I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
You're obviously utterly ignorant of the realities of life in your preferred 1950s.
Just set up a seedy photograph session in a Brighton hotel and pretend adultery, hey presto divorce.
An excellent boost to the British Tourism Industry. Especially the 'seedy hotel' sector.
But yeah. There's a social cost to easy divorce etc, but it's lower than the cost of the alternative. Nivarna doesn't exist on planet Earth, and probably can't.
"My idiot great-nephew, Hughie, has bungled matters as usual. Having undertaken to do the thing like a gentleman, he sneaked off to Brighton with a hired nobody, and the Judge wouldn't believe either the hotel bills or the chambermaid—knowing them all too well by sight. So it means starting all over again from the beginning."
We are going through a difficult time with my mother in law at the moment. She is 88 and has vascular dementia. She has been a widow for 11 years now and was an effective widow for some years before that as her husband had dementia too and she devoted her life to caring for him.
She takes 7 pills each morning and a blood thinner at night. She has medication for her blood pressure, for her heart, for her tendencies to retain excess liquid and statins. She is utterly miserable. She sees people who are not there. They sometimes frighten her. Despite my wife's enormous efforts and 2 carers she spends a lot of time alone talking to her photographs and apparently hearing them talking back. She is becoming ever more incontinent.
She has expressed, repeatedly, that she sees no point in her life, that she is a burden and that she gets very little pleasure from it. But, of course, she would not be eligible under this bill. We are spending quite a lot of money and medical care keeping her alive. Why? Why do we torture our elderly in this way?
Well said. Mirrors my experience.
This bill is woefully insufficient. Being mentally incapable should more entitle someone for assisted doing not bar them from it.
This is what I want for myself:
1) If mentally capable: I want to be able to choose when I seek help ending my life when I am over a certain age (say, 80). Age should be the qualifier if the decision is by the mentally capable. Health condition irrelevant. We must stop calling it 'committing suicide' as this implies wrongdoing and reinforces the stigma against it.
2) If not mentally capable: no minimum age. There must be appointed attorneys and my chosen attorneys make the decision.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I share your antipathy to ultrafeminism, and to woke's ambivalence to tge traditional family. But it's worth noting that this is a fringe position, albeit a disproportionately influential one; and it's also worth noting that a decline in birth rate also exists in much more traditional societies (such as East Asia).
My view is that decline in birth rates is simply a product of societies, however they are structured - individualist or collectivist, traditional or modern - having to divert an ever greater share of resources towards the over 65s, leaving less for the under 16s.
Why do you think 'woke' (however the fuck you define that) has an 'ambivalence' to the traditional family?
Superb performance from Liz Kendal on Laura K over assisted death vote.
If only Starmer had the courage to make his own case rather than leaving it to others.
This one is personal not party, though, isn't it? So Kendal is making the Kendal case not the Labour one.
It is one of the more heartening aspects of the discussion that it is not Party Political. Long may it remain so.
I think they are less fortunate in the USA in this respect, but maybe I do them a injustice.
You don't. Eg a woman's right to have an abortion up to a reasonable timeframe should imo be above politics. It's fundamental to holding women of equal worth to men.
No it is just another example of a feminist agenda.
Now I could just about accept abortion up to 22 weeks but 24 weeks is too high and it is pleasing to see a wide range of Tory MPs from Hunt to Kruger and indeed Dorries when she was an MP trying to cut the abortion time limit
You have no problem with these sorts of dumbed down antics when it's the pop right doing it. Trump, Farage et al. Do they have exclusive rights to the joshing/trolling space or something?
Where does he imagine that it's leading? Does he think that "day 283 of Ed Davey asking to play video games with Keir Starmer" will capture the imagination of the nation?
Well you know me. I hate this sort of thing. But my point is it worked for him at the GE (73 seats says so) and he obviously thinks (rightly or wrongly) that it still does. If the non-populists can't go around behaving like dicks to counter similar from the populists you're making them fight with one arm tied behind their backs.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni to power in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I probably know more "ultra woke, uber feminists" than you. You'd probably classify Mrs J as one.
But I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. It's male dinosaurs such as yourself that feed wokeism and feminism, by treating women and others as inferior for *reasons*. And I hate to tell you this; things are not perfect now; but they were far worse in the past that you seem to revere.
"not enough women are producing children in a traditional family"
That's because, for many men, a "traditional family" subjugates women. And from your comments, I guess you have the same view. Too many men see a "traditional family" as being one where they are in control. I think the successful families, then and now, are ones where control is shared. But some women, and many, many men, are not ready for that.
(And Walz was not childless?)
I was in a car with a couple of 20 year old girls the other day and they were fuming at Emmeline Pankhurst 'deciding we shouldn't be housewives any more - how dare she?' it wasn't said entirely seriously but it was an interesting and amusing perspective.
I hope you informed them that Pankhurst was about a tad more than that...
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
Shabana Mahmood is against it and has cited her faith.
I don’t see why religious conviction causing an objection should be an issue.
She and others should stick their religion up their arses. If she does not want it fine, the clown should not be forcing her religious beliefs on the rest of the nation
Forcing one’s beliefs on the rest of the nation is exactly what politicians of all stripes do.
We vote for them based on their policy platforms. God botherers we don’t.
Shabana Mahmood was elected by the voters of her constituency. She got 42.5% in 2024, not quite a majority but a good performance under FPTP.
The only God botherers who get to force their beliefs on the nation are the unelected Bishops in the Lords.
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
Interesting lack of balance from the BBC in the reporting too.
A lot of views from people saying it's not enough money.
No views from anyone suggesting it is a waste of money, or that it could be better spent elsewhere, or that much of the money sent in aid could be swallowed up by corruption and not serve its intended purpose.
Entirely one slanted criticism.
They wanted over 1 trillion dollars yearly
Equals the US military budget.
Which does far more to keep the planet safe, healthy and alive.
We all dine off the US military budget.
We massively underestimate and take for granted how much its hard power keeps us safe.
Under my proposals I think France (40k), UK (40k), Germany (25k) and Poland (75k) could form a European defensive alliance that could deploy, with other nations like Italy, Spain and the Baltic and Scandi States, a high kinetic and high technology allied army of a quarter of a million on the Central European Plain _without_ any help from the USA.
That would keep us safe in perpetuity against any conceivable conventional threat. But we'd have to pay for it.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni to power in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I probably know more "ultra woke, uber feminists" than you. You'd probably classify Mrs J as one.
But I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. It's male dinosaurs such as yourself that feed wokeism and feminism, by treating women and others as inferior for *reasons*. And I hate to tell you this; things are not perfect now; but they were far worse in the past that you seem to revere.
"not enough women are producing children in a traditional family"
That's because, for many men, a "traditional family" subjugates women. And from your comments, I guess you have the same view. Too many men see a "traditional family" as being one where they are in control. I think the successful families, then and now, are ones where control is shared. But some women, and many, many men, are not ready for that.
(And Walz was not childless?)
No it is ultra woke left liberals like you and your wife pushing your agenda who have led to the conservative anti woke electoral backlash led by the victories of Trump and Meloni.
You thought your side had won the culture war completely, no the traditional right backlash to your agenda has just begun. Here too the rise of Reform and the emergence of Badenoch as Tory leader is driving energy to the UK anti woke crusade.
I never said Walz was childless even if Harris was, he was just as woke as her though maybe more so
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
Good riddance to him then.
Divorce is not remotely easy, as your own story demonstrates.
And its consequences often negative, especially for the wife
You mus\t be so frustrated that the Married Women's Property Acts were repealed. So much simpler when the man got *everything* in his name.
(Unless the wife's family had expensive lawyers.)
That was about 100 years before no fault divorce
Not true. About 350 years *after*. You're forgetting Henry VIII. Definitely not his fault, no milord.
On a point of pedantry:
Henry VIII was never divorced.
He thrice declared his marriages annulled, which is not quite the same thing.
(It remains something of a mystery why he didn't declare his marriage to Catherine Howard annulled before her execution, as he did with Anne Boleyn, but he didn't.)
He didn't have a replacement lined up for Ms Howard, as he had for Ms Boleyn?
That's one possibility.
But he also had irrefutable evidence against Howard, while he had to manufacture it against Boleyn. So it seems strange he didn't take advantage of it.
You have no problem with these sorts of dumbed down antics when it's the pop right doing it. Trump, Farage et al. Do they have exclusive rights to the joshing/trolling space or something?
Where does he imagine that it's leading? Does he think that "day 283 of Ed Davey asking to play video games with Keir Starmer" will capture the imagination of the nation?
Well you know me. I hate this sort of thing. But my point is it worked for him at the GE (73 seats says so) and he obviously thinks (rightly or wrongly) that it still does. If the non-populists can't go around behaving like dicks to counter similar from the populists you're making them fight with one arm tied behind their backs.
Ed Davey is a populist. He went into the election promising to increase public spending based on a vague idea to raise money by cracking down on tax avoidance.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
I see the 1950s have reentered the room.
A lot of things were better in the 1950s, change since has not all been for the good
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
"Sorry, kids, me and yer dad can't split up, even though we hate each other because some bloke called Jesus, who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago, wouldn't like it and the government don't like it very much, either, so we'll just stay together and make your life a misery until you're old enough to leave home" That's right?
We are going through a difficult time with my mother in law at the moment. She is 88 and has vascular dementia. She has been a widow for 11 years now and was an effective widow for some years before that as her husband had dementia too and she devoted her life to caring for him.
She takes 7 pills each morning and a blood thinner at night. She has medication for her blood pressure, for her heart, for her tendencies to retain excess liquid and statins. She is utterly miserable. She sees people who are not there. They sometimes frighten her. Despite my wife's enormous efforts and 2 carers she spends a lot of time alone talking to her photographs and apparently hearing them talking back. She is becoming ever more incontinent.
She has expressed, repeatedly, that she sees no point in her life, that she is a burden and that she gets very little pleasure from it. But, of course, she would not be eligible under this bill. We are spending quite a lot of money and medical care keeping her alive. Why? Why do we torture our elderly in this way?
Many sympathies. I think (backed up by the findings in the survey) that most people feel that adults in that sort of hopeless situation should be allowed to end their lives, though of course family should do all they can to give an alternative that offers some pleasure. The condition that the illness must be fatal seems to me to miss the point - I'd be keen (I think) to live as long as possible, but if I didn't then it seems intrusive to insist.
The problem of family pressure is a real one but relatively small - I think that most families are 99% sympathetic, and only to a negligible degree concerned with earlier inheritance. But of course the Bill needs proper precautions to deal with the rare exceptions.
MPs seem deeply divided on the issue, more so than the general public. At a crude level there's the question of losing votes over such a seminal issue, but I hope most people will accept that MPs are generally seriously wrestling with the details and it's inappropriate to threaten to withhold support over the issue.
It is the old person who is concerned about the inheritance.
If I were the old person in poor condition, mentally or physically, my life is in effect already over. Therefore my health needs would not come anywhere near the top of my needs except for pain relief.
Yet the system we have prioritises health needs at 100%.
My needs would be to stop being a burden to others, family and non-family, and for my wealth for which I am proud to be inherited as I wish. It would break my heart to think that my wealth would be drained away paying for care than I do not want.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I share your antipathy to ultrafeminism, and to woke's ambivalence to tge traditional family. But it's worth noting that this is a fringe position, albeit a disproportionately influential one; and it's also worth noting that a decline in birth rate also exists in much more traditional societies (such as East Asia).
My view is that decline in birth rates is simply a product of societies, however they are structured - individualist or collectivist, traditional or modern - having to divert an ever greater share of resources towards the over 65s, leaving less for the under 16s.
East Asia though is even less religious on average than Europe. While wokeism has not been as strong there as western Europe and North America and Oceania wokeism is certainly stronger in South Korea and Taiwan for example than the Middle East and South Asia
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
Good riddance to him then.
Divorce is not remotely easy, as your own story demonstrates.
And its consequences often negative, especially for the wife
You mus\t be so frustrated that the Married Women's Property Acts were repealed. So much simpler when the man got *everything* in his name.
(Unless the wife's family had expensive lawyers.)
That was about 100 years before no fault divorce
Not true. About 350 years *after*. You're forgetting Henry VIII. Definitely not his fault, no milord.
On a point of pedantry:
Henry VIII was never divorced.
He thrice declared his marriages annulled, which is not quite the same thing.
(It remains something of a mystery why he didn't declare his marriage to Catherine Howard annulled before her execution, as he did with Anne Boleyn, but he didn't.)
He didn't have a replacement lined up for Ms Howard, as he had for Ms Boleyn?
That's one possibility.
But he also had irrefutable evidence against Howard, while he had to manufacture it against Boleyn. So it seems strange he didn't take advantage of it.
Changing the law to make it treason not to disclose your sexual history to the king suggests the case against Howard was not a strong one.
Howard seems to have been molested from a very young age. Her life seems to have been a horror show.
We are going through a difficult time with my mother in law at the moment. She is 88 and has vascular dementia. She has been a widow for 11 years now and was an effective widow for some years before that as her husband had dementia too and she devoted her life to caring for him.
She takes 7 pills each morning and a blood thinner at night. She has medication for her blood pressure, for her heart, for her tendencies to retain excess liquid and statins. She is utterly miserable. She sees people who are not there. They sometimes frighten her. Despite my wife's enormous efforts and 2 carers she spends a lot of time alone talking to her photographs and apparently hearing them talking back. She is becoming ever more incontinent.
She has expressed, repeatedly, that she sees no point in her life, that she is a burden and that she gets very little pleasure from it. But, of course, she would not be eligible under this bill. We are spending quite a lot of money and medical care keeping her alive. Why? Why do we torture our elderly in this way?
Well said, and I'm so sorry for her situation.
Nobody should be forced against their will to live in misery like that.
This Bill is a good starting point but it does not remotely go far enough. The six month rule should be eliminated. I hope it gets amended out.
I think we should have the capacity to direct our future care now, when we are mentally competent. We can direct that we receive no medication other than pain relief, that in the event of us losing mental capacity we do not want to be revived, that if we become physically incompetent to care for ourselves that we should receive no more care than is necessary for us to become comfortable and, subject to appropriate safeguards, if we become mentally incompetent we are to be given a fatal dose of something painless.
I would sign such a document now, in a heart beat. I would not want to live the way my mother in law does. I think I should have the right to make these choices and for them to be binding on future medical practitioners. My critique of this bill is that it does not go nearly far enough and does not address our real problems. Perhaps it will be a trial where difficulties can be ironed out but in my earlier sixties I am impatient for this to be resolved. Looking at my mother in law with genuine affection and compassion is scary.
I'm not sure I would sign it but I nevertheless agree with you. It should be an option. I hope we do get an AD bill passed this parliament and I think we will. With an aging population, the prevalence of dementia, and our ability to prolong life beyond a point where it has any pleasure or meaning, I sense this is something whose time has come.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
We are going through a difficult time with my mother in law at the moment. She is 88 and has vascular dementia. She has been a widow for 11 years now and was an effective widow for some years before that as her husband had dementia too and she devoted her life to caring for him.
She takes 7 pills each morning and a blood thinner at night. She has medication for her blood pressure, for her heart, for her tendencies to retain excess liquid and statins. She is utterly miserable. She sees people who are not there. They sometimes frighten her. Despite my wife's enormous efforts and 2 carers she spends a lot of time alone talking to her photographs and apparently hearing them talking back. She is becoming ever more incontinent.
She has expressed, repeatedly, that she sees no point in her life, that she is a burden and that she gets very little pleasure from it. But, of course, she would not be eligible under this bill. We are spending quite a lot of money and medical care keeping her alive. Why? Why do we torture our elderly in this way?
Well said, and I'm so sorry for her situation.
Nobody should be forced against their will to live in misery like that.
This Bill is a good starting point but it does not remotely go far enough. The six month rule should be eliminated. I hope it gets amended out.
If it gets amended out then the bill wont pass I strongly suspect.
As it is I can't see this passing now. Not when the f*cking Justice Sec has started saying the law wont work and isn't tight enough etc etc.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
I see the 1950s have reentered the room.
A lot of things were better in the 1950s, change since has not all been for the good
Can we have 1950s tax rates, please?
Sure, as long as you are happy with 1950s levels of public service and expenditure.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni to power in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I probably know more "ultra woke, uber feminists" than you. You'd probably classify Mrs J as one.
But I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. It's male dinosaurs such as yourself that feed wokeism and feminism, by treating women and others as inferior for *reasons*. And I hate to tell you this; things are not perfect now; but they were far worse in the past that you seem to revere.
"not enough women are producing children in a traditional family"
That's because, for many men, a "traditional family" subjugates women. And from your comments, I guess you have the same view. Too many men see a "traditional family" as being one where they are in control. I think the successful families, then and now, are ones where control is shared. But some women, and many, many men, are not ready for that.
(And Walz was not childless?)
No it is ultra woke left liberals like you and your wife pushing your agenda who have led to the conservative backlash led by the victories of Trump and Meloni.
You thought you had won the culture war completely, no the traditional right backlash to your agenda has just begun.
I never said Woke was childless even if Harris was, he was just as woke as her though maybe more so
"than woke childless Harris and Walz." sorta indicated that.
If you think I am an "ultra woke left liberal", then you are so far up your own backside that I'm surprised you cannot lick your own tonsils.
I want people to be treated as well as possible, and that incudes women and minorities. I'd have thought your 'Christianity' would be in agreement with that.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
"Sorry, kids, me and yer dad can't split up, even though we hate each other because some bloke called Jesus, who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago, wouldn't like it and the government don't like it very much, either, so we'll just stay together and make your life a misery until you're old enough to leave home" That's right?
"Wait up, I've found a loophole. I'll just go and shag her next door then we're sorted."
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
I'm one of the (few?) PBers who have married twice since I started posting on PB.com, avoiding bigamy with a divorce in the middle.
I think that an important part of the value of a marriage is the mutual commitment that a couple makes to each other, so I'm inclined to encouraging people to stick to their word, but we also have to be willing to admit when circumstances have changed or a mistake has been made.
When my daughter was about ten, and my second wife-to-be had been living with us for a few years, my daughter said that she really liked how we didn't argue with each other, because there'd been a lot of arguing between me and her mother.
More years of unhappy arguing would have been a terrible thing for our daughter, hard as it was for her parents to be divorced.
You have no problem with these sorts of dumbed down antics when it's the pop right doing it. Trump, Farage et al. Do they have exclusive rights to the joshing/trolling space or something?
I don’t think anyone had a strong objection to Ed Davey twatting about in ponds during the election campaign. It's the fact that he seems to think opposing what has now turned out to be the least liberal Government in living history is best acheived by a chummy gaming session that now looks somewhat stale.
I think Ed is the best judge of that. Let's not box him in.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
Reflecting on their lives with the experience of age I wonder if it would have been better for my sister and myself if my parents had divorced.
Sometimes, there’s no choice, but to divorce. Staying together can be a miserable experience for the whole family.
But, I don’t think that @HYUFD’s argument is without merit. In my experience, some divorces are done for reasons that are frivolous or selfish - eg a man wants to trade his wife in for a younger model, leaving her with the children; or a woman resents being married to a man who earns less than she does.
On the trading in the wife. When I lived in Hampstead, the amount of exercise the ladies-who-lunch put in…. The desperate race against the younger women. Ghastly.
One woman broke down in tears to my girlfriend. Her husband was about to be made a partner in his law firm. Big money time…. And she was scared by meeting the other wives at that level - she wasn’t a trophy enough, she felt.
We are going through a difficult time with my mother in law at the moment. She is 88 and has vascular dementia. She has been a widow for 11 years now and was an effective widow for some years before that as her husband had dementia too and she devoted her life to caring for him.
She takes 7 pills each morning and a blood thinner at night. She has medication for her blood pressure, for her heart, for her tendencies to retain excess liquid and statins. She is utterly miserable. She sees people who are not there. They sometimes frighten her. Despite my wife's enormous efforts and 2 carers she spends a lot of time alone talking to her photographs and apparently hearing them talking back. She is becoming ever more incontinent.
She has expressed, repeatedly, that she sees no point in her life, that she is a burden and that she gets very little pleasure from it. But, of course, she would not be eligible under this bill. We are spending quite a lot of money and medical care keeping her alive. Why? Why do we torture our elderly in this way?
Well said, and I'm so sorry for her situation.
Nobody should be forced against their will to live in misery like that.
This Bill is a good starting point but it does not remotely go far enough. The six month rule should be eliminated. I hope it gets amended out.
I think we should have the capacity to direct our future care now, when we are mentally competent. We can direct that we receive no medication other than pain relief, that in the event of us losing mental capacity we do not want to be revived, that if we become physically incompetent to care for ourselves that we should receive no more care than is necessary for us to become comfortable and, subject to appropriate safeguards, if we become mentally incompetent we are to be given a fatal dose of something painless.
I would sign such a document now, in a heart beat. I would not want to live the way my mother in law does. I think I should have the right to make these choices and for them to be binding on future medical practitioners. My critique of this bill is that it does not go nearly far enough and does not address our real problems. Perhaps it will be a trial where difficulties can be ironed out but in my earlier sixties I am impatient for this to be resolved. Looking at my mother in law with genuine affection and compassion is scary.
100% agreed.
This Bill, or one you propose, is sadly too little too late for the likes of your mother. However your proposal is one I completely support and I too would sign such a living will in a heartbeat.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni to power in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I probably know more "ultra woke, uber feminists" than you. You'd probably classify Mrs J as one.
But I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. It's male dinosaurs such as yourself that feed wokeism and feminism, by treating women and others as inferior for *reasons*. And I hate to tell you this; things are not perfect now; but they were far worse in the past that you seem to revere.
"not enough women are producing children in a traditional family"
That's because, for many men, a "traditional family" subjugates women. And from your comments, I guess you have the same view. Too many men see a "traditional family" as being one where they are in control. I think the successful families, then and now, are ones where control is shared. But some women, and many, many men, are not ready for that.
(And Walz was not childless?)
No it is ultra woke left liberals like you and your wife pushing your agenda who have led to the conservative backlash led by the victories of Trump and Meloni.
You thought you had won the culture war completely, no the traditional right backlash to your agenda has just begun.
I never said Woke was childless even if Harris was, he was just as woke as her though maybe more so
"than woke childless Harris and Walz." sorta indicated that.
If you think I am an "ultra woke left liberal", then you are so far up your own backside that I'm surprised you cannot lick your own tonsils.
I want people to be treated as well as possible, and that incudes women and minorities. I'd have thought your 'Christianity' would be in agreement with that.
Biblical Christianity does not support same sex marriage or no fault divorce even if it may be more welcoming of refugees
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What on earth are you talking about
You havent a clue about the real world
In some nations and amongst some communities arranged marriages by parents are still the norm, they may have always been loveless, other marriages aren't
Don't be a fool.
The question is not whether a marriages was always loveless.
The problem is those marriages that have become loveless.
They generally don't become loveless, just couples don't work through their problems enough and expect marriage to be a perfect utopia all the time which it isn't, it requires effort from both partners
I'd advise reading the relationship threads on mumsnet. There are a lot of men not willing to work through their problems at all.
@Casino_Royale thanks for any interesting post on defence in the previous theread. I strongly agree with you in principle - we need to decide what defence capability we need, and work back from there.
With regard to your detail, I don't pretend to be an expert, but my instinct is to err strongly on the side of investing in defending our islands, then naval power, and not on troops. Every single time we get involved in a large scale boots on the ground operation, we suffer, from the Wars of the Spanish Succession, through WW1, to Iraq. I am sick of it. It is much better that where we project power at all, it should be naval force, with drones and a small amount of marines where necessary.
Therefore your calculations on soldiers look too much to me. Where there are soldiers, there will be some ***t in Downing Street wanting to commit them to some conflict to look big in front of his mates.
I would prioritise missile defence, and I would also like the ability to fire torpedos from under the sea from multiple locations around the UK at anyone who threatens us.
Afaik, current military procurement is itself in the hands of an American company. That's no way to organise national defence - it's a sop to the US military industrial complex. They need to be sacked and probably the rest of the MOD with them, before anything good can come about.
Fair enough. I think we do need to be able to deploy a corps because we have several very large and powerful strategic adversaries who might credibly threaten us and our allies, who we will need to work in concert with if they ever do, but your position isn't an entirely unreasonable one.
I am much more pro-American and anti-Russian than you, but that's OK too.
We are going through a difficult time with my mother in law at the moment. She is 88 and has vascular dementia. She has been a widow for 11 years now and was an effective widow for some years before that as her husband had dementia too and she devoted her life to caring for him.
She takes 7 pills each morning and a blood thinner at night. She has medication for her blood pressure, for her heart, for her tendencies to retain excess liquid and statins. She is utterly miserable. She sees people who are not there. They sometimes frighten her. Despite my wife's enormous efforts and 2 carers she spends a lot of time alone talking to her photographs and apparently hearing them talking back. She is becoming ever more incontinent.
She has expressed, repeatedly, that she sees no point in her life, that she is a burden and that she gets very little pleasure from it. But, of course, she would not be eligible under this bill. We are spending quite a lot of money and medical care keeping her alive. Why? Why do we torture our elderly in this way?
Well said, and I'm so sorry for her situation.
Nobody should be forced against their will to live in misery like that.
This Bill is a good starting point but it does not remotely go far enough. The six month rule should be eliminated. I hope it gets amended out.
If it gets amended out then the bill wont pass I strongly suspect.
As it is I can't see this passing now. Not when the f*cking Justice Sec has started saying the law wont work and isn't tight enough etc etc.
What a farce.
Our MPs are not fit for purpose.
This Bill is draconianly tight.
Elected MPs don't agree with my uber liberal agenda and are thus not fit for purpose shock
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
It's not exactly easy. I'm going through an agreed divorce after 24 years of marriage with no dispute about anything and no children but some uncertainty about what a fair division is, and it's coming to an end after two years of solicitors saying "We need to do X to avoid a possible rejection by the court". Since neither of us have been divorced before, it's been difficult to impossible to judge which risks were well-founded. In retrospect I suspect we'd have been better-advised to go straight to court with minimal involvement of solicitors, but I really don't know.
I do sympathise with your father's problems but sadly I don't think that hanging on to the marriage at all costs is likely to have been a good alternative. We only have one life.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni to power in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I probably know more "ultra woke, uber feminists" than you. You'd probably classify Mrs J as one.
But I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. It's male dinosaurs such as yourself that feed wokeism and feminism, by treating women and others as inferior for *reasons*. And I hate to tell you this; things are not perfect now; but they were far worse in the past that you seem to revere.
"not enough women are producing children in a traditional family"
That's because, for many men, a "traditional family" subjugates women. And from your comments, I guess you have the same view. Too many men see a "traditional family" as being one where they are in control. I think the successful families, then and now, are ones where control is shared. But some women, and many, many men, are not ready for that.
(And Walz was not childless?)
I was in a car with a couple of 20 year old girls the other day and they were fuming at Emmeline Pankhurst 'deciding we shouldn't be housewives any more - how dare she?' it wasn't said entirely seriously but it was an interesting and amusing perspective.
I hope you informed them that Pankhurst was about a tad more than that...
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
"Sorry, kids, me and yer dad can't split up, even though we hate each other because some bloke called Jesus, who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago, wouldn't like it and the government don't like it very much, either, so we'll just stay together and make your life a misery until you're old enough to leave home" That's right?
If you clearly hated each other you would never have married in the first place. Most kids want both their parents at home with them
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
Good riddance to him then.
Divorce is not remotely easy, as your own story demonstrates.
And its consequences often negative, especially for the wife
You mus\t be so frustrated that the Married Women's Property Acts were repealed. So much simpler when the man got *everything* in his name.
(Unless the wife's family had expensive lawyers.)
That was about 100 years before no fault divorce
Not true. About 350 years *after*. You're forgetting Henry VIII. Definitely not his fault, no milord.
On a point of pedantry:
Henry VIII was never divorced.
He thrice declared his marriages annulled, which is not quite the same thing.
(It remains something of a mystery why he didn't declare his marriage to Catherine Howard annulled before her execution, as he did with Anne Boleyn, but he didn't.)
He didn't have a replacement lined up for Ms Howard, as he had for Ms Boleyn?
That's one possibility.
But he also had irrefutable evidence against Howard, while he had to manufacture it against Boleyn. So it seems strange he didn't take advantage of it.
Changing the law to make it treason not to disclose your sexual history to the king suggests the case against Howard was not a strong one.
Howard seems to have been molested from a very young age. Her life seems to have been a horror show.
I know it's not entirely historical/a documentary, but I recently saw Six and it definitely left me feeling very sorry for Howard.
@Casino_Royale thanks for any interesting post on defence in the previous theread. I strongly agree with you in principle - we need to decide what defence capability we need, and work back from there.
With regard to your detail, I don't pretend to be an expert, but my instinct is to err strongly on the side of investing in defending our islands, then naval power, and not on troops. Every single time we get involved in a large scale boots on the ground operation, we suffer, from the Wars of the Spanish Succession, through WW1, to Iraq. I am sick of it. It is much better that where we project power at all, it should be naval force, with drones and a small amount of marines where necessary.
Therefore your calculations on soldiers look too much to me. Where there are soldiers, there will be some ***t in Downing Street wanting to commit them to some conflict to look big in front of his mates.
I would prioritise missile defence, and I would also like the ability to fire torpedos from under the sea from multiple locations around the UK at anyone who threatens us.
Afaik, current military procurement is itself in the hands of an American company. That's no way to organise national defence - it's a sop to the US military industrial complex. They need to be sacked and probably the rest of the MOD with them, before anything good can come about.
Fair enough. I think we do need to be able to deploy a corps because we have several very large and powerful strategic adversaries who might credibly threaten us and our allies, who we will need to work in concert with if they ever do, but your position isn't an entirely unreasonable one.
I am much more pro-American and anti-Russian than you, but that's OK too.
Perhaps the optimal solution lies somewhere in between.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni to power in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I probably know more "ultra woke, uber feminists" than you. You'd probably classify Mrs J as one.
But I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. It's male dinosaurs such as yourself that feed wokeism and feminism, by treating women and others as inferior for *reasons*. And I hate to tell you this; things are not perfect now; but they were far worse in the past that you seem to revere.
"not enough women are producing children in a traditional family"
That's because, for many men, a "traditional family" subjugates women. And from your comments, I guess you have the same view. Too many men see a "traditional family" as being one where they are in control. I think the successful families, then and now, are ones where control is shared. But some women, and many, many men, are not ready for that.
(And Walz was not childless?)
No it is ultra woke left liberals like you and your wife pushing your agenda who have led to the conservative backlash led by the victories of Trump and Meloni.
You thought you had won the culture war completely, no the traditional right backlash to your agenda has just begun.
I never said Woke was childless even if Harris was, he was just as woke as her though maybe more so
"than woke childless Harris and Walz." sorta indicated that.
If you think I am an "ultra woke left liberal", then you are so far up your own backside that I'm surprised you cannot lick your own tonsils.
I want people to be treated as well as possible, and that incudes women and minorities. I'd have thought your 'Christianity' would be in agreement with that.
Biblical Christianity does not support same sex marriage or no fault divorce even if it may be more welcoming of refugees
We were not talking about same-sex marriage. But thanks for showing your bigotry.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
I see the 1950s have reentered the room.
A lot of things were better in the 1950s, change since has not all been for the good
Can we have 1950s tax rates, please?
Late 1980s low tax rates and public spending levels but 1950s social values with more grammar schools as there were back then would be most traditional rightwingers wet dream
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
Interesting lack of balance from the BBC in the reporting too.
A lot of views from people saying it's not enough money.
No views from anyone suggesting it is a waste of money, or that it could be better spent elsewhere, or that much of the money sent in aid could be swallowed up by corruption and not serve its intended purpose.
Entirely one slanted criticism.
They wanted over 1 trillion dollars yearly
Equals the US military budget.
Which does far more to keep the planet safe, healthy and alive.
We all dine off the US military budget.
We massively underestimate and take for granted how much its hard power keeps us safe.
Under my proposals I think France (40k), UK (40k), Germany (25k) and Poland (75k) could form a European defensive alliance that could deploy, with other nations like Italy, Spain and the Baltic and Scandi States, a high kinetic and high technology allied army of a quarter of a million on the Central European Plain _without_ any help from the USA.
That would keep us safe in perpetuity against any conceivable conventional threat. But we'd have to pay for it.
Oh absolutely.
In the wake of the Trump speech about NATO contributions, we were discussing it here.
A couple of posters took the position of “do you want a heavily armed Germany?”
I pointed out (and realised the commenters were too young to remember) that, up to the 90s, West Germany used to have the largest tank park in Europe. And an airforce to match. No worries about Austrian immigrant street artists, either.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
What would the impact have been if they had stayed together and argued all the time? You may be able to guess, but you don't know.
Like many 'religious' people, you just want other people to undergo misery so your view of morality is not threatened.
The traditional family is the backbone of civilisation and the nation state, ultra feminism and wokeism has been focused on undermining it at every turn and the result is our dreadfully low 1.4 fertility rate now. Children with strong families behind them also do better at school and are less likely to fall into crime.
Ultra liberal obsession with short term me first 'happyness' leads to long term misery for society all too frequently
I agree that a strong family life is important. But not if that family life is corrosive, as it all too often is. It is the only way to live, and that people cannot be happy, thriving and good members of society as single parents, or divorced.
I'd argue "ultra feminism" has arisen due to the actions of men like you, who seem to want women to stay at home, be miserable, and pump out loads of kids. In other words, slaves.
(I'd also argue that there's a much bigger issue than divorce: the fact people many live away from their extended families. In ye olden days, men would often die or be absent due to disease, accident or war, leaving the women to care for their kids. But those women more often lived near extended family who would have with the child rearing and general life. That's less common nowadays, and I would strongly argue that people who want to increase the 'fertility rate' might better look at helping everyone raise children than coercing women into having kids they don't want. Which would mean much more money going to state-funded nurseries and childcare.)
The ultra woke, uber feminists however just hate the whole concept of the traditional family as a concept. Now Vance may have been criticised for his 'childless cat ladies' comments and saying not enough women are producing children in a traditional family but in the privacy of the ballot box more Americans voted for him and Trump than woke childless Harris and Walz.
The rise of Meloni to power in Italy, pushing more funding and support for mothers is similarly the start of a backlash against the woke anti family agenda
I probably know more "ultra woke, uber feminists" than you. You'd probably classify Mrs J as one.
But I think you're getting cause and effect mixed up. It's male dinosaurs such as yourself that feed wokeism and feminism, by treating women and others as inferior for *reasons*. And I hate to tell you this; things are not perfect now; but they were far worse in the past that you seem to revere.
"not enough women are producing children in a traditional family"
That's because, for many men, a "traditional family" subjugates women. And from your comments, I guess you have the same view. Too many men see a "traditional family" as being one where they are in control. I think the successful families, then and now, are ones where control is shared. But some women, and many, many men, are not ready for that.
(And Walz was not childless?)
I was in a car with a couple of 20 year old girls the other day and they were fuming at Emmeline Pankhurst 'deciding we shouldn't be housewives any more - how dare she?' it wasn't said entirely seriously but it was an interesting and amusing perspective.
I hope you informed them that Pankhurst was about a tad more than that...
I am delighted to say that I didn't.
So you're willing to come on here and spread Putin's lies about MH17 and Ukrainian biolabs, but were too timid to tell some mistaken young women about how they gained their right to vote?
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
Good riddance to him then.
Divorce is not remotely easy, as your own story demonstrates.
And its consequences often negative, especially for the wife
You mus\t be so frustrated that the Married Women's Property Acts were repealed. So much simpler when the man got *everything* in his name.
(Unless the wife's family had expensive lawyers.)
That was about 100 years before no fault divorce
Not true. About 350 years *after*. You're forgetting Henry VIII. Definitely not his fault, no milord.
On a point of pedantry:
Henry VIII was never divorced.
He thrice declared his marriages annulled, which is not quite the same thing.
(It remains something of a mystery why he didn't declare his marriage to Catherine Howard annulled before her execution, as he did with Anne Boleyn, but he didn't.)
He didn't have a replacement lined up for Ms Howard, as he had for Ms Boleyn?
That's one possibility.
But he also had irrefutable evidence against Howard, while he had to manufacture it against Boleyn. So it seems strange he didn't take advantage of it.
Changing the law to make it treason not to disclose your sexual history to the king suggests the case against Howard was not a strong one.
Howard seems to have been molested from a very young age. Her life seems to have been a horror show.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
Shabana Mahmood is against it and has cited her faith.
I don’t see why religious conviction causing an objection should be an issue.
She and others should stick their religion up their arses. If she does not want it fine, the clown should not be forcing her religious beliefs on the rest of the nation
Forcing one’s beliefs on the rest of the nation is exactly what politicians of all stripes do.
We vote for them based on their policy platforms. God botherers we don’t.
Shabana Mahmood was elected by the voters of her constituency. She got 42.5% in 2024, not quite a majority but a good performance under FPTP.
The only God botherers who get to force their beliefs on the nation are the unelected Bishops in the Lords.
The entire Lords is unelected and the Bishops are less than 5% of them
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
Shabana Mahmood is against it and has cited her faith.
I don’t see why religious conviction causing an objection should be an issue.
She and others should stick their religion up their arses. If she does not want it fine, the clown should not be forcing her religious beliefs on the rest of the nation
Forcing one’s beliefs on the rest of the nation is exactly what politicians of all stripes do.
We vote for them based on their policy platforms. God botherers we don’t.
Shabana Mahmood was elected by the voters of her constituency. She got 42.5% in 2024, not quite a majority but a good performance under FPTP.
The only God botherers who get to force their beliefs on the nation are the unelected Bishops in the Lords.
The entire Lords is unelected and the Bishops are less than 5% of them
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
Shabana Mahmood is against it and has cited her faith.
I don’t see why religious conviction causing an objection should be an issue.
She and others should stick their religion up their arses. If she does not want it fine, the clown should not be forcing her religious beliefs on the rest of the nation
Forcing one’s beliefs on the rest of the nation is exactly what politicians of all stripes do.
We vote for them based on their policy platforms. God botherers we don’t.
Shabana Mahmood was elected by the voters of her constituency. She got 42.5% in 2024, not quite a majority but a good performance under FPTP.
The only God botherers who get to force their beliefs on the nation are the unelected Bishops in the Lords.
The entire Lords is unelected and the Bishops are less than 5% of them
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
"Sorry, kids, me and yer dad can't split up, even though we hate each other because some bloke called Jesus, who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago, wouldn't like it and the government don't like it very much, either, so we'll just stay together and make your life a misery until you're old enough to leave home" That's right?
If you clearly hated each other you would never have married in the first place. Most kids want both their parents at home with them
Flipping heck. There's no arguing with you, is there?
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
The ancient world drew little distinction between combatants and non-combatants, save that young women and children were often sold as slaves, rather than executed. The ancients generally would talk of fighting peoples “the Carthaginians”, “the Athenians” rather than States or kings. That was justification to carry out genocide of the defeated.
The Medievals even had a term for that kind of warfare, BellumRomanum, which was recognised as departing from the norms of war.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
It's not exactly easy. I'm going through an agreed divorce after 24 years of marriage with no dispute about anything and no children but some uncertainty about what a fair division is, and it's coming to an end after two years of solicitors saying "We need to do X to avoid a possible rejection by the court". Since neither of us have been divorced before, it's been difficult to impossible to judge which risks were well-founded. In retrospect I suspect we'd have been better-advised to go straight to court with minimal involvement of solicitors, but I really don't know.
I do sympathise with your father's problems but sadly I don't think that hanging on to the marriage at all costs is likely to have been a good alternative. We only have one life.
I am not going to comment on your circumstances beyond the fact you had your reasons but generally unless adultery or domestic violence involved most couples are better staying married where possible.
I also don't believe we only have one life, as a Christian I believe in the possibility of eternal life after death anyway
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
Shabana Mahmood is against it and has cited her faith.
I don’t see why religious conviction causing an objection should be an issue.
She and others should stick their religion up their arses. If she does not want it fine, the clown should not be forcing her religious beliefs on the rest of the nation
Forcing one’s beliefs on the rest of the nation is exactly what politicians of all stripes do.
We vote for them based on their policy platforms. God botherers we don’t.
Shabana Mahmood was elected by the voters of her constituency. She got 42.5% in 2024, not quite a majority but a good performance under FPTP.
The only God botherers who get to force their beliefs on the nation are the unelected Bishops in the Lords.
The entire Lords is unelected and the Bishops are less than 5% of them
Not true.
Some Lords are elected.
Just a shame about the *electorate*.
The remaining hereditaries were elected yes but the Labour government in its unwisdom decided to get rid of them meaning the entire upper house is not elected now by anyone once they leave
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What on earth are you talking about
You havent a clue about the real world
In some nations and amongst some communities arranged marriages by parents are still the norm, they may have always been loveless, other marriages aren't
Don't be a fool.
The question is not whether a marriages was always loveless.
The problem is those marriages that have become loveless.
They generally don't become loveless, just couples don't work through their problems enough and expect marriage to be a perfect utopia all the time which it isn't, it requires effort from both partners
I'd advise reading the relationship threads on mumsnet. There are a lot of men not willing to work through their problems at all.
Selfish men are also a problem, not just uber feminist women
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
I see the 1950s have reentered the room.
A lot of things were better in the 1950s, change since has not all been for the good
Can we have 1950s tax rates, please?
Late 1980s low tax rates and public spending levels but 1950s social values with more grammar schools as there were back then would be most traditional rightwingers wet dream
I lived through the 1950s including with ration books and any idea that those days were a halcyon period is utter nonsense especially compared to what we enjoy today
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than Biblical support for no fault divorce
@Casino_Royale thanks for any interesting post on defence in the previous theread. I strongly agree with you in principle - we need to decide what defence capability we need, and work back from there.
With regard to your detail, I don't pretend to be an expert, but my instinct is to err strongly on the side of investing in defending our islands, then naval power, and not on troops. Every single time we get involved in a large scale boots on the ground operation, we suffer, from the Wars of the Spanish Succession, through WW1, to Iraq. I am sick of it. It is much better that where we project power at all, it should be naval force, with drones and a small amount of marines where necessary.
Therefore your calculations on soldiers look too much to me. Where there are soldiers, there will be some ***t in Downing Street wanting to commit them to some conflict to look big in front of his mates.
I would prioritise missile defence, and I would also like the ability to fire torpedos from under the sea from multiple locations around the UK at anyone who threatens us.
Afaik, current military procurement is itself in the hands of an American company. That's no way to organise national defence - it's a sop to the US military industrial complex. They need to be sacked and probably the rest of the MOD with them, before anything good can come about.
Fair enough. I think we do need to be able to deploy a corps because we have several very large and powerful strategic adversaries who might credibly threaten us and our allies, who we will need to work in concert with if they ever do, but your position isn't an entirely unreasonable one.
I am much more pro-American and anti-Russian than you, but that's OK too.
Perhaps the optimal solution lies somewhere in between.
One suggestion, to prevent expeditionary warfare, is to not invest in expeditionary warfare capability.
Germany did this, post war. They ended up with a huge army that couldn’t go anywhere the locals didn’t actually invite them in and support them.
The U.K. version would be a huge artillery and tank park, a navy configured for anti-submarine warfare, and airspace denial (keep the sea lanes open), no landing ships, very little airlift capability.
One upside is that we could get rid of the silly attempts to make tanks that can be flown on planes.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
I see the 1950s have reentered the room.
A lot of things were better in the 1950s, change since has not all been for the good
Can we have 1950s tax rates, please?
Sure, as long as you are happy with 1950s levels of public service and expenditure.
I would be happy with 1950s levels of public transport, nationalised utilities not being asset stripped by foreign shareholders, and effective national defence.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than support for no fault divorce
Indeed.
Which is why thank goodness we do not live in a Christian society, but instead an enlightened one.
The enlightenment and the end of religion dominating politics was the best thing that happened to the world, other than the industrial revolution.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
"Sorry, kids, me and yer dad can't split up, even though we hate each other because some bloke called Jesus, who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago, wouldn't like it and the government don't like it very much, either, so we'll just stay together and make your life a misery until you're old enough to leave home" That's right?
If you clearly hated each other you would never have married in the first place. Most kids want both their parents at home with them
Flipping heck. There's no arguing with you, is there?
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
It's not exactly easy. I'm going through an agreed divorce after 24 years of marriage with no dispute about anything and no children but some uncertainty about what a fair division is, and it's coming to an end after two years of solicitors saying "We need to do X to avoid a possible rejection by the court". Since neither of us have been divorced before, it's been difficult to impossible to judge which risks were well-founded. In retrospect I suspect we'd have been better-advised to go straight to court with minimal involvement of solicitors, but I really don't know.
I do sympathise with your father's problems but sadly I don't think that hanging on to the marriage at all costs is likely to have been a good alternative. We only have one life.
I'm sorry to hear about that Nick.
A dear friend of ours got divorced after a short marriage that just had not worked. There was no particular fault on either side; they were just unsuited. And they had been 'courting' for years before the marriage, so knew each other well. They had no kids and no house, and no substantial joint holdings. As far as I am aware, neither cheated. They both worked (in different cities, which I doubt helped the situation).
It should have been the simplest of divorces, but lawyers really seemed to unduly complicate matters and draw them out over far too long a period of time. And my impression was that much of the delay was between the solicitors, to their fiscal advantage.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
Shabana Mahmood is against it and has cited her faith.
I don’t see why religious conviction causing an objection should be an issue.
She and others should stick their religion up their arses. If she does not want it fine, the clown should not be forcing her religious beliefs on the rest of the nation
Forcing one’s beliefs on the rest of the nation is exactly what politicians of all stripes do.
We vote for them based on their policy platforms. God botherers we don’t.
Shabana Mahmood was elected by the voters of her constituency. She got 42.5% in 2024, not quite a majority but a good performance under FPTP.
The only God botherers who get to force their beliefs on the nation are the unelected Bishops in the Lords.
The entire Lords is unelected and the Bishops are less than 5% of them
Not true.
Some Lords are elected.
Just a shame about the *electorate*.
The remaining hereditaries were elected yes but the Labour government in its unwisdom decided to get rid of them meaning the entire upper house is not elected now by anyone once they leave
Doesn't change the fact you made a completely wrong assertion *on a UK politics site*. Doesn't give much confidence in the reliability of your argument.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
Good riddance to him then.
Divorce is not remotely easy, as your own story demonstrates.
And its consequences often negative, especially for the wife
You mus\t be so frustrated that the Married Women's Property Acts were repealed. So much simpler when the man got *everything* in his name.
(Unless the wife's family had expensive lawyers.)
That was about 100 years before no fault divorce
Not true. About 350 years *after*. You're forgetting Henry VIII. Definitely not his fault, no milord.
On a point of pedantry:
Henry VIII was never divorced.
He thrice declared his marriages annulled, which is not quite the same thing.
(It remains something of a mystery why he didn't declare his marriage to Catherine Howard annulled before her execution, as he did with Anne Boleyn, but he didn't.)
He didn't have a replacement lined up for Ms Howard, as he had for Ms Boleyn?
That's one possibility.
But he also had irrefutable evidence against Howard, while he had to manufacture it against Boleyn. So it seems strange he didn't take advantage of it.
Changing the law to make it treason not to disclose your sexual history to the king suggests the case against Howard was not a strong one.
Howard seems to have been molested from a very young age. Her life seems to have been a horror show.
I know it's not entirely historical/a documentary, but I recently saw Six and it definitely left me feeling very sorry for Howard.
Some people just get dealt an appalling hand in life and she was one
A sexually abused girl, forced to marry a gross, stinking, old pervert, who had her beheaded.
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
Anyone who commits the UK to an annual share of 300 billion dollars needs to explain how much our share is and how it is paid
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
I see the 1950s have reentered the room.
A lot of things were better in the 1950s, change since has not all been for the good
Can we have 1950s tax rates, please?
Sure, as long as you are happy with 1950s levels of public service and expenditure.
I would be happy with 1950s levels of public transport, nationalised utilities not being asset stripped by foreign shareholders, and effective national defence.
So you want rail passenger transportation numbers to be cut by approximately 50%?
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than support for no fault divorce
Indeed.
Which is why thank goodness we do not live in a Christian society, but instead an enlightened one.
The enlightenment and the end of religion dominating politics was the best thing that happened to the world, other than the industrial revolution.
Though other, non-Christian religions could do with an enlightenment of their own.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What on earth are you talking about
You havent a clue about the real world
In some nations and amongst some communities arranged marriages by parents are still the norm, they may have always been loveless, other marriages aren't
Don't be a fool.
The question is not whether a marriages was always loveless.
The problem is those marriages that have become loveless.
They generally don't become loveless, just couples don't work through their problems enough and expect marriage to be a perfect utopia all the time which it isn't, it requires effort from both partners
I'd advise reading the relationship threads on mumsnet. There are a lot of men not willing to work through their problems at all.
Selfish men are also a problem, not just uber feminist women
I would say the modern problem is mutual.
At my rowing club, us old blokes look at each other and roll our eyes over the sorrows of the young. As expressed in the pub. If I have to listen to another saga of “He seemed alright…”
The basic problem seems to be not spending time with a mix of other people, outside a rather forced dating environment. If you meet other people as people, first….
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
Anyone who commits the UK to an annual share of 300 billion dollars needs to explain how much our share is and how it is paid
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
Since we have agreed that if others don't pay their share that we will make up the difference (and Trump has already said the USA won't), then it absolutely is the concern of UK taxpayers.
Starmer isn't just signing us up to pay the UK's share, but to contribute to America's share too.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than support for no fault divorce
Indeed.
Which is why thank goodness we do not live in a Christian society, but instead an enlightened one.
The enlightenment and the end of religion dominating politics was the best thing that happened to the world, other than the industrial revolution.
Ultra wokeism is going beyond the enlightenment to actively reject Christian values of society, hence declining fertility rates and the decline of the nuclear family in most of the Western world.
Galatians says re slavery though 'But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. b 6Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, c Father.” 7So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.'
Ephesians also says '7 Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 8 Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free.
9 Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.' https://biblia.com/bible/nlt/ephesians/6/7-9
As for the industrial revolution, ultra wokeists also often reject that too as leading to climate change, hence they want to end all fossil fuel usage now
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
I wonder if some countries will get to the point where they tax childless women unless they can show medical cause, together with banning abortion and contraception?
A bit like the reverse of the China one-child policy. Ceaușescu did this and it did raise the birth rate, although it also led to the horror of the Romanian Orphanages.
Isn't that exactly what we are seeing in Trumpistan?
Yes, to some extent. But are they restricting contraception and taxing childlessness?
I expect the most extreme policies on this to be outside the West. But we won't hear much criticism of that due to cultural relativism.
During Trump’s first term, they introduced exemptions from the ACA for contraception, making it harder to afford contraception. Of course, there was also the reversal of Roe v Wade. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas said they should also reverse Griswold, the ruling that stopped a state ban on contraception.
On the campaign trail, Trump said they were “looking at” restrictions on contraception, but the campaign then walked back those comments. Project 2025 want to limit access to contraceptives. Trump supporters said Trump didn’t have anything to do with Project 2025, but of course a whole bunch of Project 2025 people are now being appointed by Trump.
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
Anyone who commits the UK to an annual share of 300 billion dollars needs to explain how much our share is and how it is paid
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
Since we have agreed that if others don't pay their share that we will make up the difference (and Trump has already said the USA won't), then it absolutely is the concern of UK taxpayers.
Starmer isn't just signing us up to pay the UK's share, but to contribute to America's share too.
It’s appallingly careless for a lawyer to fail to read the small print.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than support for no fault divorce
Indeed.
Which is why thank goodness we do not live in a Christian society, but instead an enlightened one.
The enlightenment and the end of religion dominating politics was the best thing that happened to the world, other than the industrial revolution.
There's an argument we live in a more christian society than we acknowledge.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
"Sorry, kids, me and yer dad can't split up, even though we hate each other because some bloke called Jesus, who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago, wouldn't like it and the government don't like it very much, either, so we'll just stay together and make your life a misery until you're old enough to leave home" That's right?
I am a liberal on divorce, but even so I can spot the polemical distortion here. The general ban on divorce (still upheld in a sort of way by the Roman catholics) does not of itself compel cohabitation or forbid separation. To this day (unless my law is out of date) people can still opt for 'judicial separation' rather than divorce.
FWIW St Paul fairly clearly acknowledges separation of the married as a reality.
Finally, the likelihood is that Jesus in banning divorce was addressing the disparity of the old law in which it was easy for men and hard for women. Despite those who are good at spotting the odd countervailing verse, both Jesus and Paul were feminists.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than support for no fault divorce
Indeed.
Which is why thank goodness we do not live in a Christian society, but instead an enlightened one.
The enlightenment and the end of religion dominating politics was the best thing that happened to the world, other than the industrial revolution.
There's an argument we live in a more christian society than we acknowledge.
Society, just like humanity, has evolved over time.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than Biblical support for no fault divorce
But what the bible supports has got nothing to do with me.
Superb performance from Liz Kendal on Laura K over assisted death vote.
If only Starmer had the courage to make his own case rather than leaving it to others.
This one is personal not party, though, isn't it? So Kendal is making the Kendal case not the Labour one.
It is one of the more heartening aspects of the discussion that it is not Party Political. Long may it remain so.
I think they are less fortunate in the USA in this respect, but maybe I do them a injustice.
You don't. Eg a woman's right to have an abortion up to a reasonable timeframe should imo be above politics. It's fundamental to holding women of equal worth to men.
No it is just another example of a feminist agenda.
Now I could just about accept abortion up to 22 weeks but 24 weeks is too high and it is pleasing to see a wide range of Tory MPs from Hunt to Kruger and indeed Dorries when she was an MP trying to cut the abortion time limit
A female equality agenda. You can kiss goodbye to any notion of that if abortion is illegal or very restrictive. In fact I don't have a big problem with what you say here. Although I'd prefer to just trust women it is reasonable to have a debate about time limits and strike some sort of balance.
I'm quite sure that those in favour of assisted dying will be using this survey as support for the proposals, probably during the bit over a couple of hours they have to debate it.
If there is ever a topic that should require a referendum after a public debate, it is this. Especially when not one single party (to my knowledge) included this in their GE manifestos just a matter of months ago. It's almost as if it is being pushed through by vested interests.
My wife works in social care assessing the care needs of the typical person that this will be relevant to. I can safely say that there will be many families perfectly happy to push and coerce people down this route. Especially where money is concerned and where it is being eaten up by care requirements.
Personally, I tend to lean towards favouring it, but not in the way it is being pushed through.
We elect MP's, surely, to make informed decisions, since they have, or ought to have, access to all the necessary information. It is, of course, open to constituents to try and influence MP's. On your third paragraph I have some experience there which supports your view. It is, or was when I was concerned with these things, sometimes difficult to persuade relatives to agree to a 'loved one' being taken out of a geriatric ward, where care is free, and sent to a care home where it isn't.
We do elect MPs to make decisions, but surely we should at least have expected them to put an actual matter of life and death into a manifesto. Is there anything more important? Realistically we had no idea of our MPs views on this subject. I doubt they would change their mind because I tried to influence them, nor should they and I would imagine others may have a different view, to influence. A referendum on this seems most suitable, then everyone has their say.
Sadly your other point is true. Many people will argue for months about the cost of care for a loved one, but spend no more than a few minutes thought on the actual care.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
My mother got a divorce in the late 1960's. It was incredibly difficult and took an absolute age, being one of the reasons the Denning Reforms came about. My father was a serial philanderer and he walked out the family home just after my sister was born in 1962. There was no fault on my mother's part. He was finally forced by the courts to pay maintenance in the princely sum of £4 a week. But the marriage still could not be ended for an age longer.
Allowing my mother to escape being trapped in a marriage was no "last resort"; splitting from him was not "best avoided", as for one thing it would have prevented her getting another successful, joyous marriage to my stepfather. The strain of the broken relationship and the attempts to get a divorce caused her to have several nervous breakdowns. No child should have had to endure seeing their parent go through ECT.
Your world view is so constrained. It would result in so much pain for others if rigidly adopted.
I have already said I don't oppose divorce on the grounds of adultery, even Jesus did not oppose divorce when one party had committed sexual immorality and cheated on the other.
That is not the same as supporting no fault divorce though, which I oppose even though it is now legal in the UK
"Sorry, kids, me and yer dad can't split up, even though we hate each other because some bloke called Jesus, who may or may not have existed 2000 years ago, wouldn't like it and the government don't like it very much, either, so we'll just stay together and make your life a misery until you're old enough to leave home" That's right?
I am a liberal on divorce, but even so I can spot the polemical distortion here. The general ban on divorce (still upheld in a sort of way by the Roman catholics) does not of itself compel cohabitation or forbid separation. To this day (unless my law is out of date) people can still opt for 'judicial separation' rather than divorce.
FWIW St Paul fairly clearly acknowledges separation of the married as a reality.
Finally, the likelihood is that Jesus in banning divorce was addressing the disparity of the old law in which it was easy for men and hard for women. Despite those who are good at spotting the odd countervailing verse, both Jesus and Paul were feminists.
I bow to your knowledge on these matters, I've barely read the bible, only did the very least I could get away with in school. I was the kid who got a smack on the knuckles for looking around when I should have been head down, praying.
I'm quite sure that those in favour of assisted dying will be using this survey as support for the proposals, probably during the bit over a couple of hours they have to debate it.
If there is ever a topic that should require a referendum after a public debate, it is this. Especially when not one single party (to my knowledge) included this in their GE manifestos just a matter of months ago. It's almost as if it is being pushed through by vested interests.
My wife works in social care assessing the care needs of the typical person that this will be relevant to. I can safely say that there will be many families perfectly happy to push and coerce people down this route. Especially where money is concerned and where it is being eaten up by care requirements.
Personally, I tend to lean towards favouring it, but not in the way it is being pushed through.
We elect MP's, surely, to make informed decisions, since they have, or ought to have, access to all the necessary information. It is, of course, open to constituents to try and influence MP's. On your third paragraph I have some experience there which supports your view. It is, or was when I was concerned with these things, sometimes difficult to persuade relatives to agree to a 'loved one' being taken out of a geriatric ward, where care is free, and sent to a care home where it isn't.
We do elect MPs to make decisions, but surely we should at least have expected them to put an actual matter of life and death into a manifesto. Is there anything more important? Realistically we had no idea of our MPs views on this subject. I doubt they would change their mind because I tried to influence them, nor should they and I would imagine others may have a different view, to influence. A referendum on this seems most suitable, then everyone has their say.
Sadly your other point is true. Many people will argue for months about the cost of care for a loved one, but spend no more than a few minutes thought on the actual care.
QTWAIN since matters of life and death have always, rightly, been classed as conscience matters and are not a matter of party politics.
Superb performance from Liz Kendal on Laura K over assisted death vote.
If only Starmer had the courage to make his own case rather than leaving it to others.
This one is personal not party, though, isn't it? So Kendal is making the Kendal case not the Labour one.
It is one of the more heartening aspects of the discussion that it is not Party Political. Long may it remain so.
I think they are less fortunate in the USA in this respect, but maybe I do them a injustice.
You don't. Eg a woman's right to have an abortion up to a reasonable timeframe should imo be above politics. It's fundamental to holding women of equal worth to men.
No it is just another example of a feminist agenda.
Now I could just about accept abortion up to 22 weeks but 24 weeks is too high and it is pleasing to see a wide range of Tory MPs from Hunt to Kruger and indeed Dorries when she was an MP trying to cut the abortion time limit
A female equality agenda. You can kiss goodbye to any notion of that if abortion is illegal or very restrictive. In fact I don't have a big problem with what you say here. Although I'd prefer to just trust women it is reasonable to have a debate about time limits and strike some sort of balance.
No
I’d prefer to trust in objective scientific evidence.
Which is where 24 weeks came from.
And that is as someone whose niece was born at 23 and bit weeks.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
It's not exactly easy. I'm going through an agreed divorce after 24 years of marriage with no dispute about anything and no children but some uncertainty about what a fair division is, and it's coming to an end after two years of solicitors saying "We need to do X to avoid a possible rejection by the court". Since neither of us have been divorced before, it's been difficult to impossible to judge which risks were well-founded. In retrospect I suspect we'd have been better-advised to go straight to court with minimal involvement of solicitors, but I really don't know.
I do sympathise with your father's problems but sadly I don't think that hanging on to the marriage at all costs is likely to have been a good alternative. We only have one life.
I'm sorry to hear about that Nick.
A dear friend of ours got divorced after a short marriage that just had not worked. There was no particular fault on either side; they were just unsuited. And they had been 'courting' for years before the marriage, so knew each other well. They had no kids and no house, and no substantial joint holdings. As far as I am aware, neither cheated. They both worked (in different cities, which I doubt helped the situation).
It should have been the simplest of divorces, but lawyers really seemed to unduly complicate matters and draw them out over far too long a period of time. And my impression was that much of the delay was between the solicitors, to their fiscal advantage.
That case seems mysterious. A simple clean break is the current policy in such a case, and one such I saw happen recently happened quite quickly.
With big or hidden assets and/or children there are no limtis as to what the parties will sometimes do to make themselves and everyone else miserable. Some of the Court of Appeal judgments should be published in popular paperback form (as should some wills cases).
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
Anyone who commits the UK to an annual share of 300 billion dollars needs to explain how much our share is and how it is paid
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
Since we have agreed that if others don't pay their share that we will make up the difference (and Trump has already said the USA won't), then it absolutely is the concern of UK taxpayers.
Starmer isn't just signing us up to pay the UK's share, but to contribute to America's share too.
This is why 2029 can't come soon enough, we have to get out of these stupid agreements and if I'm being honest having a Tory/Reform coalition strikes me as the best way to drag the country to the right and dump all of this nonsense about climate payments, reparations and pissing endless billions up the NHS wall. I don't think the Tories have it within them to do it alone, Reform are going to have to force them into it kicking and screaming.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
It's not exactly easy. I'm going through an agreed divorce after 24 years of marriage with no dispute about anything and no children but some uncertainty about what a fair division is, and it's coming to an end after two years of solicitors saying "We need to do X to avoid a possible rejection by the court". Since neither of us have been divorced before, it's been difficult to impossible to judge which risks were well-founded. In retrospect I suspect we'd have been better-advised to go straight to court with minimal involvement of solicitors, but I really don't know.
I do sympathise with your father's problems but sadly I don't think that hanging on to the marriage at all costs is likely to have been a good alternative. We only have one life.
I'm sorry to hear about that Nick.
A dear friend of ours got divorced after a short marriage that just had not worked. There was no particular fault on either side; they were just unsuited. And they had been 'courting' for years before the marriage, so knew each other well. They had no kids and no house, and no substantial joint holdings. As far as I am aware, neither cheated. They both worked (in different cities, which I doubt helped the situation).
It should have been the simplest of divorces, but lawyers really seemed to unduly complicate matters and draw them out over far too long a period of time. And my impression was that much of the delay was between the solicitors, to their fiscal advantage.
That case seems mysterious. A simple clean break is the current policy in such a case, and one such I saw happen recently happened quite quickly.
With big or hidden assets and/or children there are no limtis as to what the parties will sometimes do to make themselves and everyone else miserable. Some of the Court of Appeal judgments should be published in popular paperback form (as should some wills cases).
That depends on the lawyers being only interested in the best interests of the client.
Another problem is friends telling the person who is getting divorced that they should “take them to the cleaners”. As with property, there seems to be an idea that grabbing everything you can, morals be damned, is the right approach.
I think that is precisely where Starmer is going wrong. Their need to be a narrative, not just bashing dole-bludgers in the Mail and copying up to Blackrock. The same policy should be promoted as supporting people back to work, rather than bashing the skivers.
There was a very good thread on Bluesky yesterday from Clive Lewis, worth the read on why Starmer is floundering:
For those attempting to make sense of Trump’s victory and the rise of the far-right across Europe - look no further than the PMs statement. Whether you like it or not, the far-right has a set of common narratives. They are something like, "the reason you’re in an overpriced, damp rental, your gran lives in squalor, your job is low paid/insecure & your public services crumbling - is because elites declared war on workers, favoured immigrants & made your life more expensive with their green crap. Vote for the far-right and they will deport the immigrants, stop the elites, cut the green crap & declare war on woke, Britain will be great again."
This far-right narrative has a story. It has a beginning, middle & end. It sets the scene, explains why we are where we are and offers a solution. In other words it has goodies, baddies and happy ending.
Labour’s story, just like the US Democrats, doesn’t make narrative sense. Labour's story doesn't explain how 40 years of atomising, neoliberal plunder; the selling-off of & destruction of our public services; the undermining of our democracy, the hollowing out and selling off of our natural resources at the hands of companies like Blackrock and other price-gouging corporations, billionaires & financial institutions, has led us here. Instead Labour refuse to give a credible explanation for how we got here other than ‘it was Tory chaos’.
Problem is when the political & economic permacrisis continues, that won’t be a viable explanation. By refusing to identify who the culprits for this state of affairs is, Labour fail to make a convincing narrative story that explaims our predicament. Instead Labour become the defenders of the very elites that the right claim they are, even though the far-right themselves are a core part of the very establishment that championed these policies.
Therefore Labour either develop a story as the agents of progressive change, identifying those responsible and pledging to fix it, or Labour makes way for the inevitability of a far-right victory, just like in the US.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than Biblical support for no fault divorce
But what the bible supports has got nothing to do with me.
So what, it has got to do with me and the 46% of British people who still called themselves Christian on the last census.
Add the 6% of Brits who said they were Muslim (and there is some overlap between the Koran and the Bible) and the almost 1% who are Jewish you get to 53% who respect our sacred books
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
Anyone who commits the UK to an annual share of 300 billion dollars needs to explain how much our share is and how it is paid
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
Since we have agreed that if others don't pay their share that we will make up the difference (and Trump has already said the USA won't), then it absolutely is the concern of UK taxpayers.
Starmer isn't just signing us up to pay the UK's share, but to contribute to America's share too.
This is why 2029 can't come soon enough, we have to get out of these stupid agreements and if I'm being honest having a Tory/Reform coalition strikes me as the best way to drag the country to the right and dump all of this nonsense about climate payments, reparations and pissing endless billions up the NHS wall. I don't think the Tories have it within them to do it alone, Reform are going to have to force them into it kicking and screaming.
It could work like the LibDem/Tory coalition but in reverse. Instead of the Lib Dems giving cover for Cameron to do all the liberal things that his party would otherwise have opposed, Reform can give the Tories cover to do the opposite.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than support for no fault divorce
Indeed.
Which is why thank goodness we do not live in a Christian society, but instead an enlightened one.
The enlightenment and the end of religion dominating politics was the best thing that happened to the world, other than the industrial revolution.
There's an argument we live in a more christian society than we acknowledge.
Society, just like humanity, has evolved over time.
There is no single source to it.
No single source, that's right. But I think Christianity could claim to be a pretty big one even if I'm conflicted on its value. Like Nietzsche, I think it has a tendency to valourise weakness.
I lean in favour of assisted dying, but don't have a strong view.
Of course, one can take one's stance from our moral leaders - any proposed reform that churches oppose, from ending the burning of witches and heretics to legalising divorce to more or less anything Mrs Thatcher did, is usually an excellent idea.
Divorce laws in the UK are too liberal now with no fault divorce. Having a negative effect on the family and fertility rates
What conceivable benefit would you expect to acru from restricting divorce? Couples stuck in loveless marriages are not likely to bring children into them and if they did it would be for entirely the wrong reasons to the detriment of everyone.
Unless it was an arranged marriage no marriage would be loveless otherwise they would never have got married in the first place.
No marriage is perfect, you work through the downs and arguments as well as the ups
What a naive view.
Love sometimes lasts, but love sometimes dies. At which point it becomes loveless.
Go through ups and downs, yes, my wife and I have had ups and downs and we still love each other. That is a healthy marriage.
If you only have downs and the love is gone, then it's not a healthy marriage and it should be terminated.
All my biological grandparents divorced. Both my dad's parents remarried before I was even born and had a happy, healthy second marriage that took them to the end of their lives. Them divorcing and remarrying was the best thing that ever happened to them, and the family as a whole.
I was also lucky enough then to grow up with 5 grandparents (3 biological, 2 not) and am fortunate still have the two non-biological grandparents whom I love as my grandparents every bit as much as the biological ones.
My father's parents divorced and it had a negative impact on his teenage years and hit his mother hard while his father remarried.
Divorce is simply too easy nowadays, unless there is adultery or domestic violence involved divorce should be an absolute last resort and best avoided
It's not exactly easy. I'm going through an agreed divorce after 24 years of marriage with no dispute about anything and no children but some uncertainty about what a fair division is, and it's coming to an end after two years of solicitors saying "We need to do X to avoid a possible rejection by the court". Since neither of us have been divorced before, it's been difficult to impossible to judge which risks were well-founded. In retrospect I suspect we'd have been better-advised to go straight to court with minimal involvement of solicitors, but I really don't know.
I do sympathise with your father's problems but sadly I don't think that hanging on to the marriage at all costs is likely to have been a good alternative. We only have one life.
I'm sorry to hear about that Nick.
A dear friend of ours got divorced after a short marriage that just had not worked. There was no particular fault on either side; they were just unsuited. And they had been 'courting' for years before the marriage, so knew each other well. They had no kids and no house, and no substantial joint holdings. As far as I am aware, neither cheated. They both worked (in different cities, which I doubt helped the situation).
It should have been the simplest of divorces, but lawyers really seemed to unduly complicate matters and draw them out over far too long a period of time. And my impression was that much of the delay was between the solicitors, to their fiscal advantage.
That case seems mysterious. A simple clean break is the current policy in such a case, and one such I saw happen recently happened quite quickly.
With big or hidden assets and/or children there are no limtis as to what the parties will sometimes do to make themselves and everyone else miserable. Some of the Court of Appeal judgments should be published in popular paperback form (as should some wills cases).
I don't think there was much of a mystery about it. I can never be sure, but I think the lawyers were blaming the other parties for documents being delayed, not being signed etc, when the couple getting divorced had talked and knew that was not the case. Though, of course, you can never be sure. Sadly, it was a fairly amicable divorce at first, but the lawyers seemed to turn it into less of an amicable one.
The Tories have at least now backed Senator Graham in saying the UK should not allow Netanyahu to be arrested despite Starmer saying he would respect the ICC decision
Superb performance from Liz Kendal on Laura K over assisted death vote.
If only Starmer had the courage to make his own case rather than leaving it to others.
This one is personal not party, though, isn't it? So Kendal is making the Kendal case not the Labour one.
It is one of the more heartening aspects of the discussion that it is not Party Political. Long may it remain so.
I think they are less fortunate in the USA in this respect, but maybe I do them a injustice.
You don't. Eg a woman's right to have an abortion up to a reasonable timeframe should imo be above politics. It's fundamental to holding women of equal worth to men.
No it is just another example of a feminist agenda.
Now I could just about accept abortion up to 22 weeks but 24 weeks is too high and it is pleasing to see a wide range of Tory MPs from Hunt to Kruger and indeed Dorries when she was an MP trying to cut the abortion time limit
A female equality agenda. You can kiss goodbye to any notion of that if abortion is illegal or very restrictive. In fact I don't have a big problem with what you say here. Although I'd prefer to just trust women it is reasonable to have a debate about time limits and strike some sort of balance.
No
I’d prefer to trust in objective scientific evidence.
Which is where 24 weeks came from.
And that is as someone whose niece was born at 23 and bit weeks.
Don't do that "No" business. It irritates.
But ok, fine, we can disagree on the ideal law - as I say I'd prefer to trust women - but can agree that the current UK position is ok.
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
Anyone who commits the UK to an annual share of 300 billion dollars needs to explain how much our share is and how it is paid
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
Since we have agreed that if others don't pay their share that we will make up the difference (and Trump has already said the USA won't), then it absolutely is the concern of UK taxpayers.
Starmer isn't just signing us up to pay the UK's share, but to contribute to America's share too.
This is why 2029 can't come soon enough, we have to get out of these stupid agreements and if I'm being honest having a Tory/Reform coalition strikes me as the best way to drag the country to the right and dump all of this nonsense about climate payments, reparations and pissing endless billions up the NHS wall. I don't think the Tories have it within them to do it alone, Reform are going to have to force them into it kicking and screaming.
Seriously?
Reform are as committed to large amounts of public expenditure as all the other parties. If you think they are some kind of small State proto-Thatcherite lasissez-faire party, you couldn't be more wrong.
They want lots of money spent on the WWC and that includes the NHS - they just don't want the money to be wasted, as they see it, on migrants.
Let’s hope Leon is sleeping it off after his outbursts last night, or this thread will be hard work.
On topic, I’ve not had time to follow closely but surely the major issue with the current bill is nobody has yet written the safeguards into it, saying they will be added later?
*pokes raddled old hungover bear*
I wonder what are the views of Muslims on assisted dying?
I'm surmising, but I think it would be framed around the twin concepts of respect for life, and respect for the sovereignty of God. In general aiui Islam has a stronger concept of 'fate' ("Inshallah") over human agency compared to some other belief systems eg Protestant Christianity. It has a version of what I could characterise as "Calvinist" values.
So a decision to be killed could be seen as an imposition on matters that are not strictly our decision.
I sense that many religious views on the subject emanate from a feeling that life is a gift from whichever god goes with you, and that there is something blasphemous about having agency over the ending of it.
(Snip)
Given how both Christianity and Islam have taken great glee historically in ending life of the 'wrong' people, and of hurting many others, I think that's utterly wrong.
The churches pretend to care about people. In reality, the churches and their hierarchies are about control of the population.
(I see churches as very different from faith.)
I think the picture is more mixed.
OTOH, you have brutal wars of religion. On the other, you have truces of God, distinctions between combatants and non-combatants, Just War theory, and religious buildings treated as places of sanctuary. These all had an impact in mitigating the brutality of medieval warfare.
One reason why warfare became more atrocious in the 16th century is that as the Church split, so it lost its authority over men who waged war.
I think the worsening of war is down to improvements in weaponry and associated technology more than a church split. I fear the crusades (and the equivalent Islamic wars of conquest) belie the idea that the religious authorities were not bloodthirsty charlatans. The rules, such that there were, were often broken when it suited the combatants.
As a minor example from history, remember how much Pope Alexander II promoted and encouraged the Norman Invasion.
I think it’s a complicated picture. Many in Europe and the Americas relied on their Christian faith to critique slavery, the treatment of colonised people and the horrors of war. The Normans outlawed slavery after 1066 on Christian principles.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
An entertainment for the cynical, is to see the hoops people will jump through, to reconcile their faith with their actions -
- Christian slavers - Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam. - Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
Plenty of slaves in the Old Testament, slavery is clearly wrong but there is more Biblical evidence for slavery than Biblical support for no fault divorce
But what the bible supports has got nothing to do with me.
So what, it has got to do with me and the 46% of British people who still called themselves Christian on the last census.
Add the 6% of Brits who said they were Muslim (and there is some overlap between the Koran and the Bible) and the almost 1% who are Jewish you get to 53% who respect our sacred books
Most self-identifying Christians don't want the law to be the Bible, but instead what they vote for.
Or as Jesus said Matthew 22:21 "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."
You have no interest in the teachings of Jesus though.
China and India are still defined by the United Nations as "developing" countries.
As a result, the nations have no formal obligation to cut their greenhouse gas emissions or to provide financial help to poorer countries.
Normally shunned by the international community, the Taliban delegation was allowed to attend because of the severe problems facing Afghanistan.
The country is seen as one of the most vulnerable to climate change, as well as being one of the lowest emitters of greenhouse gases.
Kheel says the Taliban delegation is "raising the voice of people vulnerable to the impact of climate change, including women, children and men".
Doubtless they'll have got ol' Starmer to stick his hand in our collective pockets though
What makes you think Starmer is an easy touch for something that delivers him no political benefit?
He has already agreed it and accepted the communique
Hasn't everyone? These things almost always end with some sort of agreement.
Not everyone by some distance
Biden, Macron, Scholz, UVL, China, India, Indonesia and many others were not even there
But their reps were and their countries have signed the communique, I believe?
Starmer hasn't done some sort of special UK signature in blood, has he?
Starmer needs to explain where our share is coming from
And all the others don't?
That is a matter for them, and just deflecting from the very real question - how do we pay our share ?
Sure. Let's get it in the spreadsheet. But let's give him a chance to catch his breath. The way people are talking it's like they expected him to make a big stand, SKS against the world, and refuse to sign the thing.
Anyone who commits the UK to an annual share of 300 billion dollars needs to explain how much our share is and how it is paid
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
Since we have agreed that if others don't pay their share that we will make up the difference (and Trump has already said the USA won't), then it absolutely is the concern of UK taxpayers.
Starmer isn't just signing us up to pay the UK's share, but to contribute to America's share too.
This is why 2029 can't come soon enough, we have to get out of these stupid agreements and if I'm being honest having a Tory/Reform coalition strikes me as the best way to drag the country to the right and dump all of this nonsense about climate payments, reparations and pissing endless billions up the NHS wall. I don't think the Tories have it within them to do it alone, Reform are going to have to force them into it kicking and screaming.
Seriously?
Reform are as committed to large amounts of public expenditure as all the other parties. If you think they are some kind of small State proto-Thatcherite lasissez-faire party, you couldn't be more wrong.
They want lots of money spent on the WWC and that includes the NHS - they just don't want the money to be wasted, as they see it, on migrants.
Comments
This bill is woefully insufficient. Being mentally incapable should more entitle someone for assisted doing not bar them from it.
This is what I want for myself:
1) If mentally capable: I want to be able to choose when I seek help ending my life when I am over a certain age (say, 80). Age should be the qualifier if the decision is by the mentally capable. Health condition irrelevant. We must stop calling it 'committing suicide' as this implies wrongdoing and reinforces the stigma against it.
2) If not mentally capable: no minimum age. There must be appointed attorneys and my chosen attorneys make the decision.
Now I could just about accept abortion up to 22 weeks but 24 weeks is too high and it is pleasing to see a wide range of Tory MPs from Hunt to Kruger and indeed Dorries when she was an MP trying to cut the abortion time limit
The only God botherers who get to force their beliefs on the nation are the unelected Bishops in the Lords.
We massively underestimate and take for granted how much its hard power keeps us safe.
Under my proposals I think France (40k), UK (40k), Germany (25k) and Poland (75k) could form a European defensive alliance that could deploy, with other nations like Italy, Spain and the Baltic and Scandi States, a high kinetic and high technology allied army of a quarter of a million on the Central European Plain _without_ any help from the USA.
That would keep us safe in perpetuity against any conceivable conventional threat. But we'd have to pay for it.
You thought your side had won the culture war completely, no the traditional right backlash to your agenda has just begun. Here too the rise of Reform and the emergence of Badenoch as Tory leader is driving energy to the UK anti woke crusade.
I never said Walz was childless even if Harris was, he was just as woke as her though maybe more so
But he also had irrefutable evidence against Howard, while he had to manufacture it against Boleyn. So it seems strange he didn't take advantage of it.
That's right?
If I were the old person in poor condition, mentally or physically, my life is in effect already over. Therefore my health needs would not come anywhere near the top of my needs except for pain relief.
Yet the system we have prioritises health needs at 100%.
My needs would be to stop being a burden to others, family and non-family, and for my wealth for which I am proud to be inherited as I wish. It would break my heart to think that my wealth would be drained away paying for care than I do not want.
Howard seems to have been molested from a very young age. Her life seems to have been a horror show.
The Qu’ran has many rules of war, like the ten rules summarised by Abu Bakr:
“Do not commit treachery or deviate from the right path. You must not mutilate dead bodies. Neither kill a child, nor a woman, nor an aged man. Bring no harm to the trees, nor burn them with fire, especially those which are fruitful. Slay not any of the enemy's flock, save for your food. You are likely to pass by people who have devoted their lives to monastic services; leave them alone.”
World religions are diverse and complicated phenomena. I think it’s never going to work trying to put them uncomplicatedly in a “good” or “bad” column.
Our MPs are not fit for purpose.
This Bill is draconianly tight.
If you think I am an "ultra woke left liberal", then you are so far up your own backside that I'm surprised you cannot lick your own tonsils.
I want people to be treated as well as possible, and that incudes women and minorities. I'd have thought your 'Christianity' would be in agreement with that.
I think that an important part of the value of a marriage is the mutual commitment that a couple makes to each other, so I'm inclined to encouraging people to stick to their word, but we also have to be willing to admit when circumstances have changed or a mistake has been made.
When my daughter was about ten, and my second wife-to-be had been living with us for a few years, my daughter said that she really liked how we didn't argue with each other, because there'd been a lot of arguing between me and her mother.
More years of unhappy arguing would have been a terrible thing for our daughter, hard as it was for her parents to be divorced.
One woman broke down in tears to my girlfriend. Her husband was about to be made a partner in his law firm. Big money time…. And she was scared by meeting the other wives at that level - she wasn’t a trophy enough, she felt.
It was Desperate Housewives made real.
This Bill, or one you propose, is sadly too little too late for the likes of your mother. However your proposal is one I completely support and I too would sign such a living will in a heartbeat.
I am much more pro-American and anti-Russian than you, but that's OK too.
I do sympathise with your father's problems but sadly I don't think that hanging on to the marriage at all costs is likely to have been a good alternative. We only have one life.
In the wake of the Trump speech about NATO contributions, we were discussing it here.
A couple of posters took the position of “do you want a heavily armed Germany?”
I pointed out (and realised the commenters were too young to remember) that, up to the 90s, West Germany used to have the largest tank park in Europe. And an airforce to match. No worries about Austrian immigrant street artists, either.
It takes all sorts, I suppose...
Some Lords are elected.
Just a shame about the *electorate*.
We trust ourselves to make the right decision for a suffering animal
We don’t trust others to make the right decision for us
The Medievals even had a term for that kind of warfare, Bellum Romanum, which was recognised as departing from the norms of war.
- Christian slavers
- Islamic slavers. Especially when the slave do annoying stuff like converting to Islam.
- Buddhists in the Imperial Japanese military. They achieved peak *something* by coming up with a justification for acts such as Nanking. Yes, really.
I also don't believe we only have one life, as a Christian I believe in the possibility of eternal life after death anyway
In a related note, who thinks Lady G should go **** himself?
https://x.com/megatron_ron/status/1860248940223901957?s=46&t=fJymV-V84rexmlQMLXHHJQ
Germany did this, post war. They ended up with a huge army that couldn’t go anywhere the locals didn’t actually invite them in and support them.
The U.K. version would be a huge artillery and tank park, a navy configured for anti-submarine warfare, and airspace denial (keep the sea lanes open), no landing ships, very little airlift capability.
One upside is that we could get rid of the silly attempts to make tanks that can be flown on planes.
Which is why thank goodness we do not live in a Christian society, but instead an enlightened one.
The enlightenment and the end of religion dominating politics was the best thing that happened to the world, other than the industrial revolution.
A dear friend of ours got divorced after a short marriage that just had not worked. There was no particular fault on either side; they were just unsuited. And they had been 'courting' for years before the marriage, so knew each other well. They had no kids and no house, and no substantial joint holdings. As far as I am aware, neither cheated. They both worked (in different cities, which I doubt helped the situation).
It should have been the simplest of divorces, but lawyers really seemed to unduly complicate matters and draw them out over far too long a period of time. And my impression was that much of the delay was between the solicitors, to their fiscal advantage.
A sexually abused girl, forced to marry a gross, stinking, old pervert, who had her beheaded.
How others deal with it is not the concern of UK taxpayers
At my rowing club, us old blokes look at each other and roll our eyes over the sorrows of the young. As expressed in the pub. If I have to listen to another saga of “He seemed alright…”
The basic problem seems to be not spending time with a mix of other people, outside a rather forced dating environment. If you meet other people as people, first….
Which is why many people join the club.
Starmer isn't just signing us up to pay the UK's share, but to contribute to America's share too.
Galatians says re slavery though 'But when the set time had fully come, God sent his Son, born of a woman, born under the law, 5to redeem those under the law, that we might receive adoption to sonship. b 6Because you are his sons, God sent the Spirit of his Son into our hearts, the Spirit who calls out, “Abba, c Father.” 7So you are no longer a slave, but God’s child; and since you are his child, God has made you also an heir.'
https://biblehub.com/niv/galatians/4.htm
Ephesians also says '7 Work with enthusiasm, as though you were working for the Lord rather than for people. 8 Remember that the Lord will reward each one of us for the good we do, whether we are slaves or free.
9 Masters, treat your slaves in the same way. Don’t threaten them; remember, you both have the same Master in heaven, and he has no favorites.'
https://biblia.com/bible/nlt/ephesians/6/7-9
As for the industrial revolution, ultra wokeists also often reject that too as leading to climate change, hence they want to end all fossil fuel usage now
On the campaign trail, Trump said they were “looking at” restrictions on contraception, but the campaign then walked back those comments. Project 2025 want to limit access to contraceptives. Trump supporters said Trump didn’t have anything to do with Project 2025, but of course a whole bunch of Project 2025 people are now being appointed by Trump.
FWIW St Paul fairly clearly acknowledges separation of the married as a reality.
Finally, the likelihood is that Jesus in banning divorce was addressing the disparity of the old law in which it was easy for men and hard for women. Despite those who are good at spotting the odd countervailing verse, both Jesus and Paul were feminists.
There is no single source to it.
Sadly your other point is true. Many people will argue for months about the cost of care for a loved one, but spend no more than a few minutes thought on the actual care.
Long may it stay that way.
I’d prefer to trust in objective scientific evidence.
Which is where 24 weeks came from.
And that is as someone whose niece was born at 23 and bit weeks.
With big or hidden assets and/or children there are no limtis as to what the parties will sometimes do to make themselves and everyone else miserable. Some of the Court of Appeal judgments should be published in popular paperback form (as should some wills cases).
Another problem is friends telling the person who is getting divorced that they should “take them to the cleaners”. As with property, there seems to be an idea that grabbing everything you can, morals be damned, is the right approach.
For those attempting to make sense of Trump’s victory and the rise of the far-right across Europe - look no further than the PMs statement. Whether you like it or not, the far-right has a set of common narratives. They are something like, "the reason you’re in an overpriced, damp rental, your gran lives in squalor, your job is low paid/insecure & your public services crumbling - is because elites declared war on workers, favoured immigrants & made your life more expensive with their green crap. Vote for the far-right and they will deport the immigrants, stop the elites, cut the green crap & declare war on woke, Britain will be great again."
This far-right narrative has a story. It has a beginning, middle & end. It sets the scene, explains why we are where we are and offers a solution. In other words it has goodies, baddies and happy ending.
Labour’s story, just like the US Democrats, doesn’t make narrative sense. Labour's story doesn't explain how 40 years of atomising, neoliberal plunder; the selling-off of & destruction of our public services; the undermining of our democracy, the hollowing out and selling off of our natural resources at the hands of companies like Blackrock and other price-gouging corporations, billionaires & financial institutions, has led us here. Instead Labour refuse to give a credible explanation for how we got here other than ‘it was Tory chaos’.
Problem is when the political & economic permacrisis continues, that won’t be a viable explanation. By refusing to identify who the culprits for this state of affairs is, Labour fail to make a convincing narrative story that explaims our predicament. Instead Labour become the defenders of the very elites that the right claim they are, even though the far-right themselves are a core part of the very establishment that championed these policies.
Therefore Labour either develop a story as the agents of progressive change, identifying those responsible and pledging to fix it, or Labour makes way for the inevitability of a far-right victory, just like in the US.
Add the 6% of Brits who said they were Muslim (and there is some overlap between the Koran and the Bible) and the almost 1% who are Jewish you get to 53% who respect our sacred books
https://www.clactonandfrintongazette.co.uk/news/national/24746683.tories-not-support-decision-arrest-netanyahu-uk-says-hollinrake/
But ok, fine, we can disagree on the ideal law - as I say I'd prefer to trust women - but can agree that the current UK position is ok.
Yes.
Reform are as committed to large amounts of public expenditure as all the other parties. If you think they are some kind of small State proto-Thatcherite lasissez-faire party, you couldn't be more wrong.
They want lots of money spent on the WWC and that includes the NHS - they just don't want the money to be wasted, as they see it, on migrants.
Or as Jesus said Matthew 22:21 "Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's."
You have no interest in the teachings of Jesus though.