🚨 BREAKING: 3rd new Hezbollah leader reported killed already
Ibrahim Amine al-Sayyed only lasted hours
It’s a bit like the spinal tap drummer gag
They clearly did a hell of a lot more than sell them some dodgy pagers booby trapped with explosives.
They've evidently turned the whole organisation upside down.
I would be very interested to know how long they have been planning this. It is very hard to believe that a plan of this scale, complexity and fiendish effectiveness was conceived, developed, initiated and executed in just one year.
Which would suggest they have been planning to go after Hizbollah on a grand scale for quite a while...
I agree. They do seem likely to have a very high level double agent, for a start. They're going to start looking at which among them has mysteriously stayed clear of harm.
If the Israelis really wanted to be sh**s, they would also knock off their top level double agent once they are satisfied with how things have gone.
I also wonder whether the agent may be more on the Iranian side, not the Hizbollah one.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
My wife and I updated our wills and obtained power of attorneys last year, specifically to ensure that our affairs are in order before we may succumb to dementia
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
If they had got to a point where they decided they wanted to go abroad to end their life, would you actively prevent them?
Would that be different if they needed third party assistance to make that decision practical?
See what you think. I don’t know where I stand on this sad issue. But the Canadian example gives me doubts
It was LBJ who said: “You do not examine legislation in the light of the benefits it will convey if properly administered but in the light of the wrongs it would do and the harms it would cause if improperly administered."
Wise advice. It should be heeded by those proposing new laws or policies and airily dismissing any concerns about the misuse of such laws, on the basis that no-one will ever do the thing that the law permits or abuse the loophole created or use the law to achieve an end its proponents never intended.
Those with malign intent will always exploit the law, loopholes, well-meaning policies for their own ends, if given the opportunity to do so. The fact that those ends were not intended by those enacting the legislation or introducing a policy is irrelevant.
To those who say no-one would do awful things with these laws, the response is: “How can you be certain?”
If they wouldn’t do them, the powers are not needed.
If they exist, they will be used.
If they can be used, they will be abused.
Naivety is unpardonable in legislators and policy-makers.
They should read the Francis Report or the Report on the Gosport War Memorial Hospital for what nurses and doctors are capable of doing to the vulnerable.
That’s highly persuasive and eloquent
But what if - as is plausible - during your dementia (inshallah it doesn’t happen) they discovered a cure for dementia?
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
Well, perhaps, and I hope we do, let's see. Cleverly is a bit slow moving, but perhaps he has what it takes. Jenrick and Badenoch are flash-in-the-pan politicians, but Cleverly is different. Good or bad, I don't know.
An effective Leader of the Opposition needs conviction and energy and aggression or high intellect and sharp debating skills, ideally both, as far as I can see Cleverly has neither. I don’t dislike him, he should be in Shadow Cabinet but not leader
Yes, but that's the day-to-day politics. Starmer is a clear example of none of these things, but he managed Labour in a way that they got elected with a thumping majority. The Tory party needs above all a sense of direction, a sense of what they want to achieve. They didn't get trounced out of office because they had no conviction, energy, or intellect. It was about them not having anything like a vision. Government by numbers.
Starmer at least has intellect and good debating skills, he would run rings around Cleverly at PMQs.
Say what you like about Jenrick or Badenoch at least they have some vision of a right wing red meat form. Even Tugendhat has a vision of a form of patrician Toryism, does Cleverly have any vision at all?
Yes, it's puzzling how well he's doing in the betting
🚨 BREAKING: 3rd new Hezbollah leader reported killed already
Ibrahim Amine al-Sayyed only lasted hours
It’s a bit like the spinal tap drummer gag
Netanyahu may be a shit but I would far rather he was in charge of defending us and our overseas territories than dreary old Sir Keir
Are you quite serious? You'd prefer someone who happily politicises the judiciary, is happy to see the whole Middle East burn to keep himself out of jail, is/was close friends with Putin and whose own police force state that he should be indicted for bribery and fraud?
Whither the rule of law? Off to GB News with you boyo.
If you want to defend your country you want a leader who is a ruthless shit, not one who will consider subsection 4.1 of the UN Charter before deciding whether or not to blow up a ship dropping large numbers of enemy troops on your beaches or whether to kill terrorist leaders or not
There are no circumstances that I would want a Netanyahu, Trump or Putin leading our country
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
Any such scheme would have to have a conscience clause (as we have for abortion) where staff can refuse to participate on the grounds of ethical belief.
Euthanasia is a step too far in my view, though am in favour of cessation of active treatment, with generous pain relief that may well accelerate death. Indeed I have supported this for members of my own family who were dying. It's a nuanced distinction, perhaps even a false one.
End of Life care can be quite a difficult discussion to broach, but usually families are quite receptive.
In practice the law has a lot of discretion. Take for example the Case of Dr Cox who deliberately killed a patient. I had worked on the ward and knew both him and (I think) the patient he killed. He was a very compassionate doctor.
It is a common fallacy about DNR forms that it means "do not treat" when it means "do not initiate CPR", so sets no limits on treatment short of that point.
So, if a patient has severe dementia it can reasonably be recorded on a Respect form to not treat pneumonia with antibiotics, but to keep comfortable in other ways.
Not everywhere uses this form, but there is also this alternative:
Israel's army chief has said that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas, as he addressed troops ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group.
So the war is over now, right? Israel has won and can dictate the peace.
"We are not stopping," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement, as troops in northern Gaza operated against what the military said were Hamas attempts to rebuild.
It's a forever war now.
They're on the way to social and moral collapse as a nation.
And these action are leading to a surge in anti-senitism all over the world, as some of my own family are finding out.
I'd strongly argue that the 'new' anti-Semites are people who, if they were not anti-Semites before, were just looking for an excuse to be anti-Semites.
For some reason, many people, and indeed nations, find it very easy to fall into anti-Semitism; something that has recurringly happened over centuries, if not Millenia.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
For the moderately well off, you can just fly off to Switzerland, where there are a dozen places that will take your money and your life. (And, for what it's worth, the safeguards do seem to work there.)
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
Israel's army chief has said that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas, as he addressed troops ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group.
So the war is over now, right? Israel has won and can dictate the peace.
"We are not stopping," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement, as troops in northern Gaza operated against what the military said were Hamas attempts to rebuild.
It's a forever war now.
They're on the way to social and moral collapse as a nation.
And these action are leading to a surge in anti-senitism all over the world, as some of my own family are finding out.
I'd strongly argue that the 'new' anti-Semites are people who, if they were not anti-Semites before, were just looking for an excuse to be anti-Semites.
For some reason, many people, and indeed nations, find it very easy to fall into anti-Semitism; something that has recurringly happened over centuries, if not Millenia.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
For the moderately well off, you can just fly off to Switzerland, where there are a dozen places that will take your money and your life. (And, for what it's worth, the safeguards do seem to work there.)
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
🚨 BREAKING: 3rd new Hezbollah leader reported killed already
Ibrahim Amine al-Sayyed only lasted hours
It’s a bit like the spinal tap drummer gag
Netanyahu may be a shit but I would far rather he was in charge of defending us and our overseas territories than dreary old Sir Keir
Are you quite serious? You'd prefer someone who happily politicises the judiciary, is happy to see the whole Middle East burn to keep himself out of jail, is/was close friends with Putin and whose own police force state that he should be indicted for bribery and fraud?
Whither the rule of law? Off to GB News with you boyo.
If you want to defend your country you want a leader who is a ruthless shit, not one who will consider subsection 4.1 of the UN Charter before deciding whether or not to blow up a ship dropping large numbers of enemy troops on your beaches or whether to kill terrorist leaders or not
There are no circumstances that I would want a Netanyahu, Trump or Putin leading our country
History suggests what you want is someone who can build a team, identify, promote and properly support talented lieutenants and generals who can execute campaigns, and then occasionally give a half decent speech. You do not want a narcissistic dictator.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
Israel's army chief has said that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas, as he addressed troops ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group.
So the war is over now, right? Israel has won and can dictate the peace.
"We are not stopping," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement, as troops in northern Gaza operated against what the military said were Hamas attempts to rebuild.
It's a forever war now.
They're on the way to social and moral collapse as a nation.
And these action are leading to a surge in anti-senitism all over the world, as some of my own family are finding out.
I'd strongly argue that the 'new' anti-Semites are people who, if they were not anti-Semites before, were just looking for an excuse to be anti-Semites.
For some reason, many people, and indeed nations, find it very easy to fall into anti-Semitism; something that has recurringly happened over centuries, if not Millenia.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
For the moderately well off, you can just fly off to Switzerland, where there are a dozen places that will take your money and your life. (And, for what it's worth, the safeguards do seem to work there.)
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
No-one ever complained about being euthenased. It has the highest level of customer satisfaction ever recorded.
The members will be furious with the MPs if Cleverly is next to go out, which I still think is a possibility because of the fact that most Stride supporters will switch to Tugendhat.
Tugendhat is more electable than Cleverly, the members would be more furious if they aren’t given Kemi to vote for
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
See what you think. I don’t know where I stand on this sad issue. But the Canadian example gives me doubts
My view is that assisted dying should only be legal so long as it is safe and rare, that doctor makes me want to oppose any assisted dying.
There is I believe a disturbing stat that poor Canadians are more likely to undergo euthanasia than wealthy ones.
Watch the whole documentary that that clip comes from. I did on Friday. It's powerful. There's a homeless Canadian man who was all teed up for the needle precisely because he saw no way out of his predicament and the bureaucrats were only too happy to oblige. Thankfully, due to media coverage a fundraising effort saw his troubles disappear. The interview with the daughter whose mother was aided to end her life was painful to watch.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
A decent analysis
However, Badenoch is a wild card. Hard to know what she’d do in the office. She may - ahem - surprise on the upside. Or she may be Liz truss 2.0
I suspect Labour are worried by her - just in case. Her gender and ethnicity alone would make her more problematic for the left
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
I was in Greece last week. Some wonderful food, but also some that was awful. Oddly it seems impossible to get a good Kleftico, or a Moussaka. The very light fish recipes though are a delight.
Greek wines! Wow - there's money to be made importing those.
Just one lovely smile from a lovely Greek goddess. Still one's better than none.
When I go to the Washington Post I am offered a page "Cookie Choices for EU, Swiss & UK Residents" whence I realise that we could ditch this stupidity because it is now in our hands. But then I remember Skir wants us to cling to nurse stay close to the EU. FFS
Very unusual that a poll would move the market THAT much. That's quite a jump. I've long been of the view that Cleverly is value but I'd say Cleverly is now a lay.
Feels rather confected to me. The Cleverly-gasm followed by this. With the unfortunate unplanned Chagos gaffe in the middle threatening to spoil the picnic. I'm not buying it.
James 'we shouldn't apologise for our record' Cleverly would be exceptionally bad news for our politics, and should the Tories ever get back in with him in command, our national security.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
Yes, and we have the precedent of abortion where a system was setup with safeguards of requiring a specific reason for a termination, confirmed with a second opinion from another doctor, which has become almost abortion on demand (though applied unevenly, so sometimes an individual doctor might not play ball, which wouldn't happen if Parliament had rewritten the rules, rather than how they had been applied changing over time).
And in the case of abortion you have the safeguard that the person who requests the abortion - the pregnant woman - is still there after the procedure. So if they were coerced into it, they can subsequently come forward about that. But in the case of euthanasia, the key witness is dead, and then who can say what they really wanted?
But, of course, terminally ill people can suffer degradation and pain that is cruel.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
My wife and I updated our wills and obtained power of attorneys last year, specifically to ensure that our affairs are in order before we may succumb to dementia
Yes, we did as well. Took a while though, cost over a grand! Do you have both finance and medical?
🚨 BREAKING: 3rd new Hezbollah leader reported killed already
Ibrahim Amine al-Sayyed only lasted hours
It’s a bit like the spinal tap drummer gag
Netanyahu may be a shit but I would far rather he was in charge of defending us and our overseas territories than dreary old Sir Keir
Are you quite serious? You'd prefer someone who happily politicises the judiciary, is happy to see the whole Middle East burn to keep himself out of jail, is/was close friends with Putin and whose own police force state that he should be indicted for bribery and fraud?
Whither the rule of law? Off to GB News with you boyo.
If you want to defend your country you want a leader who is a ruthless shit, not one who will consider subsection 4.1 of the UN Charter before deciding whether or not to blow up a ship dropping large numbers of enemy troops on your beaches
Perhaps in the short term.
In the long term, I suspect Netanyahu is doing more damage to Israeli interests than Hamas, Hezbollah and IRGC have managed between them. If I were Israeli I'd be horrified at the way Netanyahu were 'defending' my country.
(To be clear, my view is premised on the belief that Israel is not, as some claim, in a 'fight for survival' because it will always have the backing of the USA. If I'm wrong in my view and Israel really could be wiped out by its enemies, my view (and probably my ethical stance) would move significantly in favour of their current actions).
I feel somewhat confident that the aggressive Israeli campaign against Hezbollah in particular is predicated on it being cost-free for Israel and if the government thought Israel would also suffer in the exercise, it wouldn't do it. So clearly it isn't a fight for survival. (Hamas is different because it attacked Israel and in this case Israel does accept some level of casualties on its side).
I guess the question is whether the Hezbollah campaign will actually be cost-free for Israel. I suspect it won't solve anything in the longer term but as Israel has never shown any interest in a solution to date, it doesn't change anything. So from an Israeli point of view, which is the only one it will consider, why not go all in?
Should add, just because Israel considers no point of view except its own, is not a reason for everyone else to do likewise. This escalation is dangerous and many people will in any case be killed by it.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
I was in Greece last week. Some wonderful food, but also some that was awful. Oddly it seems impossible to get a good Kleftico, or a Moussaka. The very light fish recipes though are a delight.
Greek wines! Wow - there's money to be made importing those.
Just one lovely smile from a lovely Greek goddess. Still one's better than none.
Greek wines are now known to be good. And you pay for them. There is no money to be made importing, I’m afraid. That ship sailed 5-10 years ago
The whites are wonderful but the reds are fast improving. The Balkans is a happening place in red wine world
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
The problem is, once the person is dead, how can you be sure it was voluntary?
And, in the case of mental illness, what if they might have changed their mind a day later?
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
I was in Greece last week. Some wonderful food, but also some that was awful. Oddly it seems impossible to get a good Kleftico, or a Moussaka. The very light fish recipes though are a delight.
Greek wines! Wow - there's money to be made importing those.
Just one lovely smile from a lovely Greek goddess. Still one's better than none.
Greek wines are now known to be good. And you pay for them. There is no money to be made importing, I’m afraid. That ship sailed 5-10 years ago
The whites are wonderful but the reds are fast improving. The Balkans is a happening place in red wine world
Do you know of a good outlet in central London?
(I suspect that place in Queen's Park may be the place to look - forget it's name)
Edit: Now recalled - Salusbury Wine shop. (Sometimes I like to call upon memory rather than just look on the internet.
See what you think. I don’t know where I stand on this sad issue. But the Canadian example gives me doubts
Some years ago I was working in Amsterdam. I was invited to a 'leaving party' of a colleague who had been fighting cancer for some time and who had decided to go out on their own terms and had arranged the event before they began their preparations to be euthanised. None of my Dutch friends seemed to think this was particularly out of the ordinary.
Without wanting to go into detail, the Dignitas website does exist and you can work out the rest by yourself. Although I hope none of you will ever need it
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
I was in Greece last week. Some wonderful food, but also some that was awful. Oddly it seems impossible to get a good Kleftico, or a Moussaka. The very light fish recipes though are a delight.
Greek wines! Wow - there's money to be made importing those.
Just one lovely smile from a lovely Greek goddess. Still one's better than none.
Greek wines are now known to be good. And you pay for them. There is no money to be made importing, I’m afraid. That ship sailed 5-10 years ago
The whites are wonderful but the reds are fast improving. The Balkans is a happening place in red wine world
Do you know of a good outlet in central London?
(I suspect that place in Queen's Park may be the place to look - forget it's name)
Vivino will sort you out. I regularly buy excellent Assyrtikos etc from them
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
My wife and I updated our wills and obtained power of attorneys last year, specifically to ensure that our affairs are in order before we may succumb to dementia
Yes, we did as well. Took a while though, cost over a grand! Do you have both finance and medical?
Yes and I did it online and it was relatively easy
It cost 4 x £82 = £328
I am not sure it is generally known you have separate ones for finance and property - hence 4 x
There was a very interesting BBC programme with Michael Portillo maybe a decade ago, where he looked at the horrors of the mechanics of the death penalty in the US. His intervention led to several states to move to nitrogen hypoxia. He tried this in a controlled environment and confirmed that it was entirely painless as he passed out. Let it run a little longer and you die - painlessly, cleanly, very straightforward.
If going into a nitrogen hypoxia chamber, sitting in a comfy chair and never coming out alive, if that was an option, I am sure many would choose it to end their life.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
Refusing treatment does not equate to the right to end your life in a controlled manner.
No, but it has some utility along those lines.
While dementia can be distressing, it isn't necessarily so. My MiL was demented for 18 months but was rather jolly with it and certainly not distressed by it. She remained good company, albeit a little repetitive with her stories.
Worth noting too that a number of treatable conditions can mimic dementia.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
My wife and I updated our wills and obtained power of attorneys last year, specifically to ensure that our affairs are in order before we may succumb to dementia
Yes, we did as well. Took a while though, cost over a grand! Do you have both finance and medical?
Yes and I did it online and it was relatively easy
It cost 4 x £82 = £328
I am not sure it is generally known you have separate ones for finance and property - hence 4 x
Yeah, I succumbed to my wife wanting a solicitor involved!!!
There was a very interesting BBC programme with Michael Portillo maybe a decade ago, where he looked at the horrors of the mechanics of the death penalty in the US. His intervention led to several states to move to nitrogen hypoxia. He tried this in a controlled environment and confirmed that it was entirely painless as he passed out. Let it run a little longer and you die - painlessly, cleanly, very straightforward.
If going into a nitrogen hypoxia chamber, sitting in a comfy chair and never coming out alive, if that was an option, I am sure many would choose it to end their life.
Isn’t “the chair” meant to be a deterrent BECAUSE it is so grisly?
I’m not proposing it. The death penalty alone is sufficient
🚨 BREAKING: 3rd new Hezbollah leader reported killed already
Ibrahim Amine al-Sayyed only lasted hours
It’s a bit like the spinal tap drummer gag
Netanyahu may be a shit but I would far rather he was in charge of defending us and our overseas territories than dreary old Sir Keir
Are you quite serious? You'd prefer someone who happily politicises the judiciary, is happy to see the whole Middle East burn to keep himself out of jail, is/was close friends with Putin and whose own police force state that he should be indicted for bribery and fraud?
Whither the rule of law? Off to GB News with you boyo.
If you want to defend your country you want a leader who is a ruthless shit, not one who will consider subsection 4.1 of the UN Charter before deciding whether or not to blow up a ship dropping large numbers of enemy troops on your beaches or whether to kill terrorist leaders or not
There are no circumstances that I would want a Netanyahu, Trump or Putin leading our country
History suggests what you want is someone who can build a team, identify, promote and properly support talented lieutenants and generals who can execute campaigns, and then occasionally give a half decent speech. You do not want a narcissistic dictator.
When is the last time we had a PM who represented an unalloyed benefit to the body politic? Further back than I studied I think. William Pitt?
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
This challenge format is all a bit.... youtubey. Is the magazine going downmarket?
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It should be their choice. It already is. Many commit suicide.
The proposed change is assisted dying so that they don't die alone or messily (my sister-in-law jumped from the top of a multi-storey car park), or they get open support and maybe don't do the deed. It's progress.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
Any such scheme would have to have a conscience clause (as we have for abortion) where staff can refuse to participate on the grounds of ethical belief.
Euthanasia is a step too far in my view, though am in favour of cessation of active treatment, with generous pain relief that may well accelerate death. Indeed I have supported this for members of my own family who were dying. It's a nuanced distinction, perhaps even a false one.
End of Life care can be quite a difficult discussion to broach, but usually families are quite receptive.
In practice the law has a lot of discretion. Take for example the Case of Dr Cox who deliberately killed a patient. I had worked on the ward and knew both him and (I think) the patient he killed. He was a very compassionate doctor.
TBH this issue vexes me particularly now because of my mother. I may make black jokes but that’s how I cope. Her condition is grim - she’s badly demented and in quite a lot of physical pain due to multiple ailments
When she was younger she would say to me “if I ever get like that please smother me with a cushion”. Of course she is now LIKE THAT but the dementia means she is in no position to choose
A rum do
It is a dreadfully hard issue.
I with MM - if I’m ever diagnosed with dementia, I would probably want to check out, too. My father clung to life with absolute determination through a decade with the disease, while all other faculties withered away. Not easy for the family, but a choice I’d never question. But not one I’d make myself.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
I was in Greece last week. Some wonderful food, but also some that was awful. Oddly it seems impossible to get a good Kleftico, or a Moussaka. The very light fish recipes though are a delight.
Greek wines! Wow - there's money to be made importing those.
Just one lovely smile from a lovely Greek goddess. Still one's better than none.
Greek wines are now known to be good. And you pay for them. There is no money to be made importing, I’m afraid. That ship sailed 5-10 years ago
The whites are wonderful but the reds are fast improving. The Balkans is a happening place in red wine world
Do you know of a good outlet in central London?
(I suspect that place in Queen's Park may be the place to look - forget it's name)
Vivino will sort you out. I regularly buy excellent Assyrtikos etc from them
Greek whites are my favourite fish wine
Actually I think you have quite good taste. The post midweek that you made about Dover Sole Meuniere particularly enticed/annoyed me!
There was a very interesting BBC programme with Michael Portillo maybe a decade ago, where he looked at the horrors of the mechanics of the death penalty in the US. His intervention led to several states to move to nitrogen hypoxia. He tried this in a controlled environment and confirmed that it was entirely painless as he passed out. Let it run a little longer and you die - painlessly, cleanly, very straightforward.
If going into a nitrogen hypoxia chamber, sitting in a comfy chair and never coming out alive, if that was an option, I am sure many would choose it to end their life.
Isn’t “the chair” meant to be a deterrent BECAUSE it is so grisly?
I’m not proposing it. The death penalty alone is sufficient
There are certainly some in the American justice system who want execution to be with extreme prejuduce. But it is a position little held now. People bursting into flame is pretty grim for everyone who has to witness the execution.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Is Pristina airport more than one small building now? I think I was last there (mostly Podujeve) in summer 2004. Local wine was not great, and I was oddly presented with a lot of (very nice but it’s not hard) Greek salad. Something in the back of my mind tells me there was the odd nice, spicy, Albanian dish.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
It's not state sanctioned euthanasia. That's a misleading and emotive way of describing taking the state out of the decision to end one's life with help from others. It's none of the state's business.
Israel's army chief has said that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas, as he addressed troops ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group.
So the war is over now, right? Israel has won and can dictate the peace.
"We are not stopping," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement, as troops in northern Gaza operated against what the military said were Hamas attempts to rebuild.
It's a forever war now.
They're on the way to social and moral collapse as a nation.
And these action are leading to a surge in anti-senitism all over the world, as some of my own family are finding out.
I'd strongly argue that the 'new' anti-Semites are people who, if they were not anti-Semites before, were just looking for an excuse to be anti-Semites.
For some reason, many people, and indeed nations, find it very easy to fall into anti-Semitism; something that has recurringly happened over centuries, if not Millenia.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
For the moderately well off, you can just fly off to Switzerland, where there are a dozen places that will take your money and your life. (And, for what it's worth, the safeguards do seem to work there.)
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
But with British rather than Swiss management. Which is perhaps not ideal.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
I had thought that there may be more comment on what Netanyahu may choose to do tonight.
Peace or war? Perhaps whatever his choice is, it's already underway.
It would be nice to think he could extend an arm of friendship to the mullahs. But realistically? We'll know soon enough. He'll find the symbolism hard to ignore
I had thought that there may be more comment on what Netanyahu may choose to do tonight.
Peace or war? Perhaps whatever his choice is, it's already underway.
Or he’s already achieved his objective by making the Iranians shit themselves and flee all electronic devices for an evening, and then wonder if actually IT (whatever IT is) will come tomorrow.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
'As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.'
Are you having a laugh? Cleverly will be selling exactly the same message Rishi did in July just with less dynamism and charisma.
Cleverly is Sunak 2 and wouldn't change anything from the manifesto Rishi fought the general election on which led to thumping defeat. Starmer also does blokeiness.
Jenrick offers at least some vision of the lessons the Tories need to learn from the voters they lost to Reform, as does Badenoch.
Tugendhat at least has more intellect than Cleverly and a genuine ideological commitment to a form of One Nation Toryism at home and moral foreign policy abroad which might attract voters Cameron won who went Labour or LD this time.
At best Cleverly might hold the 2024 Tory vote and add a few from Labour, at worst he would lose more to Reform and the LDs and Farage would end up LOTO by default and win over voters disaffected with Labour to Reform not the Tories
I had thought that there may be more comment on what Netanyahu may choose to do tonight.
Peace or war? Perhaps whatever his choice is, it's already underway.
Or he’s already achieved his objective by making the Iranians shit themselves and flee all electronic devices for an evening, and then wonder if actually IT (whatever IT is) will come tomorrow.
I had thought that there may be more comment on what Netanyahu may choose to do tonight.
Peace or war? Perhaps whatever his choice is, it's already underway.
It would be nice to think he could extend an arm of friendship to the mullahs. But realistically? We'll know soon enough. He'll find the symbolism hard to ignore
Well, we'll see.
I don't think Netanyahu is particularly motivated by his own legacy (cf Trump), and he therefore will probably choose what he thinks is in Israel's best interest. I think it's very hard to know what that path is.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
Israel's army chief has said that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas, as he addressed troops ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group.
So the war is over now, right? Israel has won and can dictate the peace.
"We are not stopping," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement, as troops in northern Gaza operated against what the military said were Hamas attempts to rebuild.
It's a forever war now.
They're on the way to social and moral collapse as a nation.
And these action are leading to a surge in anti-senitism all over the world, as some of my own family are finding out.
I'd strongly argue that the 'new' anti-Semites are people who, if they were not anti-Semites before, were just looking for an excuse to be anti-Semites.
For some reason, many people, and indeed nations, find it very easy to fall into anti-Semitism; something that has recurringly happened over centuries, if not Millenia.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
For the moderately well off, you can just fly off to Switzerland, where there are a dozen places that will take your money and your life. (And, for what it's worth, the safeguards do seem to work there.)
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
But with British rather than Swiss management. Which is perhaps not ideal.
What's the worst that can go wrong - they make you better?
Netenyahu will do what helps him to stay in power so a long protracted war is what he wants .
The west continues to indulge this maniac . I’m so tired of these continual exclamations of concern and restraint from western leaders . Either put up or shut up .
Israel's army chief has said that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas, as he addressed troops ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group.
So the war is over now, right? Israel has won and can dictate the peace.
"We are not stopping," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement, as troops in northern Gaza operated against what the military said were Hamas attempts to rebuild.
It's a forever war now.
They're on the way to social and moral collapse as a nation.
And these action are leading to a surge in anti-senitism all over the world, as some of my own family are finding out.
I'd strongly argue that the 'new' anti-Semites are people who, if they were not anti-Semites before, were just looking for an excuse to be anti-Semites.
For some reason, many people, and indeed nations, find it very easy to fall into anti-Semitism; something that has recurringly happened over centuries, if not Millenia.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
For the moderately well off, you can just fly off to Switzerland, where there are a dozen places that will take your money and your life. (And, for what it's worth, the safeguards do seem to work there.)
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
But with British rather than Swiss management. Which is perhaps not ideal.
My view is this is a John Rawls 'veil of ignorance' situation.
You have no idea how you will die. It lies in the future.
But there is a risk it is going to be a drawn out, horrendous, agonising death in extreme pain which no amount of drugs and palliative care can quite help with.
You now have the choice, in advance, whether to be born into a country that has assisted dying for the very terminally ill or one that does not.
You can also run the thought experiment thinking the case is your mother or your husband or indeed your only child.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
I've already supplied my GP ands my children with that form - my living will.
But I'm determined to be in control and manage my own death* and not just leave it to luck. I have my plans. I'd prefer not to have to do it alone, but I don't want to put friends and family or doctor at risk with the law.
*I hope and believe it will be a long time off as, though I am in my 80s, I'm healthy, fit and happy. Bit grim this!
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
You were unbelievably restrained….
Not really.
I even took the time to look up on my prototype smart phone the German phrase for Ballast Existence, that the Nazis used.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
You were unbelievably restrained….
Not really.
I even took the time to look up on my prototype smart phone the German phrase for Ballast Existence, that the Nazis used.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
You were unbelievably restrained….
Not really.
I even took the time to look up on my prototype smart phone the German phrase for Ballast Existence, that the Nazis used.
Im sorry to hear that. I’m curious if there were any repercussions?
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
'As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.'
Are you having a laugh? Cleverly will be selling exactly the same message Rishi did in July just with less dynamism and charisma.
Cleverly is Sunak 2 and wouldn't change anything from the manifesto Rishi fought the general election on which led to thumping defeat. Starmer also does blokeiness.
Jenrick offers at least some vision of the lessons the Tories need to learn from the voters they lost to Reform, as does Badenoch.
Tugendhat at least has more intellect than Cleverly and a genuine ideological commitment to a form of One Nation Toryism at home and moral foreign policy abroad which might attract voters Cameron won who went Labour or LD this time.
At best Cleverly might hold the 2024 Tory vote and add a few from Labour, at worst he would lose more to Reform and the LDs and Farage would end up LOTO by default and win over voters disaffected with Labour to Reform not the Tories
Cleverly is avuncular. Kind of likeable, in a have a beer down the pub way. Nobody really knows what his politics are, so he’s about as blank a canvas as you’ll get in a former minister.
Something to be said for that. A sort of Tory Ed Davey.
Israel's army chief has said that Israeli forces had defeated the military wing of Hamas, as he addressed troops ahead of the first anniversary of the 7 October attack by the Palestinian militant group.
So the war is over now, right? Israel has won and can dictate the peace.
"We are not stopping," Lieutenant General Herzi Halevi said in a statement, as troops in northern Gaza operated against what the military said were Hamas attempts to rebuild.
It's a forever war now.
They're on the way to social and moral collapse as a nation.
And these action are leading to a surge in anti-senitism all over the world, as some of my own family are finding out.
I'd strongly argue that the 'new' anti-Semites are people who, if they were not anti-Semites before, were just looking for an excuse to be anti-Semites.
For some reason, many people, and indeed nations, find it very easy to fall into anti-Semitism; something that has recurringly happened over centuries, if not Millenia.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
It is reported that about 50 MPs already want it extended to more than those who are terminally ill before the Bill has even been debated. Any safeguards will be like snow in sunshine.
For the moderately well off, you can just fly off to Switzerland, where there are a dozen places that will take your money and your life. (And, for what it's worth, the safeguards do seem to work there.)
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
But with British rather than Swiss management. Which is perhaps not ideal.
My view is this is a John Rawls 'veil of ignorance' situation.
You have no idea how you will die. It lies in the future.
But there is a risk it is going to be a drawn out, horrendous, agonising death in extreme pain which no amount of drugs and palliative care can quite help with.
You now have the choice, in advance, whether to be born into a country that has assisted dying for the very terminally ill or one that does not.
You can also run the thought experiment thinking the case is your mother or your husband or indeed your only child.
I'd choose Switzerland over Holland. I suspect we'd be closer to the latter.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
You were unbelievably restrained….
Not really.
I even took the time to look up on my prototype smart phone the German phrase for Ballast Existence, that the Nazis used.
An awful story :-(
Why do you think so? It’s is quite common, probably. Just if you ask questions and push back, in the Nasty Entitled Middle Class way, you get treated differently.
Read the Stafford report and others, it was attitude as much as resources. “They are just bed blockers” was the refrain of a minority. But that was enough.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
The problem is, once the person is dead, how can you be sure it was voluntary?
And, in the case of mental illness, what if they might have changed their mind a day later?
If they are dead, they are dead. They really won't complain.
It is the survivors who might complain. But there is a danger that eg children will try to persuade parents not take that route for selfish reasons. They don't want to lose their parent even if it means the parent suffering longer. There's coercion in that direction too.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
Offer them a quick easy way out?
Cheer up Leon, would be my suggestion.
You got a proper chuckle here in Pristina airport. So that’s something. Especially given the catering options - I do believe Kosovo has the worst food in Europe
Well, I'm delighted if I've done a good deed.
You did. The food is fucking terrible
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
This challenge format is all a bit.... youtubey. Is the magazine going downmarket?
Top Ten Reasons For Going To Albania - Number Four Will Shock You!
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
'As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.'
Are you having a laugh? Cleverly will be selling exactly the same message Rishi did in July just with less dynamism and charisma.
Cleverly is Sunak 2 and wouldn't change anything from the manifesto Rishi fought the general election on which led to thumping defeat. Starmer also does blokeiness.
Jenrick offers at least some vision of the lessons the Tories need to learn from the voters they lost to Reform, as does Badenoch.
Tugendhat at least has more intellect than Cleverly and a genuine ideological commitment to a form of One Nation Toryism at home and moral foreign policy abroad which might attract voters Cameron won who went Labour or LD this time.
At best Cleverly might hold the 2024 Tory vote and add a few from Labour, at worst he would lose more to Reform and the LDs and Farage would end up LOTO by default and win over voters disaffected with Labour to Reform not the Tories
Cleverly is avuncular. Kind of likeable, in a have a beer down the pub way. Nobody really knows what his politics are, so he’s about as blank a canvas as you’ll get in a former minister.
Something to be said for that. A sort of Tory Ed Davey.
I think he did well to invoke the spirit of Reagan (the real one, not the one the current Republicans pretend existed).
Of course the irony is that Ron “shining city on a hill” “if it must have walls then the doors must be wide open” Reagan would defenestrate the Rwanda policy.
But then probably so would Cleverly if he was being honest.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
You were unbelievably restrained….
Not really.
I even took the time to look up on my prototype smart phone the German phrase for Ballast Existence, that the Nazis used.
Im sorry to hear that. I’m curious if there were any repercussions?
Probably I should have done something, looking back. Didn’t see her again. Probably moved to a different ward.
But it does make you wondered what she did in the 23 years since.
Ukraine war videos of drone-on-drone warfare are becoming more common. Plenty of Russian aerial drones taken out by Ukrainian drones, and now numbers of Russian ground drones, carrying supplies, or armed with machine guns, are targets for Ukrainian drones.
The €400m pledged by the Dutch for drones for Ukraine today should be viewed in this context.
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
My wife and I updated our wills and obtained power of attorneys last year, specifically to ensure that our affairs are in order before we may succumb to dementia
Yes, we did as well. Took a while though, cost over a grand! Do you have both finance and medical?
Yes and I did it online and it was relatively easy
It cost 4 x £82 = £328
I am not sure it is generally known you have separate ones for finance and property - hence 4 x
Yeah, I succumbed to my wife wanting a solicitor involved!!!
I wrote the powers of attorney and wills for my mother, my wife and myself without a solicitor. It's very straightforward. I subsequently used the powers of attorney and obtained probates with no problems.
That sounds sinister on reading it! But it wasn't.
There was a post here the other day (@Nigelb?) saying how Trump had pledged to restore some confederacy names to key military sites and elsewhere.
Whilst I'm not a supporter of the Confederacy- nowhere close - I can see why stripping out every single statue of Robert Lee and Stonewall Jackson would have pissed off Southerners, as it's part of their history and identity. I was annoyed even here about the Rhodes Commission to make a detailed submission to them, and that one stayed up.
There are lots of little things like that about Trump that garner him votes.
It's 9 military bases that were renamed in 2023.
Jurisdiction over statues, school names, parks etc is not a federal responsibility.
So in Georgia there are 201 recognised Confederate memorials still extant for example, including a statue of General Gordon outside the state legislature, despite him being a KKK leader. The state flag is based on the Confederate flag too.
So it isn't accurate to suggest that history is being erased.
There are 45 schools in Georgia named for Confederates too, some with significant African American student enrollment.
Well done for spectacularly missing the point.
What was your point then?
You mentioned removing statues of Lee and Jackson. That isn't a Federal responsibility
As for the originals, Lee was captured at Appomattox Courthouse but Jackson was shot by the Confederates.
A bit of context for Jackson's shooting might help understand @ydoethur 's comment: he had been looking at the battlefield and was mistaken for a Union soldier by a trigger happy Rebel picket. They didn't shoot him deliberately...
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
'As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.'
Are you having a laugh? Cleverly will be selling exactly the same message Rishi did in July just with less dynamism and charisma.
Cleverly is Sunak 2 and wouldn't change anything from the manifesto Rishi fought the general election on which led to thumping defeat. Starmer also does blokeiness.
Jenrick offers at least some vision of the lessons the Tories need to learn from the voters they lost to Reform, as does Badenoch.
Tugendhat at least has more intellect than Cleverly and a genuine ideological commitment to a form of One Nation Toryism at home and moral foreign policy abroad which might attract voters Cameron won who went Labour or LD this time.
At best Cleverly might hold the 2024 Tory vote and add a few from Labour, at worst he would lose more to Reform and the LDs and Farage would end up LOTO by default and win over voters disaffected with Labour to Reform not the Tories
Cleverly is avuncular. Kind of likeable, in a have a beer down the pub way. Nobody really knows what his politics are, so he’s about as blank a canvas as you’ll get in a former minister.
Something to be said for that. A sort of Tory Ed Davey.
Ed Davey isn't going to be PM or an effective LOTO either.
I am not looking for someone to have a beer with, I could get that in any pub, I am looking for a leader
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
When my mother was dying in hospital, a nurse refused to follow the hand sanitising protocol before entering her room - as posted on the door.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
You were unbelievably restrained….
Not really.
I even took the time to look up on my prototype smart phone the German phrase for Ballast Existence, that the Nazis used.
An awful story :-(
Why do you think so? It’s is quite common, probably. Just if you ask questions and push back, in the Nasty Entitled Middle Class way, you get treated differently.
Read the Stafford report and others, it was attitude as much as resources. “They are just bed blockers” was the refrain of a minority. But that was enough.
Part of it is that many elderly patients don’t have anyone to advocate on their behalf. Very noticeable, over a decade of visiting my Dad in various institutions, that a large number of patient very rarely received visitors.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
The current arrangements are about right, and that is largely because government and law keep out of it and balance and nuance are respected.
If you really want or need to end your life you can do so, even with a little help, and nobody is likely to be prosecuted. It may not be technically legal, but common sense and compassion generally prevail, making it effectively non-criminal.
I have no time for ludicrous strawman arguments like 'I want to die but I'm terrified my spouse will go to prison'. Yeah, unless you're Mrs Shipman I think you'll be alright...
🚨 BREAKING: 3rd new Hezbollah leader reported killed already
Ibrahim Amine al-Sayyed only lasted hours
It’s a bit like the spinal tap drummer gag
Netanyahu may be a shit but I would far rather he was in charge of defending us and our overseas territories than dreary old Sir Keir
Are you quite serious? You'd prefer someone who happily politicises the judiciary, is happy to see the whole Middle East burn to keep himself out of jail, is/was close friends with Putin and whose own police force state that he should be indicted for bribery and fraud?
Whither the rule of law? Off to GB News with you boyo.
If you want to defend your country you want a leader who is a ruthless shit, not one who will consider subsection 4.1 of the UN Charter before deciding whether or not to blow up a ship dropping large numbers of enemy troops on your beaches or whether to kill terrorist leaders or not
There are no circumstances that I would want a Netanyahu, Trump or Putin leading our country
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
Yes, and we have the precedent of abortion where a system was setup with safeguards of requiring a specific reason for a termination, confirmed with a second opinion from another doctor, which has become almost abortion on demand (though applied unevenly, so sometimes an individual doctor might not play ball, which wouldn't happen if Parliament had rewritten the rules, rather than how they had been applied changing over time).
And in the case of abortion you have the safeguard that the person who requests the abortion - the pregnant woman - is still there after the procedure. So if they were coerced into it, they can subsequently come forward about that. But in the case of euthanasia, the key witness is dead, and then who can say what they really wanted?
But, of course, terminally ill people can suffer degradation and pain that is cruel.
With the Abortion Act, it’s not the case that the safeguards have eroded over time. Rather, the Abortion Act 1967 was written to give women the choice as much as possible while appearing to have lots of medical safeguards in order to get those who were sceptical about giving women the choice to vote for it.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
That’s roughly where I am. Tho I somewhat change my mind with each heart rending story
What gives me real pause is the evidence there IS a slippery slope. You start with offering it to the terminally ill in terrible pain - hard to argue against - and then it ends up with severely depressed people in financial trouble. wtf
As with all big political questions, it needs to be considered through the prism of how the British state, bureaucracy and society would actually implement such a policy over time. Not how you would like it to be. It’s the first step on the road to dystopia but no one would notice until society was so far down the path we couldn’t walk it back.
The current arrangements are about right, and that is largely because government and law keep out of it and balance and nuance are respected.
If you really want or need to end your life you can do so, even with a little help, and nobody is likely to be prosecuted. It may not be technically legal, but common sense and compassion generally prevail, making it effectively non-criminal.
I have no time for ludicrous strawman arguments like 'I want to die but I'm terrified my spouse will go to prison'. Yeah, unless you're Mrs Shipman I think you'll be alright...
My opposition to changing the law has been confirmed by watching my grandmother recently. She's in her late 80s, completely compos mentis and still just about living in her own. Recently though she's got a lot more dependent on others which is making her depressed and she keeps going on about how much of a burden she is. It would take barely a suggestion from a doctor to get her to take the assistant dying route when it's totally unnecessary and would be a huge loss to all of her family.
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
'As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.'
Are you having a laugh? Cleverly will be selling exactly the same message Rishi did in July just with less dynamism and charisma.
Cleverly is Sunak 2 and wouldn't change anything from the manifesto Rishi fought the general election on which led to thumping defeat. Starmer also does blokeiness.
Jenrick offers at least some vision of the lessons the Tories need to learn from the voters they lost to Reform, as does Badenoch.
Tugendhat at least has more intellect than Cleverly and a genuine ideological commitment to a form of One Nation Toryism at home and moral foreign policy abroad which might attract voters Cameron won who went Labour or LD this time.
At best Cleverly might hold the 2024 Tory vote and add a few from Labour, at worst he would lose more to Reform and the LDs and Farage would end up LOTO by default and win over voters disaffected with Labour to Reform not the Tories
Cleverly is avuncular. Kind of likeable, in a have a beer down the pub way. Nobody really knows what his politics are, so he’s about as blank a canvas as you’ll get in a former minister.
Something to be said for that. A sort of Tory Ed Davey.
Ed Davey isn't going to be PM or an effective LOTO either.
I am not looking for someone to have a beer with, I could get that in any pub, I am looking for a leader
The desperation of non-Tory supporters to persuade Tories of the electoral bonanza that awaits them should they elect Jimmy Dimly is quite something to behold. I can't remember the last time I heard similar advice. Oh yes I do, it was when they were cheerleading for Rishi Sunak.
Cleverly is perfectly amiable but I fail to see the point of replacing Rishi with him. As far as I can see he is Rishi with less energy and fewer brains and not much charisma. Indeed I can’t see a single policy difference between Cleverly and Sunak as PM.
Farage would welcome a Cleverly leadership as he would gain no voters the Tories have lost to Reform while Jenrick might and the LDs fear Tugendhat more than Cleverly. All that can be said for Cleverly is he is better than Kemi for leader as he would at least hold the 2024 Tory vote and might win over a few Labour voters unhappy with Starmer.
The Conhome poll was a snap poll with a small sample though, all it may well do is see Jenrick lend some MPs to Tugendhat next week to try and knock Cleverly and Kemi out
As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
'As a non-Tory Cleverly would be the only one I'd genuinely fear might do well. As he's the only one who seems to get that the Tories have to be seen to have changed and had a big rethink to get a hearing among large parts of the country.'
Are you having a laugh? Cleverly will be selling exactly the same message Rishi did in July just with less dynamism and charisma.
Cleverly is Sunak 2 and wouldn't change anything from the manifesto Rishi fought the general election on which led to thumping defeat. Starmer also does blokeiness.
Jenrick offers at least some vision of the lessons the Tories need to learn from the voters they lost to Reform, as does Badenoch.
Tugendhat at least has more intellect than Cleverly and a genuine ideological commitment to a form of One Nation Toryism at home and moral foreign policy abroad which might attract voters Cameron won who went Labour or LD this time.
At best Cleverly might hold the 2024 Tory vote and add a few from Labour, at worst he would lose more to Reform and the LDs and Farage would end up LOTO by default and win over voters disaffected with Labour to Reform not the Tories
Cleverly is avuncular. Kind of likeable, in a have a beer down the pub way. Nobody really knows what his politics are, so he’s about as blank a canvas as you’ll get in a former minister.
Something to be said for that. A sort of Tory Ed Davey.
Ed Davey isn't going to be PM or an effective LOTO either.
I am not looking for someone to have a beer with, I could get that in any pub, I am looking for a leader
The desperation of non-Tory supporters to persuade Tories of the electoral bonanza that awaits them should they elect Jimmy Dimly is quite something to behold. I can't remember the last time I heard similar advice. Oh yes I do, it was when they were cheerleading for Rishi Sunak.
Thanks very much, ladies and gents. I'm here all week. Do try the veal.
Sad to hear Johnny Walker today on Radio 2 announce that he is retiring at the end of the month as he is terminally ill. He has been the background music to so much of my life and I have avidly listend to Sounds of the Seventies on a Sunday no matter where I was in the world.
I hope he does have at least some of a peaceful retirement before he finally walks the Black Sands.
Could you ever be part of a medical euthanasia scheme? As I say I am deeply divided on the topic
I’d like people to be given the means of a painless way out but building an ethical legal structure is incredibly hard. And I don’t think Canada has done it
I think that, on balance, I'm opposed. Just as the principle with a criminal conviction is that we'd rather ten guilty men go free rather than one innocent man is wrongly convicted, so I'd have to argue that it was better for ten terminally ill patients to suffer a difficult death than one person to be killed by the state before their time.
As someone who has suffered quite badly from depression at various times the stories about mentally ill people being euthanased has seriously given me the jitters.
So long as the system is voluntary only then no, it is absolutely not better.
Let people choose.
There is no dignity in a painful and sad long drawn out death.
And what do you say to someone who insists they are suicidally miserable and hopeless due to loneliness and sexual dysfunction?
In principle, I am in favour of a well regulated and controlled form of euthanasia. In practice I think I am against because I am not confident it could be regulated well enough to avoid some cases of state endorsed murder; and just one case is too many.
I read today that in Holland 5% of deaths are now a result of state sanctioned euthanasia
Don’t hate on me if I’m wrong. I haven’t checked and I’m too knackered to do so and flying home v v v late
But still. If that’s right. It’s an alarming stat. 1 in 20??
12% of deaths in the UK are down to dementia.
The moment I am diagnosed with dementia from which there is no real prospect of remission, I will want to put my affairs in order, then have a means of checking out that doesn't require me to traumatise a train driver. I would not want my loved ones to see my decline, be responsible for my care during that decline.
I want to know with 100% certainty that my previously recorded wishes to terminate my life in various circumstances will be respected. That law is unlikely during my lifetime. But in stages we need to move towards it.
My wife and I updated our wills and obtained power of attorneys last year, specifically to ensure that our affairs are in order before we may succumb to dementia
Yes, we did as well. Took a while though, cost over a grand! Do you have both finance and medical?
We did it for my mother; it costs not that much. Just the government fee - about £75-80 AIR
Comments
I also wonder whether the agent may be more on the Iranian side, not the Hizbollah one.
Would that be different if they needed third party assistance to make that decision practical?
But what if - as is plausible - during your dementia (inshallah it doesn’t happen) they discovered a cure for dementia?
It is not impossible. The science is closing in
https://www.resus.org.uk/respect/respect-healthcare-professionals
It is a common fallacy about DNR forms that it means "do not treat" when it means "do not initiate CPR", so sets no limits on treatment short of that point.
So, if a patient has severe dementia it can reasonably be recorded on a Respect form to not treat pneumonia with antibiotics, but to keep comfortable in other ways.
Not everywhere uses this form, but there is also this alternative:
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/end-of-life-care/planning-ahead/advance-decision-to-refuse-treatment/
All this bill would do is extend the right to die to the rather less well off.
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/end-of-life-care/planning-ahead/advance-decision-to-refuse-treatment/
https://youtu.be/gEysXRLTG5M?si=kuIvoliLHA5jkpQi
Not had a single nice meal in 3 days. Pizza was ok
Now I’ve got: 2 days of the cheapest possible kebabs in Geneva
I can report that Kosovan wine is now acceptable. Almost everywhere now makes acceptable wine if they make wine at all
In particular the growing in influence group who moved into early adulthood during the last Tory government and who in the past would've been open to voting Tory in terms of age and socio-economic status but now actively despise them after the past 14 years of feeling ignored and attacked.
Plus could do that with a blokeiness that might contrast well with Starmer and maybe even appeal to some Farage fans on style if not substance.
Jenrick is more of the same rhetoric but in stereo and "we pinky promise to do similar things we didn't/couldn't do last time but tougher". Plus he's very ambitious Oxbridge dweeb - not exactly en vogue right now.
Badenoch is a great candidate if the electorate were The Spectator's online readership - less so if you're the majority who don't want to be in the same room as either them or the people they're wanging on about.
Tugendhat's just really wet and doesn't seem to understand that David Cameron's modernisation project was predicated on being demonstratively bold (even if lots of it was horseshit) in challenging his party and proving to people it wasn't the same old duffers they'd rejected three times. Rather than asking it to please stop being a bit less beastly, if it wouldn't terribly mind - but oh no, not that bit of beastliness you all like.
A difficulty in coming back is have to attract voters from all directions to have a hope - Cleverly is the only one I think who has a slim chance of that.
However, Badenoch is a wild card. Hard to know what she’d do in the office. She may - ahem - surprise on the upside. Or she may be Liz truss 2.0
I suspect Labour are worried by her - just in case. Her gender and ethnicity alone would make her more problematic for the left
Greek wines! Wow - there's money to be made importing those.
Just one lovely smile from a lovely Greek goddess. Still one's better than none.
James 'we shouldn't apologise for our record' Cleverly would be exceptionally bad news for our politics, and should the Tories ever get back in with him in command, our national security.
And in the case of abortion you have the safeguard that the person who requests the abortion - the pregnant woman - is still there after the procedure. So if they were coerced into it, they can subsequently come forward about that. But in the case of euthanasia, the key witness is dead, and then who can say what they really wanted?
But, of course, terminally ill people can suffer degradation and pain that is cruel.
I guess the question is whether the Hezbollah campaign will actually be cost-free for Israel. I suspect it won't solve anything in the longer term but as Israel has never shown any interest in a solution to date, it doesn't change anything. So from an Israeli point of view, which is the only one it will consider, why not go all in?
Should add, just because Israel considers no point of view except its own, is not a reason for everyone else to do likewise. This escalation is dangerous and many people will in any case be killed by it.
The whites are wonderful but the reds are fast improving. The Balkans is a happening place in red wine world
And, in the case of mental illness, what if they might have changed their mind a day later?
(I suspect that place in Queen's Park may be the place to look - forget it's name)
Edit: Now recalled - Salusbury Wine shop. (Sometimes I like to call upon memory rather than just look on the internet.
Greek whites are my favourite fish wine
It cost 4 x £82 = £328
I am not sure it is generally known you have separate ones for finance and property - hence 4 x
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/oct/06/nitrogen-gas-executions-michael-portillo
If going into a nitrogen hypoxia chamber, sitting in a comfy chair and never coming out alive, if that was an option, I am sure many would choose it to end their life.
While dementia can be distressing, it isn't necessarily so. My MiL was demented for 18 months but was rather jolly with it and certainly not distressed by it. She remained good company, albeit a little repetitive with her stories.
Worth noting too that a number of treatable conditions can mimic dementia.
I’m not proposing it. The death penalty alone is sufficient
The proposed change is assisted dying so that they don't die alone or messily (my sister-in-law jumped from the top of a multi-storey car park), or they get open support and maybe don't do the deed. It's progress.
I with MM - if I’m ever diagnosed with dementia, I would probably want to check out, too.
My father clung to life with absolute determination through a decade with the disease, while all other faculties withered away. Not easy for the family, but a choice I’d never question. But not one I’d make myself.
Peace or war? Perhaps whatever his choice is, it's already underway.
It's not state sanctioned euthanasia. That's a misleading and emotive way of describing taking the state out of the decision to end one's life with help from others. It's none of the state's business.
Which is perhaps not ideal.
“Because she is better off dead” is what she literally said to me. Followed by “she is wasting resources”.
My mother was in no particular pain, alert and spent her days organising things, calling people and generally… living. As she would do for several more months.
Fortunately my father (son of Holocaust survivors) didn’t hear.
I went to the head shed doctor. He called the nurse in. I explained my philosophical position. In direct terms. I was interested to note that people really do put their hands to their throats in certain circumstances.
Are you having a laugh? Cleverly will be selling exactly the same message Rishi did in July just with less dynamism and charisma.
Cleverly is Sunak 2 and wouldn't change anything from the manifesto Rishi fought the general election on which led to thumping defeat. Starmer also does blokeiness.
Jenrick offers at least some vision of the lessons the Tories need to learn from the voters they lost to Reform, as does Badenoch.
Tugendhat at least has more intellect than Cleverly and a genuine ideological commitment to a form of One Nation Toryism at home and moral foreign policy abroad which might attract voters Cameron won who went Labour or LD this time.
At best Cleverly might hold the 2024 Tory vote and add a few from Labour, at worst he would lose more to Reform and the LDs and Farage would end up LOTO by default and win over voters disaffected with Labour to Reform not the Tories
I don't think Netanyahu is particularly motivated by his own legacy (cf Trump), and he therefore will probably choose what he thinks is in Israel's best interest. I think it's very hard to know what that path is.
The west continues to indulge this maniac . I’m so tired of these continual exclamations of concern and restraint from western leaders . Either put up or shut up .
You have no idea how you will die. It lies in the future.
But there is a risk it is going to be a drawn out, horrendous, agonising death in extreme pain which no amount of drugs and palliative care can quite help with.
You now have the choice, in advance, whether to be born into a country that has assisted dying for the very terminally ill or one that does not.
You can also run the thought experiment thinking the case is your mother or your husband or indeed your only child.
But I'm determined to be in control and manage my own death* and not just leave it to luck. I have my plans. I'd prefer not to have to do it alone, but I don't want to put friends and family or doctor at risk with the law.
*I hope and believe it will be a long time off as, though I am in my 80s, I'm healthy, fit and happy.
I even took the time to look up on my prototype smart phone the German phrase for Ballast Existence, that the Nazis used.
Something to be said for that. A sort of Tory Ed Davey.
I suspect we'd be closer to the latter.
Read the Stafford report and others, it was attitude as much as resources. “They are just bed blockers” was the refrain of a minority. But that was enough.
It is the survivors who might complain. But there is a danger that eg children will try to persuade parents not take that route for selfish reasons. They don't want to lose their parent even if it means the parent suffering longer. There's coercion in that direction too.
Of course the irony is that Ron “shining city on a hill” “if it must have walls then the doors must be wide open” Reagan would defenestrate the Rwanda policy.
But then probably so would Cleverly if he was being honest.
But it does make you wondered what she did in the 23 years since.
The €400m pledged by the Dutch for drones for Ukraine today should be viewed in this context.
That sounds sinister on reading it! But it wasn't.
2) Seems angry all the time - so probably permanently depressed.
Right, @malcolmg report to Soylent B Processing Plant 14, for your repurposing.
I am not looking for someone to have a beer with, I could get that in any pub, I am looking for a leader
If you really want or need to end your life you can do so, even with a little help, and nobody is likely to be prosecuted. It may not be technically legal, but common sense and compassion generally prevail, making it effectively non-criminal.
I have no time for ludicrous strawman arguments like 'I want to die but I'm terrified my spouse will go to prison'. Yeah, unless you're Mrs Shipman I think you'll be alright...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1UBjeWDmR-Q at 8.45 in
I think I’ll get a copy of this.
Den of Spies: Craig Unger on Reagan, treason and the first October surprise
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/oct/06/den-of-spies-craig-unger-reagan-carter-october-surprise-trump
Bill Casey was certainly dodgy AF.
The projection from these MAGA whackos is incredible.
Five more years yet.
“Winston, you are drunk.”
“And you, Bessie, are ugly. But I shall be sober in the morning, and you will still be ugly.”
All we have to do is work out which party is drunk and which is ugly. Should only take four years or so.
"That stupid idiot Donald
Gonna lose the election again"
Sad to hear Johnny Walker today on Radio 2 announce that he is retiring at the end of the month as he is terminally ill. He has been the background music to so much of my life and I have avidly listend to Sounds of the Seventies on a Sunday no matter where I was in the world.
I hope he does have at least some of a peaceful retirement before he finally walks the Black Sands.
Confirmation from sources now that Sue Gray is resigning
James O'Malley @Psythor
She'll come back at a critical moment as Sue White.