appropriate to their faith ?
I'm pretty sure other churches can register as registrars.
http://goo.gl/1Y38ch What if I want to get married in another religious building? If you are getting married in any other religious building which is not Church of England and is registered for marriages, (for example, Baptist, Hindu, Methodist, Muslim, Roman Catholic, Sikh or other religious denomination), you must give your notice of marriage at your local Register Office in the district you reside in, before the marriage takes place.
The surprisingly sensible liberal Democrat for Hampstead & Kilburn for the Burqa thing right :
If it's not appropriate to wear a Balaclava or a motorcycle helmet, then it's not appropriate to wear a Burqa.
So it's fine to ban them in banks, shops etc?
Firms should obviously be allowed to choose who they serve, as Nigel Farage pointed out last week.
I agree as I have said before, it seems the law doesn't, see Northern Irish cake bakers.
There must be a business opportunity for some resourceful individual to make amendable signs for service providers unhappy with life in 21st century Britain :
In the world in 1980, there were 10.2 old people for every 100 working ones. Today, there are 12.1. In 2050, the UN projects, there will be 24.7. The situation is more extreme in most of Europe and in some far-eastern countries, like Japan, today. Germany has a fertility rate of only 1.43 children; more than 21 per cent of Japanese are over 65. In Britain, this newspaper reported yesterday, there has been a 42-per-cent jump in the number of one-child families in a generation. The old are living longer – a good thing in itself but also, in a society with fewer workers, a problem.
oot.
Speaking as someone who married an African immigrant (who, like me is planning to vote UKIP) with enough children for a small football team. I can't help but agree. If half our children also vote UKIP and they themselves have three or four children, half of whom vote UKIP then my one UKIP vote is turned into about six UKIP votes in thirty years.
Meanwhile liberals who have one child (half of which (statistically) votes Liberal) which themsevles have one child, half of which votes Liberal) reduce the liberal vote by 87.5% in thirty years.
Not difficult to see where this is going. Labour have historically benefitted from this phenomenon too, but less so now since their obsession with gay rights has seen several high profile cases of people from ethnic minorities sacked from jobs like marriage regristrars.
Ethnic minority registrars are there to uphold the law of the land not their religious beliefs.
A rubbish argument. From your ARSE, perhaps?
By your criterion, Catholic nurses should be required to participate in abortions as they are employed to provide "healthcare".
The law had been changed after she got the job, but made no provision for people's right of conscience.
The problem is that no notice has been taken of the right of people not to be complicit in immoral acts.
Yes they should, if the don't want to perform what is required of the job, go get a job they are prepared to do, if they want complete freedom run their own business. pathetic as usual in this country that they can pick and choose which parts of a job they want to do.
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The best way would be to adopt this here. Everyone has a civil ceremony where anyone can become part of a union with anyone in the eyes of the law. Just like a civil partnership or a registry office wedding.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
Seems like an entirely unnecessary bureaucracy to me. Organising a marriage is stressful enough - why should you also have to do an additional ceremony and level of paperwork? Right now, no one is being forced to do anything they don't believe in: churches that don't like the gays aren't forced to conduct such marriages, while those that believe in equality do.
You don't have to do an additional ceremony if you don't want to
In the world in 1980, there were 10.2 old people for every 100 working ones. Today, there are 12.1. In 2050, the UN projects, there will be 24.7. The situation is more extreme in most of Europe and in some far-eastern countries, like Japan, today. Germany has a fertility rate of only 1.43 children; more than 21 per cent of Japanese are over 65. In Britain, this newspaper reported yesterday, there has been a 42-per-cent jump in the number of one-child families in a generation. The old are living longer – a good thing in itself but also, in a society with fewer workers, a problem.
oot.
Speaking as someone who married an African immigrant (who, like me is planning to vote UKIP) with enough children for a small football team. I can't help but agree. If half our children also vote UKIP and they themselves have three or four children, half of whom vote UKIP then my one UKIP vote is turned into about six UKIP votes in thirty years.
Meanwhile liberals who have one child (half of which (statistically) votes Liberal) which themsevles have one child, half of which votes Liberal) reduce the liberal vote by 87.5% in thirty years.
Not difficult to see where this is going. Labour have historically benefitted from this phenomenon too, but less so now since their obsession with gay rights has seen several high profile cases of people from ethnic minorities sacked from jobs like marriage regristrars.
Ethnic minority registrars are there to uphold the law of the land not their religious beliefs.
A rubbish argument. From your ARSE, perhaps?
By your criterion, Catholic nurses should be required to participate in abortions as they are employed to provide "healthcare".
The law had been changed after she got the job, but made no provision for people's right of conscience.
The problem is that no notice has been taken of the right of people not to be complicit in immoral acts.
Yes they should, if the don't want to perform what is required of the job, go get a job they are prepared to do, if they want complete freedom run their own business. pathetic as usual in this country that they can pick and choose which parts of a job they want to do.
Running your own business doesn't give you complete freedom.
In the world in 1980, there were 10.2 old people for every 100 working ones. itself but also, in a society with fewer workers, a problem.
oot.
Speaking as someone who married an African immigrant (who, like me is planning to vote UKIP) with enough children for a small football team. I can't help but agree. If half our children also vote UKIP and they themselves have three or four children, half of whom vote UKIP then my one UKIP vote is turned into about six UKIP votes in thirty years.
Meanwhile liberals who have one child (half of which (statistically) votes Liberal) which themsevles have one child, half of which votes Liberal) reduce the liberal vote by 87.5% in thirty years.
Not difficult to see where this is going. Labour have historically benefitted from this phenomenon too, but less so now since their obsession with gay rights has seen several high profile cases of people from ethnic minorities sacked from jobs like marriage regristrars.
Ethnic minority registrars are there to uphold the law of the land not their religious beliefs.
A rubbish argument. From your ARSE, perhaps?
By your criterion, Catholic nurses should be required to participate in abortions as they are employed to provide "healthcare".
The law had been changed after she got the job, but made no provision for people's right of conscience.
The problem is that no notice has been taken of the right of people not to be complicit in immoral acts.
Yes they should, if the don't want to perform what is required of the job, go get a job they are prepared to do, if they want complete freedom run their own business. pathetic as usual in this country that they can pick and choose which parts of a job they want to do.
Running your own business doesn't give you complete freedom.
True, but it gives you a lot more freedom to pick and choose what you do. If you take paid employment for someone else you should get on with it or leave , if legal etc. All this moral conscience baloney to get a cushy admin position is just bollox
The economy is now 6x bigger than it was in 1938 so when the BBC and others talk about reducing spending to that level the are talking about a State that would "only" be spending 6x as much as then.
In fact it is much better than that in the going back to the 60s and 70s nearly 10% of state spending was fixed investment mainly in nationalised industries. Their investment no longer counts towards public spending meaning there is substantially more for health, education etc.
A focus on current spending suggests that this has to be reduced from 36.9% of GDP this year to 32% if a surplus is to be achieved without tax increases.
Which sounds fine until you appreciate that nearly 4% of GDP means current spending cuts of nearly £70bn. I personally don't believe this is possible with current ring fencing. There also has to be questions as to whether government fixed investment is high enough at 3.5% of GDP. I think we need to invest more in infrastructure and housing. So I do not agree we can do without tax increases.
What all the political parties have to face is that there are massively difficult choices to make in fixing the horrific imbalance that Brown caused in our economy in the decade from 2000 to 2010. Whatever reservations I have about the ambitions of the Tories and the likelihood of them being able to deliver they at least have a route map for a road in the right general direction.
You don't have to do an additional ceremony if you don't want to
Historically, marriage has been a religious thing. That's what we've done in this country for centuries. The vast majority of people want a religious ceremony, and they shouldn't have to do them as an additional add-on, with a compulsory civil ceremony, just because a small minority of idiots feel like their religious views should prevent people getting married in services outside their religion.
In the last election Scotland reached new levels of boredom with not a single seat changing hands in the entire country. I think I can predict with some confidence that the next time is not going to be like that.
Ruth Davidson was enthusiastically talking up the tories yesterday (that is her job after all) pointing out that they came out of the referendum much stronger than they went into it with more members, more activists, more funders and more candidates as a new generation were introduced to active politics and rather liked it. The Conservative party was also by far the most united in its views on independence, even more than the SNP. (It all rather chimed with an observation during the campaign that BT was a training scheme explaining to Scottish tories how you actually fight elections).
But, to be honest, even although she is determined to bury the panda joke once and for all, that is not where the main action is. The collapse of Lib Dem support seems to be even more catastrophic in Scotland than it is in England and at least 8 Lib Dem seats are seriously in play. Labour has somewhere between 5 and 25 seats in play and the breadth of that range shows how right OGH is with his plea for proper Scottish polling.
My guess would be that the SNP surge will abate somewhat by May and that they will be squeezed, as they have been before, by a media focussed on who is going to be PM in which they are bit players. But I would still be pretty surprised if the SNP did not pick up about a dozen more seats than the 6 they have at the moment. I expect the Lib Dems to lose 7 or 8 seats and the tories to pick up 2 additional seats coming frustratingly close in a number of others. If I am right then the Labour cohort will not be diminished much with some Lib Dem pick ups offsetting losses to the SNP.
But it certainly won't be boring.
Depends on how much of the blue pills they are stuffing into Sweetie and Sunshine's bamboo shoots ...
I certainly don't differ in principle with much of what you say on the Tories in Scotland - though you might want to say just how many more members as a percentage to compare with the SNP, Scottish Greens, etc. - 300% or 400% perhaps? And I'd like to know where the donations money is coming from.
However - and this is precisely because I would have expected an increase for the reasons you give - why is Tory VI in Scotland declining from around 21% before indyref to about 17% today? (ref: recent time-averaged polls shown here). I can't understand it and although I have asked here a couple of times nobody can explain it to me.
In other news, it's now clear that the AS has had no benefit for the govt and may indeed be a slight negative, which lends an entertaining edge to the thread on the day which was full of boundless joy.
I am sick of nakedly political Budgets - they nearly always unravel (Brown was just as bad) so perhaps after this latest arse-panning by the IFS Ozzy will learn his lesson. We live in hope.
You don't have to do an additional ceremony if you don't want to
Historically, marriage has been a religious thing. That's what we've done in this country for centuries. The vast majority of people want a religious ceremony, and they shouldn't have to do them as an additional add-on, with a compulsory civil ceremony, just because a small minority of idiots feel like their religious views should prevent people getting married in services outside their religion.
Well quite. The existing set up seems fine to me - religions who like gay people are free to marry them, those that don't don't have to. It's really quite simple - what is more bizarre is that we are still yattering on about this. It's long since over, a done deal.
You don't have to do an additional ceremony if you don't want to
Historically, marriage has been a religious thing. That's what we've done in this country for centuries. The vast majority of people want a religious ceremony, and they shouldn't have to do them as an additional add-on, with a compulsory civil ceremony, just because a small minority of idiots feel like their religious views should prevent people getting married in services outside their religion.
And thus spake Sunil unto his PB Disciples: "Know ye that the Lord God was never "married" to the mother of His only begotten son!"
JackW said...There must be a business opportunity for some resourceful individual to make amendable signs for service providers unhappy with life in 21st century Britain :
To which I would add this as their other product line "Stop the housing development in XXXXX" Add the name of your village - it would do a roaring trade here in West Oxfrdshire
Leaving aside your baleful view of what makes for an immoral act, you're spouting rubbish. No one is making anyone do anything. If your conscience tells you that gay marriages or civil partnerships are wrong, you have the option of resigning from the job.
If you can't perform a job - for whatever reason - you should leave it.
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
In many other countries everyone has a civil marriage, with a religious one to follow. My brother had both when he married a Lutheran German.
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
This is probably semantics over interchangeably using marriage and ceremony but there isn't such a thing as a civil marriage. There's a civil wedding ceremony and a religious wedding ceremony but they both result in a straight up, identical, marriage - no modifier is applied to the end result.
The economy is now 6x bigger than it was in 1938 so when the BBC and others talk about reducing spending to that level the are talking about a State that would "only" be spending 6x as much as then.
In fact it is much better than that in the going back to the 60s and 70s nearly 10% of state spending was fixed investment mainly in nationalised industries. Their investment no longer counts towards public spending meaning there is substantially more for health, education etc.
A focus on current spending suggests that this has to be reduced from 36.9% of GDP this year to 32% if a surplus is to be achieved without tax increases.
Which sounds fine until you appreciate that nearly 4% of GDP means current spending cuts of nearly £70bn. I personally don't believe this is possible with current ring fencing. There also has to be questions as to whether government fixed investment is high enough at 3.5% of GDP. I think we need to invest more in infrastructure and housing. So I do not agree we can do without tax increases.
What all the political parties have to face is that there are massively difficult choices to make in fixing the horrific imbalance that Brown caused in our economy in the decade from 2000 to 2010. Whatever reservations I have about the ambitions of the Tories and the likelihood of them being able to deliver they at least have a route map for a road in the right general direction.
The problem with all this is there probably isn't much more money to make from taxation. When the 50% rate was brought in, the tax take dropped. If we start raising taxes on corporations it will have next to no effect as they will pay their tax in a low tax area of the EU (signs are that Osborne's Google Tax is going to be found to be against European Law). Companies that cannot do this will just get less competitive with their foreign competition, and probably have to lay of staff, reducing the tax take. This country is sitting on the top of the Laffer Curve, almost anyway way we try and increase tax, baring a little fine tuning at the edges, will yield less money.
I have thought about this a great deal and I think that if a Registrar refused to join Nino and I together in the gay wedding of the year then I think the Christian thing to do would be to forgive them. So not being a Christian I would obviously ask for their head on a plate (unless that itself was deemed too overtly Christian). It would probably result in the first and only argument Nino and I had throughout our happily married years.
You don't have to do an additional ceremony if you don't want to
Historically, marriage has been a religious thing.
That's a pretty bold statement. From ancient times for the non-nobility marriage was a private matter that had almost no connection with any established church or pantheon.
And even for the nobility, historically, marriage was more about political alliances and guarantees and transfers of chattel and goods than religion.
I wouldn't be sympathetic to a Muslim employee who went to work in shop that sold booze and fags, and then raised a moral objection to handling them. OTOH, I'd be a good deal more sympathetic to a Muslim employee who went to work for a shop that didn't sell such things, and was then subsequently told he had to handle them, or get fired.
To press you on this, Sean, do you mean you'd be "sympathetic" in that you'd feel for their predicament, or do you mean the shopkeeper should be required to continue to employ them even if they refused to serve customers wanting to buy 20 Rothmans and a four pack of Special Brew?
Because those are quite different things. I'd be sympathetic in the first sense, but it's ludicrous to require an employer to continue to employ (or alternatively to pay off) an employee in those circumstances.
I also feel sympathetic to the registrars who have moral qualms about marrying gay people. But I don't feel sympathetic enough to pay for them to have a person without such qualms to sit with them and register the marriages they choose not to.
Depends on how much of the blue pills they are stuffing into Sweetie and Sunshine's bamboo shoots ...
I certainly don't differ in principle with much of what you say on the Tories in Scotland - though you might want to say just how many more members as a percentage to compare with the SNP, Scottish Greens, etc. - 300% or 400% perhaps? And I'd like to know where the donations money is coming from.
However - and this is precisely because I would have expected an increase for the reasons you give - why is Tory VI in Scotland declining from around 21% before indyref to about 17% today? (ref: recent time-averaged polls shown here). I can't understand it and although I have asked here a couple of times nobody can explain it to me.
The tory vote seems to have been pretty stable although once again I have to agree with OGH's point about the lack of quality Scottish polling. I think all the other parties have been squeezed by the remarkable surge in SNP support but the Tories less than any of the others. This makes sense because they were so united in voting no.
What they ought to be disappointed about is their comparative failure in picking up ex-Lib Dems, not least because it is key to their best 3 prospects of seat wins. As I say this is something of a side show to the main battle which is of much greater importance for the GE.
You don't have to do an additional ceremony if you don't want to
Historically, marriage has been a religious thing.
That's a pretty bold statement. From ancient times for the non-nobility marriage was a private matter that had almost no connection with any established church or pantheon.
Yes they should, if the don't want to perform what is required of the job, go get a job they are prepared to do, if they want complete freedom run their own business. pathetic as usual in this country that they can pick and choose which parts of a job they want to do.
Running your own business doesn't give you complete freedom.
True, but it gives you a lot more freedom to pick and choose what you do. If you take paid employment for someone else you should get on with it or leave , if legal etc. All this moral conscience baloney to get a cushy admin position is just bollox
I understand that, the reason I think the cake baking thing is a disgrace (leaving aside their were clearly targeted by a campaigning group trying to prove a point), is a cake baker sets up in business maybe 20-30 years ago, spends all that time happily running their business, then the Equalities Act (2010) passes and all of a sudden they have to choose between staying in business or compromising their religious and personal beliefs. Its not like they can suddenly decide to start a different business, they are bakers, and in any case would be forced to throw away years of goodwill and customer loyalty which would not carry over to their new business.
You don't have to do an additional ceremony if you don't want to
Historically, marriage has been a religious thing. That's what we've done in this country for centuries. The vast majority of people want a religious ceremony, and they shouldn't have to do them as an additional add-on, with a compulsory civil ceremony, just because a small minority of idiots feel like their religious views should prevent people getting married in services outside their religion.
I didn't realise the vast majority of people wanted that.. maybe they should go to church more often then.
The civil "ceremony" would be no more than popping onto the registry office with one or two witnesses and signing a form, if that's all you wanted it to be. Would barely make any difference.
But it would stop a lot of hypocrisy and double standards, and also as @foxinsox says, make it a lot easier to define when sham marriages are taking place
The significance of the BBC's nonsense regarding cuts is underestimated and perfectly illustrated on today's Marr show. Chuka Umanna cheerfully embraced Norman Smith's lies stating, as fact, that the choice is between Labour and the tories who want to take spending back to 1930's levels.
The reality is that, taking into account the proposed spending cuts, spending per person will be 800% of what it was in the 30's in real terms, yet this bull from Chuka went completely unchallanged.
The Mirror or The Guardian can spout any old garbage on their front page and it doesn't really matter as everyone knows they have an agenda, that is not the case with the BBC as the majority take what they say at face value. Expect Labour politicians all over the media to refer to Smith's lie in the coming week until it becomes accepted as a truth. Cameron and Osborne were right to challange this aggressively and should go further and demand a correction or, at least, a more detailed comparison that has some basis in fact.
The BBC should not be allowed to influence the election this way with both its collective bias and the individual bias and agendas of its correspondents.
What they ought to be disappointed about is their comparative failure in picking up ex-Lib Dems, not least because it is key to their best 3 prospects of seat wins. As I say this is something of a side show to the main battle which is of much greater importance for the GE.
It's not that surprising is it? Scottish Lib Dems are more federalist and more left wing than the England LDers.
I can see it, it might fly well north of the border, but in the other 570+ seats it would be suicide. It wouldn't take much effort for their opponents to start hanging the "unilateralist" tag around their neck, it might not be true, but it would dovetail nicely with the "taking us back to the 70's" meme, and give people an opportunity to pull out all that old footage of members of the shadow cabinet on CND marches as young people.
Isn't the current LD stance that the UK has fewer subs as a replacement for Trident rather than getting rid of it altogether? Of course I'm sure they could be flexible about it; it's not like they've made a pledge or anything.
There can't be many nurses employed today who first started prior to the 1967 Abortion Act ?
Recent liberalization on gay matters is a different matter but these substantial reforms cannot be allowed to fail because some public servants hold differing religious beliefs. They are after all not paid as salaried advocates of their faith.
It's pretty thin to argue that the physician that carries out the procedure is explicitly exempted under the Act from carrying out a procedure to which he objects morally, but the nurse that assists shouldn't be.
I argue nothing more than public servants obey the law.
If amendments are thought necessary then let them be campaigned for and voted upon by parliament.
You are starting to sound like a robot @JackW, it doesn't become you.
The vast majority of the public servants in Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia did "nothing more than obey the law"; see where that got them and their societies.
I would hate to see our public servants obey laws they despise through gritted teeth.
I'm not too sure I'd classify the Nazis or Communists are standard bearers of modern liberal democracies as I advocated earlier.
It surely isn't too difficult to grasp the concept of British citizens obeying the laws as set down by our own Parliament ?
I would certainly classify the Soviet Union as the forbearers.
The invasion of the private sphere, what we call "political correctness" actually dates back to the Soviet Union of the 1920s (politicheskaya pravil'nost' in Russian), and was the extension of political control to education, psychiatry, ethics, and behavior. Today's dogmas have led to rigid requirements of language, thought, and behavior, and violators are treated as if they were mentally unbalanced, just as Soviet dissidents were.
Truth is not something to be established by rational inquiry, but depends on the perspective of the speaker. The charge of "institutional racism" is no different from declaring an entire economic class an enemy of the people. "Racism" and "sexism" have replaced class warfare.
I have heard Eastern Europeans say what scares them about the West is that while they had to pay lip service to the ideology long after it had informally collapsed, they find their Western colleagues to be passionate believers. To put it crudely, postmodern Americans and the Americanized masses in Europe are better fooled and deceived by official propaganda than were the Sovietized and communized masses in Eastern Europe. Due to the torrent of meaningless vocables and idioms, such as "human rights" and "democracy," the thought control and intellectual repression in postmodern West functions far better.
The problem with all this is there probably isn't much more money to make from taxation. When the 50% rate was brought in, the tax take dropped. If we start raising taxes on corporations it will have next to no effect as they will pay their tax in a low tax area of the EU (signs are that Osborne's Google Tax is going to be found to be against European Law). Companies that cannot do this will just get less competitive with their foreign competition, and probably have to lay of staff, reducing the tax take. This country is sitting on the top of the Laffer Curve, almost anyway way we try and increase tax, baring a little fine tuning at the edges, will yield less money.
I don't agree. For a start the basic allowance has risen too far too fast (to coin a phrase); there are still excessively generous tax breaks around pensions and we still tolerate a situation where we pay significantly less tax on capital gains than we do on income.
The google tax is, in my opinion, more likely to spawn imitators in the larger countries than challenges. There are EU restrictions on turnover taxes other than VAT but so long as it is framed in terms of profits (deemed or otherwise) it should be sustainable.
I think we could probably increase taxes by a couple of percent of GDP (which would get us to a similar level to that socialist paradise of Germany) after which further attempts will become counter-productive.
The significance of the BBC's nonsense regarding cuts is underestimated and perfectly illustrated on today's Marr show. Chuka Umanna cheerfully embraced Norman Smith's lies stating, as fact, that the choice is between Labour and the tories who want to take spending back to 1930's levels.
The reality is that, taking into account the proposed spending cuts, spending per person will be 800% of what it was in the 30's in real terms, yet this bull from Chuka went completely unchallanged.
The Mirror or The Guardian can spout any old garbage on their front page and it doesn't really matter as everyone knows they have an agenda, that is not the case with the BBC as the majority take what they say at face value. Expect Labour politicians all over the media to refer to Smith's lie in the coming week until it becomes accepted as a truth. Cameron and Osborne were right to challange this aggressively and should go further and demand a correction or, at least, a more detailed comparison that has some basis in fact.
The BBC should not be allowed to influence the election this way with both its collective bias and the individual bias and agendas of its correspondents.
Yes, bringing down spending as a percentage of GDP - given the growth in living sandard standards reflected in the increased GDP - is not the miserly level they try to pretend. You only need to look at the maintained level of spending in the NHS for instance to see that the claim is rubbish
I can see it, it might fly well north of the border, but in the other 570+ seats it would be suicide. It wouldn't take much effort for their opponents to start hanging the "unilateralist" tag around their neck, it might not be true, but it would dovetail nicely with the "taking us back to the 70's" meme, and give people an opportunity to pull out all that old footage of members of the shadow cabinet on CND marches as young people.
Good points but it needn't be unilateralist. Having 4 subs, at least one permanently at sea and being able single-handedly to devastate many Russian cities in an afternoon isn't necessary. It's expensive, excessive and dangerous.
Tories are taking us back to the 1930's, UKIP want to take us back to the 50's, Labour are stuck in the early 80's, the Lib Dems don't matter.. what a choice!
It is slowly becoming clear that Osborne`s autumn statement has only drawn more attention to his failures and has gone down in the country like a lead balloon...Perhaps Osborne`s Christmas gift to Ed Mliband?
Cassidy's defeat of Landrieu last night by 55-41% in the Louisian run-off confirms the move of the South away from the Democrats to the GOP which started with LBJ is now complete, virtually every Southern state now voted for Romney in 2012, has a Republican Senator, a majority Republican House delegation and a Republican state legislature. The only exceptions which voted for Obama in 2012 and have a Democratic Senator are Florida and Virginia. However, that can be explained by the northern expats who move to Florida for retirement and the DC exurbs which stretch into Virginia which reduce their southern nature, and even Virginia almost elected a Republican Senator this year and Florida a Republican governor. I cannot see the position changing soon and the north east will likely still continue to elect mainly Democrats going forward at the Presidential and Congressional level, again in a shift from before the mid sixties when Republicans were more frequently elected. The swing states will remain concentrated in the mid west and west http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/senate/louisiana/runoff/december-06/#.VIQ-X0lFDIU
Tories are taking us back to the 1930's, UKIP want to take us back to the 50's, Labour are stuck in the early 80's, the Lib Dems don't matter.. what a choice!
How many MPs does UKIP have and how many do the LibDems have? After 2015 my money is on around 30 LibDems and 5 or under UKIP, so maybe UKIP doesn't matter.
Tories are taking us back to the 1930's, UKIP want to take us back to the 50's, Labour are stuck in the early 80's, the Lib Dems don't matter.. what a choice!
Im at a loss to work out how the whole 1930s thing has come about. As i understand it the predictions are for spending to drop down to 35% by 2020? Which is higher than the figure that gordon brown as chancellor had in the year 2000.
OGH The Scottish figures can be easily obtained from yougov's daily polling which always breaks the national figures down by region, including Scotland.
It is slowly becoming clear that Osborne`s autumn statement has only drawn more attention to his failures and has gone down in the country like a lead balloon...Perhaps Osborne`s Christmas gift to Ed Mliband?
"The easiest spending cuts have already been made. Thanks to low tax receipts, he has postponed his vaunted balancing of the books by two years. Nobody believes he can actually do so. The low receipts are caused by the fact many of the ‘jobs’ he claims to have created are so poorly paid. Millions can’t afford to live on their low wages, and are borrowing to bridge the gap. Real wages will be lower in 2019 than they were in 2007. No wonder household debt as a percentage of income is forecast to rise soon from 146 per cent to 180 per cent.
Meanwhile, many people still don’t understand the difference between ‘deficit’ and ‘debt’. Nor does the Prime Minister, who once mixed them up in a scripted broadcast. The deficit is the annual gap between what the government spends and what it raises, made up by borrowing. The interest on this, which could shoot up at any moment if world interest rates rise, currently costs us roughly as much each year as the defence budget. Our budget deficit is 5.2 per cent of our GDP. It is 4.4 per cent in France, which British Tories often deride as a Leftist basket-case. It is 0.2 per cent in Germany. The US deficit, once comparable to ours, has dropped to 2.8 per cent of GDP.
The national debt is what we have piled up by decades of spending more than we make. It is approaching £1.5 trillion (£1,500,000,000,000). We cannot possibly pay it off."
Tories are taking us back to the 1930's, UKIP want to take us back to the 50's, Labour are stuck in the early 80's, the Lib Dems don't matter.. what a choice!
How many MPs does UKIP have and how many do the LibDems have? After 2015 my money is on around 30 LibDems and 5 or under UKIP, so maybe UKIP doesn't matter.
You could be right, but thanks for taking the bait x
I wouldn't be sympathetic to a Muslim employee who went to work in shop that sold booze and fags, and then raised a moral objection to handling them. OTOH, I'd be a good deal more sympathetic to a Muslim employee who went to work for a shop that didn't sell such things, and was then subsequently told he had to handle them, or get fired.
....
I also feel sympathetic to the registrars who have moral qualms about marrying gay people. But I don't feel sympathetic enough to pay for them to have a person without such qualms to sit with them and register the marriages they choose not to.
Civil parnerships came before marriage. Not marrying anyone is not going to stop them living together (etc...) so I am not sure where the qualms come in. Indeed when you come to think about it then in terms of what were once called 'morals', the rise of people living unmarried together hardly does much for any religious argument especially when the church is happy to later marry people who have been living in sin for years and have had children out of wedlock. Divorce? The church marries divorced people and the whole religious association with marriage is thus shot out of the water once divorce is aknowledged.
It is slowly becoming clear that Osborne`s autumn statement has only drawn more attention to his failures and has gone down in the country like a lead balloon...Perhaps Osborne`s Christmas gift to Ed Mliband?
"The easiest spending cuts have already been made. Thanks to low tax receipts, he has postponed his vaunted balancing of the books by two years. Nobody believes he can actually do so. The low receipts are caused by the fact many of the ‘jobs’ he claims to have created are so poorly paid. Millions can’t afford to live on their low wages, and are borrowing to bridge the gap. Real wages will be lower in 2019 than they were in 2007. No wonder household debt as a percentage of income is forecast to rise soon from 146 per cent to 180 per cent.
Meanwhile, many people still don’t understand the difference between ‘deficit’ and ‘debt’. Nor does the Prime Minister, who once mixed them up in a scripted broadcast. The deficit is the annual gap between what the government spends and what it raises, made up by borrowing. The interest on this, which could shoot up at any moment if world interest rates rise, currently costs us roughly as much each year as the defence budget. Our budget deficit is 5.2 per cent of our GDP. It is 4.4 per cent in France, which British Tories often deride as a Leftist basket-case. It is 0.2 per cent in Germany. The US deficit, once comparable to ours, has dropped to 2.8 per cent of GDP.
The national debt is what we have piled up by decades of spending more than we make. It is approaching £1.5 trillion (£1,500,000,000,000). We cannot possibly pay it off."
Tories are taking us back to the 1930's, UKIP want to take us back to the 50's, Labour are stuck in the early 80's, the Lib Dems don't matter.. what a choice!
Are you inferring, @isam, that UKIP are no better than the Lab/Lib/Cons?
I can see it, it might fly well north of the border, but in the other 570+ seats it would be suicide. It wouldn't take much effort for their opponents to start hanging the "unilateralist" tag around their neck, it might not be true, but it would dovetail nicely with the "taking us back to the 70's" meme, and give people an opportunity to pull out all that old footage of members of the shadow cabinet on CND marches as young people.
Good points but it needn't be unilateralist. Having 4 subs, at least one permanently at sea and being able single-handedly to devastate many Russian cities in an afternoon isn't necessary. It's expensive, excessive and dangerous.
I dont agree, but that isnt really the point, the point is it could be made to look unilateralist, especially given a fair number of senior labourites have previously had sympathise in that direction, and worse many are on record, and have photograph connections with those sympathise. Regardless of the merits of the policy, its would look catastrophic.
Tories are taking us back to the 1930's, UKIP want to take us back to the 50's, Labour are stuck in the early 80's, the Lib Dems don't matter.. what a choice!
Are you inferring, @isam, that UKIP are no better than the Lab/Lib/Cons?
Talk about sliding doors.
If I notice any similarities whatsoever, I am asking for a refund.. only reason I like them is they are so TOTALLY DIFFERENT!
Isam Osborne has set the target of spending as low as 35% of gdp in 2020, tax revenues as a percentage of GDP are 38%, that is the key point. Although ending ringfencing would make it easier to meet the target and in a fairer way
The problem with all this is there probably isn't much more money to make from taxation. When the 50% rate was brought in, the tax take dropped. If we start raising taxes on corporations it will have next to no effect as they will pay their tax in a low tax area of the EU (signs are that Osborne's Google Tax is going to be found to be against European Law). Companies that cannot do this will just get less competitive with their foreign competition, and probably have to lay of staff, reducing the tax take. This country is sitting on the top of the Laffer Curve, almost anyway way we try and increase tax, baring a little fine tuning at the edges, will yield less money.
I don't agree. For a start the basic allowance has risen too far too fast (to coin a phrase); there are still excessively generous tax breaks around pensions and we still tolerate a situation where we pay significantly less tax on capital gains than we do on income.
The google tax is, in my opinion, more likely to spawn imitators in the larger countries than challenges. There are EU restrictions on turnover taxes other than VAT but so long as it is framed in terms of profits (deemed or otherwise) it should be sustainable.
I think we could probably increase taxes by a couple of percent of GDP (which would get us to a similar level to that socialist paradise of Germany) after which further attempts will become counter-productive.
Not that Google is actually paying much tax in Ireland either, but it rankles that the tech group is choosing to not pay much tax in Ireland when it could be choosing to not pay much tax here instead.
How exactly the British tax authorities will “deem” profits would appear to be the big secret in this baby, especially for companies like Amazon which do not make a profit. As a civil servant might say: we look forward to seeing the detail.
It is slowly becoming clear that Osborne`s autumn statement has only drawn more attention to his failures and has gone down in the country like a lead balloon...Perhaps Osborne`s Christmas gift to Ed Mliband?
"The national debt is what we have piled up by decades of spending more than we make. It is approaching £1.5 trillion (£1,500,000,000,000). We cannot possibly pay it off."
Osborne made the mistake of not matching his address to the public mood,I think.
Hitchens is on good form today
"Sexism, or a load of hot air from EDF?
How long is it since British schools dared to tell girls they couldn’t study science? Yet all this week, the French-owned energy giant EDF has been plastering unpopular newspapers with advertisements featuring huge pictures of a woman called Niki Rousseau. She appears above the words (in block capitals): My old school taught me that girls don’t do science.
Really? I’m still looking for fellow pupils of Ms Rousseau at that school, Leiston High in Suffolk, in the early 1980s. But EDF eventually admitted to me that Ms Rousseau herself studied Biology at GCE O-level. This is surely very odd if they ‘taught’ her that ‘girls don’t do science’.
EDF blustered that the claim (which has Ms Rousseau’s stern face above it and her name beneath it) isn’t actually in quote marks. So what? What other conclusion could any normal person draw from this display, than that these were her words?
In the end they fell back on saying (over and over again): ‘It’s how she felt.’ Well, she may well have felt this. I might feel that I am a poached egg and start demanding toast to sit on. But if I am not one, my feelings don’t alter the facts.
One of the nastiest habits of modern Leftism is that it constantly pretends that things are worse than they are, and then uses this exaggeration to demand yet more positive discrimination. I think this is wicked, myself, and plan to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority."
I can see it, it might fly well north of the border, but in the other 570+ seats it would be suicide. It wouldn't take much effort for their opponents to start hanging the "unilateralist" tag around their neck, it might not be true, but it would dovetail nicely with the "taking us back to the 70's" meme, and give people an opportunity to pull out all that old footage of members of the shadow cabinet on CND marches as young people.
Time has moved on, unilateralist really has no relevance to my age group. We can't afford Trident especially as it is a weapon we neither need, nor I hope would we ever use. The Falklands showed it's irrelevance.
The surprisingly sensible liberal Democrat for Hampstead & Kilburn for the Burqa thing right :
If it's not appropriate to wear a Balaclava or a motorcycle helmet, then it's not appropriate to wear a Burqa.
So it's fine to ban them in banks, shops etc?
Firms should obviously be allowed to choose who they serve, as Nigel Farage pointed out last week.
Within the law. Now I know you are not suggesting that people could refuse to serve a black man. However, whilst the law allows a landlord to refuse to serve a troublesome drunk or a shoe salesman could refuse to serve a drunk causing a disturance, you cannot refuse to serve a polite law abiding person purely out of an issue of discrimination. Frankly this is where Farage's comments are totally pathetic.
Love the use of the word "admits", as if somebody has finally been persuaded of something other people have been saying all along. It's Frank Field, he's been anti-immigration since forever.
The surprisingly sensible liberal Democrat for Hampstead & Kilburn for the Burqa thing right :
If it's not appropriate to wear a Balaclava or a motorcycle helmet, then it's not appropriate to wear a Burqa.
So it's fine to ban them in banks, shops etc?
Firms should obviously be allowed to choose who they serve, as Nigel Farage pointed out last week.
Within the law. Now I know you are not suggesting that people could refuse to serve a black man. However, whilst the law allows a landlord to refuse to serve a troublesome drunk or a shoe salesman could refuse to serve a drunk causing a disturance, you cannot refuse to serve a polite law abiding person purely out of an issue of discrimination. Frankly this is where Farage's comments are totally pathetic.
Who did Farage say shouldn't be served?
He said he wasn't bothered about women breastfeeding in public. It is Claridge's, who are nothing to do with Farage, that were involved in the incident. What did Farage say that upset you so?
Comments
Registrars perform non-religious ceremonies. As such their religious views are irrelevant to the secular services they perform... And if they believe their religious views are being impacted then yes they should resign...
Your first point is well-taken, but we've moved a very long way from being a society where employers can hire and fire at will. Making a purist argument for that seems pointless now.
It surely isn't too difficult to grasp the concept of British citizens obeying the laws as set down by our own Parliament ?
In Britain though religious leaders also act as Registrars, so those who have religious ceremonies go to these Registrars. Civil marriages are therefore predominantly for those who want a non religious ceremony. As such it is a civil function and a civil Registrar has no justification for refusing to marry an eligible couple.
Issues of ethics and conscience are fairly frequent in my work life. I cannot refuse to treat people because I do not approve of their lifestyle.
The "Poll Tax" was approved by one parliament and repealed by another. Perfectly simple.
The marriages in church should be meaningless in terms of the eyes of the law but would still mean as much to truly religious people, much as a baptism or christening does
The people entitled to these marriages would be decided by individual churches. It may be that they will marry any couple or they may discriminate in any way they wish... Churches that refuse to marry same sex partnerships would be unpopular with many homosexuals, and vice versa perhaps... If they are unpopular on the whole they will evolve or die out. But at least no one is forced to do anything they don't believe in
Churches could also turn away heterosexual couples if they wished too. For instance those who hadn't been to that church on a regular basis
If it's not appropriate to wear a Balaclava or a motorcycle helmet, then it's not appropriate to wear a Burqa.
Perfectly sensible.
Perhaps I could mention Northern Ireland. Does anyone know if both unionist parties are challenging all seats or may there be a few agreed candidates? Could the marginal seat of Belfast N fall to Nationalists please?
Thank you
Obese people and smokers requiring General Anaesthesia have significantly higher risk of complications, including fatal ones. Similarly joint replacements in obese people are technically more difficult and early mobilisation much harder. Simply put: people who have addressed their health issues have better outcomes.
In an insurance based system they may not get covered at all...
Instead we have a strange situation where there are three forms of state-sponsored marriage, all with slightly different rules, and where for some reason gays have access to two of them and straights only one.
To stop people having to get married twice - I would abolish the need for civil wedding ceremonies, instead you would be able to make an appointment with your witnesses and simply sign the register.
What if I want to get married in another religious building?
If you are getting married in any other religious building which is not Church of England and is registered for marriages, (for example, Baptist, Hindu, Methodist, Muslim, Roman Catholic, Sikh or other religious denomination), you must give your notice of marriage at your local Register Office in the district you reside in, before the marriage takes place.
ABSOULTELY NO :
Gays/Breastfeeders/BurkaBods/Pikkies/Darkies/Irish/Jews/F1-Fans/Gingers/WheelChairists/ManUtd Mob/Turban Tops
SERVED HERE
Delete As Required
By your criterion, Catholic nurses should be required to participate in abortions as they are employed to provide "healthcare".
The law had been changed after she got the job, but made no provision for people's right of conscience.
The problem is that no notice has been taken of the right of people not to be complicit in immoral acts.
Yes they should, if the don't want to perform what is required of the job, go get a job they are prepared to do, if they want complete freedom run their own business.
pathetic as usual in this country that they can pick and choose which parts of a job they want to do.
pathetic as usual in this country that they can pick and choose which parts of a job they want to do.
Running your own business doesn't give you complete freedom.
True, but it gives you a lot more freedom to pick and choose what you do. If you take paid employment for someone else you should get on with it or leave , if legal etc.
All this moral conscience baloney to get a cushy admin position is just bollox
Some key points.
The economy is now 6x bigger than it was in 1938 so when the BBC and others talk about reducing spending to that level the are talking about a State that would "only" be spending 6x as much as then.
In fact it is much better than that in the going back to the 60s and 70s nearly 10% of state spending was fixed investment mainly in nationalised industries. Their investment no longer counts towards public spending meaning there is substantially more for health, education etc.
A focus on current spending suggests that this has to be reduced from 36.9% of GDP this year to 32% if a surplus is to be achieved without tax increases.
Which sounds fine until you appreciate that nearly 4% of GDP means current spending cuts of nearly £70bn. I personally don't believe this is possible with current ring fencing. There also has to be questions as to whether government fixed investment is high enough at 3.5% of GDP. I think we need to invest more in infrastructure and housing. So I do not agree we can do without tax increases.
What all the political parties have to face is that there are massively difficult choices to make in fixing the horrific imbalance that Brown caused in our economy in the decade from 2000 to 2010. Whatever reservations I have about the ambitions of the Tories and the likelihood of them being able to deliver they at least have a route map for a road in the right general direction.
I certainly don't differ in principle with much of what you say on the Tories in Scotland - though you might want to say just how many more members as a percentage to compare with the SNP, Scottish Greens, etc. - 300% or 400% perhaps? And I'd like to know where the donations money is coming from.
However - and this is precisely because I would have expected an increase for the reasons you give - why is Tory VI in Scotland declining from around 21% before indyref to about 17% today? (ref: recent time-averaged polls shown here). I can't understand it and although I have asked here a couple of times nobody can explain it to me.
In other news, it's now clear that the AS has had no benefit for the govt and may indeed be a slight negative, which lends an entertaining edge to the thread on the day which was full of boundless joy.
I am sick of nakedly political Budgets - they nearly always unravel (Brown was just as bad) so perhaps after this latest arse-panning by the IFS Ozzy will learn his lesson. We live in hope.
ABSOULTELY NO :
Gays/Breastfeeders/BurkaBods/Pikkies/Darkies/Irish/Jews/F1-Fans/Gingers/WheelChairists/ManUtd Mob/Turban Tops
SERVED HERE
Delete As Required
To which I would add this as their other product line "Stop the housing development in XXXXX" Add the name of your village - it would do a roaring trade here in West Oxfrdshire
And even for the nobility, historically, marriage was more about political alliances and guarantees and transfers of chattel and goods than religion.
Because those are quite different things. I'd be sympathetic in the first sense, but it's ludicrous to require an employer to continue to employ (or alternatively to pay off) an employee in those circumstances.
I also feel sympathetic to the registrars who have moral qualms about marrying gay people. But I don't feel sympathetic enough to pay for them to have a person without such qualms to sit with them and register the marriages they choose not to.
What they ought to be disappointed about is their comparative failure in picking up ex-Lib Dems, not least because it is key to their best 3 prospects of seat wins. As I say this is something of a side show to the main battle which is of much greater importance for the GE.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marriage#Europe
The civil "ceremony" would be no more than popping onto the registry office with one or two witnesses and signing a form, if that's all you wanted it to be. Would barely make any difference.
But it would stop a lot of hypocrisy and double standards, and also as @foxinsox says, make it a lot easier to define when sham marriages are taking place
The reality is that, taking into account the proposed spending cuts, spending per person will be 800% of what it was in the 30's in real terms, yet this bull from Chuka went completely unchallanged.
The Mirror or The Guardian can spout any old garbage on their front page and it doesn't really matter as everyone knows they have an agenda, that is not the case with the BBC as the majority take what they say at face value. Expect Labour politicians all over the media to refer to Smith's lie in the coming week until it becomes accepted as a truth. Cameron and Osborne were right to challange this aggressively and should go further and demand a correction or, at least, a more detailed comparison that has some basis in fact.
The BBC should not be allowed to influence the election this way with both its collective bias and the individual bias and agendas of its correspondents.
http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/12/scotland-and-trident-two-words-ed-miliband-can-t-afford-ignore
The invasion of the private sphere, what we call "political correctness" actually dates back to the Soviet Union of the 1920s (politicheskaya pravil'nost' in Russian), and was the extension of political control to education, psychiatry, ethics, and behavior. Today's dogmas have led to rigid requirements of language, thought, and behavior, and violators are treated as if they were mentally unbalanced, just as Soviet dissidents were.
Truth is not something to be established by rational inquiry, but depends on the perspective of the speaker. The charge of "institutional racism" is no different from declaring an entire economic class an enemy of the people. "Racism" and "sexism" have replaced class warfare.
I have heard Eastern Europeans say what scares them about the West is that while they had to pay lip service to the ideology long after it had informally collapsed, they find their Western colleagues to be passionate believers. To put it crudely, postmodern Americans and the Americanized masses in Europe are better fooled and deceived by official propaganda than were the Sovietized and communized masses in Eastern Europe. Due to the torrent of meaningless vocables and idioms, such as "human rights" and "democracy," the thought control and intellectual repression in postmodern West functions far better.
The google tax is, in my opinion, more likely to spawn imitators in the larger countries than challenges. There are EU restrictions on turnover taxes other than VAT but so long as it is framed in terms of profits (deemed or otherwise) it should be sustainable.
I think we could probably increase taxes by a couple of percent of GDP (which would get us to a similar level to that socialist paradise of Germany) after which further attempts will become counter-productive.
You only need to look at the maintained level of spending in the NHS for instance to see that the claim is rubbish
twitter.com/prodigalbum/status/540920810266169344
http://www.politico.com/2014-election/results/map/senate/louisiana/runoff/december-06/#.VIQ-X0lFDIU
After 2015 my money is on around 30 LibDems and 5 or under UKIP, so maybe UKIP doesn't matter.
According to today's yougov in Scotland the SNP are on 38%, Labour on 29%, the Tories on 17%, the Greens on 7%, the LDs on 4% and UKIP on 4% so the SNP surge has subsided a little since the Smith Cssion reported
http://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.net/cumulus_uploads/document/juhk980ke8/YG-Archive-Pol-Sunday-Times-results-051214.pdf
Meanwhile, many people still don’t understand the difference between ‘deficit’ and ‘debt’. Nor does the Prime Minister, who once mixed them up in a scripted broadcast.
The deficit is the annual gap between what the government spends and what it raises, made up by borrowing. The interest on this, which could shoot up at any moment if world interest rates rise, currently costs us roughly as much each year as the defence budget. Our budget deficit is 5.2 per cent of our GDP. It is 4.4 per cent in France, which British Tories often deride as a Leftist basket-case. It is 0.2 per cent in Germany. The US deficit, once comparable to ours, has dropped to 2.8 per cent of GDP.
The national debt is what we have piled up by decades of spending more than we make. It is approaching £1.5 trillion (£1,500,000,000,000). We cannot possibly pay it off."
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
http://www.conservativehome.com/thetorydiary/2014/12/todays-blue-on-blue-attacks-what-do-they-mean.html
Indeed when you come to think about it then in terms of what were once called 'morals', the rise of people living unmarried together hardly does much for any religious argument especially when the church is happy to later marry people who have been living in sin for years and have had children out of wedlock.
Divorce? The church marries divorced people and the whole religious association with marriage is thus shot out of the water once divorce is aknowledged.
Osborne made the mistake of not matching his address to the public mood,I think.
http://www.ukip.org/bbc_veteran_paul_lambert_joins_ukip_s_media_team_as_director_of_communications
Mind you, I haven't the slightest idea who he is.
Talk about sliding doors.
Labour MP admits UKIP has been right all along & says immigration destroys public services http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/immigration/11274871/Immigration-debate-will-get-very-nasty-labour-MP-warns.html …
"Sexism, or a load of hot air from EDF?
How long is it since British schools dared to tell girls they couldn’t study science? Yet all this week, the French-owned energy giant EDF has been plastering unpopular newspapers with advertisements featuring huge pictures of a woman called Niki Rousseau. She appears above the words (in block capitals): My old school taught me that girls don’t do science.
Really? I’m still looking for fellow pupils of Ms Rousseau at that school, Leiston High in Suffolk, in the early 1980s. But EDF eventually admitted to me that Ms Rousseau herself studied Biology at GCE O-level. This is surely very odd if they ‘taught’ her that ‘girls don’t do science’.
EDF blustered that the claim (which has Ms Rousseau’s stern face above it and her name beneath it) isn’t actually in quote marks. So what? What other conclusion could any normal person draw from this display, than that these were her words?
In the end they fell back on saying (over and over again): ‘It’s how she felt.’ Well, she may well have felt this. I might feel that I am a poached egg and start demanding toast to sit on. But if I am not one, my feelings don’t alter the facts.
One of the nastiest habits of modern Leftism is that it constantly pretends that things are worse than they are, and then uses this exaggeration to demand yet more positive discrimination. I think this is wicked, myself, and plan to complain to the Advertising Standards Authority."
http://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/
Frankly this is where Farage's comments are totally pathetic.
He said he wasn't bothered about women breastfeeding in public. It is Claridge's, who are nothing to do with Farage, that were involved in the incident. What did Farage say that upset you so?