The children of first cousin marriage are more likely to have birth defects.
The children of older mothers and fathers are more likely to have birth defects. The mother being over 40 is, roughly, I think, going to be a greater risk than a mum in her twenties who has married her cousin. (They’re not directly comparable, because there are somewhat different sorts of problems involved.) So what’s the appropriate response in terms of legislation or public health advice?
I suggest we should start with education, make sure people are aware of the risks and can make informed choices. I don’t think we should be rushing to legislate about people’s reproductive choices.
Are you coming out in favour of removing the two-child limit then?
The media are jumping on Starmer non-denial, but I just can't see it flying. Most on the left will say straight away how regressive it is and doesn't actually hit the rich as much as you might think because the rich don't buy that much shit. Given all of that, I can't see Labour MPs going for it. And as Osborne found out, VAT is so inconsistent, it is a minefield if you are looking to tinker / target certain products.
Income tax will be increased by 1% across all bands 2026 to 2030, will be announced as a limited 4 tax years measure, back down 2030. Might be described as another levy. Also threshold freeze to 2030. Overall raises £50bn. Labour won't increase VAT
I know current parliament can't bind future parliament. But is there much of a precedent for "we will increase income tax for five years and then reduce it again. That is beyond this parliament - but you can judge us at the next election if you trust us to do that"? I'm not familiar enough with the original income tax 'temporary' legislation to know how it was sold.
It’s an annual tax (it gets reapproved each year) that was hypothecated to finance war against France.
I see this Putin/Reform thing from the other thread.
I think one greedy bozo in Wales taking the shilling is not exactly a smoking gun
All I will say is this, and I have pointed to it before over the last couple of years, look at the donor base that now back Reform on top of some inidividuals in the party, and you might have something more substantial to go to the voters with.
Berrien, the CEO of Pindel Global Precision, is campaigning as a conservative leader who stands up for family values. The MAGA wannabe candidate has been especially critical of transgender individuals, saying they are engaged in "radical social experimentation." "Take it from a dad and a coach, I will keep boys out of our daughters' sports and locker rooms," the Whitefish Bay businessman says in a recent TV ad. A new ad praises President Donald Trump for "protecting our daughters' sports."
But the Journal Sentinel reported this week that his online footprint tells a different story...
Berrien just ended his campaign.
No inconsistency there. After all, they couldn't be in his daughters' locker rooms if they were safely on the end of his cock
This was medium.com - they were essays on sexuality…
The children of first cousin marriage are more likely to have birth defects.
The children of older mothers and fathers are more likely to have birth defects. The mother being over 40 is, roughly, I think, going to be a greater risk than a mum in her twenties who has married her cousin. (They’re not directly comparable, because there are somewhat different sorts of problems involved.) So what’s the appropriate response in terms of legislation or public health advice?
I suggest we should start with education, make sure people are aware of the risks and can make informed choices. I don’t think we should be rushing to legislate about people’s reproductive choices.
Isn't this problem a tad more complicated than just looking at the straight up risk rate for 1st cousin marriages?
My impression is that occasional 1st cousin marriages aren't too problematic - it's when it happens repeatedly within the same fairly small family group it goes wrong, because genetically the cousins start get more and more like siblings.
Thus in a UK context we used to permit 1st cousin marriages because there weren't very many of them, and even fewer repeated across the generations. We've now (ie over the last 50 years) imported a significant group of people from a culture of repeated cousin marriage, who therefore are suffering from noticeably elevated rates of birth defects. Thus whilst 100 years ago there was no reason in a UK context to ban cousin marriage, there is extremely good reason to do so now.
More problematic is enforcement of a ban - how do you stop people from these cultures disappearing off "home" for a couple of weeks, and reappearing with a marriage certificate, which we then have to recognise as valid, even if we wouldn't permit the marriage. (Eg we currently will recognise a 14 year old as legally married if they can prove they were ligitimately married in a jurisdiction which permits this - although I don't think this overrides ours laws on statutory rape, thus in theory you can be legally married and it also be illegal to have sex with your consenting partner!).
By and large, immigrant groups usually adopt the reproductive and relationship norms of the host country pretty quickly (e.g., number of children, age at first child, age at marriage, etc.), although there are some groups that continue to favour endogamy within a community, as with some orthodox Jewish communities in my part of the country.
We have a history in the UK of working well with communities at higher risk of certain inherited conditions, e.g. thalassaemia in the Greek Cypriot community. That has meant education and individual genetic counselling. I think you start there: with education, rather than rushing to legislation. There’s been a lot of sensationalist reporting. I look instead to expert views, e.g. here’s a briefing by the British Society for Genetic Medicine: https://bsgm.org.uk/media/12702/british-society-for-genetic-medicine-Parliamentary-briefing-on-cousin-marriages-final.pdf
The children of first cousin marriage are more likely to have birth defects.
The children of older mothers and fathers are more likely to have birth defects. The mother being over 40 is, roughly, I think, going to be a greater risk than a mum in her twenties who has married her cousin. (They’re not directly comparable, because there are somewhat different sorts of problems involved.) So what’s the appropriate response in terms of legislation or public health advice?
I suggest we should start with education, make sure people are aware of the risks and can make informed choices. I don’t think we should be rushing to legislate about people’s reproductive choices.
Isn't this problem a tad more complicated than just looking at the straight up risk rate for 1st cousin marriages?
My impression is that occasional 1st cousin marriages aren't too problematic - it's when it happens repeatedly within the same fairly small family group it goes wrong, because genetically the cousins start get more and more like siblings.
Thus in a UK context we used to permit 1st cousin marriages because there weren't very many of them, and even fewer repeated across the generations. We've now (ie over the last 50 years) imported a significant group of people from a culture of repeated cousin marriage, who therefore are suffering from noticeably elevated rates of birth defects. Thus whilst 100 years ago there was no reason in a UK context to ban cousin marriage, there is extremely good reason to do so now.
More problematic is enforcement of a ban - how do you stop people from these cultures disappearing off "home" for a couple of weeks, and reappearing with a marriage certificate, which we then have to recognise as valid, even if we wouldn't permit the marriage. (Eg we currently will recognise a 14 year old as legally married if they can prove they were ligitimately married in a jurisdiction which permits this - although I don't think this overrides ours laws on statutory rape, thus in theory you can be legally married and it also be illegal to have sex with your consenting partner!).
Not quite sure that anyone in government would put it quite like that!
They’ll all quite talk in general terms, perhaps with the odd joke about Norfolk, while totally failing to acknowledge that this is mostly a very specific problem regarding arranged marriages with third world countries, and that the UK government can and should seek to discourage this behaviour with a combination of education and immigration reforms.
Statements such as that from the NHS above go against a lot of empirical evidence, and are the total opposite of what public health authorities should be saying on the subject.
I don’t think a Trump fan can start talking, with a straight face, about what public health authorities should be saying on any subject or on what empirical evidence says. The Trump administration’s position on vaccines is a much bigger threat to public health. And his comments on paracetamol in pregnancy are not doing anything to promote maternal wellbeing!
"A woman has been raped outside a church in Oxford by a group of men, police have said.
The woman, who is in her 30s, was attacked in the churchyard of St Mary's and the surrounding area of Banbury town centre in the early hours of Sunday morning, Thames Valley Police said."
A victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal who was temporarily paralysed after the stress of her ordeal has been offered 15% of her compensation claim.
Janet Skinner was wrongly convicted of false accounting in 2007 and sentenced to nine months in prison after the faulty software said £59,000 had gone missing from her branch account in Hull.
She has now received an offer of full financial redress - but it is a fraction of what she had claimed. "I cried and I cried… it's trauma on top of trauma," she told the BBC.
The government said it made every effort to make full and fair offers to all claimants.
But according to Ms Skinner's lawyer, all the high-value complex claims are being fought "tooth and nail".
"They've taken a particularly cruel approach to Janet's case," claims Simon Goldberg, from Simons Muirhead Burton.
"A woman has been raped outside a church in Oxford by a group of men, police have said.
The woman, who is in her 30s, was attacked in the churchyard of St Mary's and the surrounding area of Banbury town centre in the early hours of Sunday morning, Thames Valley Police said."
There has been an attack by a gang of men. Police are appealing for anyone who has relevant information
They’re appealing for one specific witness to come forward.
Usually a report of a serious sexual assault, resulting in a victim who survives, might be expected to come with a description of the assilants.
This lack of transparency starts to become a pattern of behaviour by the police, and leads people such as Nigel Farage (or worse) to draw their own conclusions.
A victim of the Post Office Horizon IT scandal who was temporarily paralysed after the stress of her ordeal has been offered 15% of her compensation claim.
Janet Skinner was wrongly convicted of false accounting in 2007 and sentenced to nine months in prison after the faulty software said £59,000 had gone missing from her branch account in Hull.
She has now received an offer of full financial redress - but it is a fraction of what she had claimed. "I cried and I cried… it's trauma on top of trauma," she told the BBC.
The government said it made every effort to make full and fair offers to all claimants.
But according to Ms Skinner's lawyer, all the high-value complex claims are being fought "tooth and nail".
"They've taken a particularly cruel approach to Janet's case," claims Simon Goldberg, from Simons Muirhead Burton.
The claim here is much higher than the £59,000 in the article. She’s asking for consequential damages
She should be asking for at least a million, aggravated by the coverup.
And the government should be paying her at least a million, if for no other reason than to convince them not to cover up stuff in the future.
It’s cases like the Post Office scandal that has me thinking that the American system of damages being decided by a jury might not be a bad idea. American juries often come up with hundred-million-dollar numbers in cases like this, which can get negotiated down but still end up with lottery-win numbers actually paid out.
"A woman has been raped outside a church in Oxford by a group of men, police have said.
The woman, who is in her 30s, was attacked in the churchyard of St Mary's and the surrounding area of Banbury town centre in the early hours of Sunday morning, Thames Valley Police said."
There has been an attack by a gang of men. Police are appealing for anyone who has relevant information
They’re appealing for one specific witness to come forward.
Usually a report of a serious sexual assault, resulting in a victim who survives, might be expected to come with a description of the assilants.
This lack of transparency starts to become a pattern of behaviour by the police, and leads people such as Nigel Farage (or worse) to draw their own conclusions.
Is it "usually" and "might be expected", especially so early after the incident?
Comments
We have a history in the UK of working well with communities at higher risk of certain inherited conditions, e.g. thalassaemia in the Greek Cypriot community. That has meant education and individual genetic counselling. I think you start there: with education, rather than rushing to legislation. There’s been a lot of sensationalist reporting. I look instead to expert views, e.g. here’s a briefing by the British Society for Genetic Medicine: https://bsgm.org.uk/media/12702/british-society-for-genetic-medicine-Parliamentary-briefing-on-cousin-marriages-final.pdf
There has been an attack by a gang of men. Police are appealing for anyone who has relevant information
Usually a report of a serious sexual assault, resulting in a victim who survives, might be expected to come with a description of the assilants.
This lack of transparency starts to become a pattern of behaviour by the police, and leads people such as Nigel Farage (or worse) to draw their own conclusions.
NEW THREAD
And the government should be paying her at least a million, if for no other reason than to convince them not to cover up stuff in the future.
It’s cases like the Post Office scandal that has me thinking that the American system of damages being decided by a jury might not be a bad idea. American juries often come up with hundred-million-dollar numbers in cases like this, which can get negotiated down but still end up with lottery-win numbers actually paid out.