With today’s resolution to Debbie Purdy’s court battle to have the law on assisted suicide clarified, there is now an inescapable feeling that matters are coming to a head regarding the issue in this country. A tide of opinion polls, news stories and incessant letters in newspapers show that this debate just won’t go away [...]
Filed under: humanrights, ideas, jonathanbirch, society on July 30th, 2009 | No Comments »
Here’s what I wrote a month ago:
It turns out that some MPs have been claiming hefty expenses to which they are technically entitled under the current rules, even though they don’t really need the money. This must have come as a terrible shock to all those who thought MPs were selfless ascetics who spurn all [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch on May 13th, 2009 | No Comments »
An aide to the Prime Minister spreads some nasty gossip in a private email to a blogger. The blogger’s emails are hacked, the emails are leaked to another blog, and the aide resigns. It’s a juicy and very modern tale of a spin doctor getting a taste of his own medicine. But is it really [...]
Filed under: Uncategorized, bbc, conservatives, davidcameron, jonathanbirch, journalism, labour, ukpolitics on April 12th, 2009 | No Comments »
Two signs of the times this week. Health Secretary Patricia Hewitt comes out in favour of assisted suicide; and a seriously ill baby, “Baby OT”, dies after the High Court orders an end to its assisted breathing. Behind both developments, an underlying intuition that death is preferable to a painful life.
I worry where this utilitarian [...]
Filed under: ideas, jonathanbirch, religion on March 21st, 2009 | No Comments »
Creative Commons licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user jgraham.
Even after eleven years, there’s still something a bit shocking about tuition fees. If the vice-chancellors get their way, fees will rise to at least £5000 per student per year. It’s a policy that flaunts its pragmatism on its sleeve. I still think fees defy any principled [...]
Filed under: barackobama, education, jonathanbirch, labour, religion, ukpolitics on March 17th, 2009 | No Comments »
Creative Commons licensed photograph courtesy of Flickr user photoverulam.
If there’s one thing more irritating than excessive political correctness, it’s excessive whining about how political correctness has “gone mad”. So I’ll try not to take that line here. But I’m a little baffled by the complaints over Emmanuel’s British Empire-themed May Ball, and the subsequent backtracking [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch on February 16th, 2009 | 5 Comments »
Photograph courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user Muhammad Mahdi Karim.
When it comes to Israel and Gaza, I find it very hard to judge. Maybe this is because my judgment isn’t very good, or maybe it’s because judging well really is hard, and not enough people realize this.
Filed under: barackobama, hillaryclinton, jonathanbirch, middle east, middleeast, taliban, terrorism on January 26th, 2009 | No Comments »
I’m not going to say what I think about this week’s student “occupations” against Israel’s actions in Gaza, but I can’t resist dragging up this remark from a protester at the University of Sussex, quoted in The Guardian:
“The action has brought together socialists, Islamists and even students from the green movement who realise the detrimental [...]
Filed under: jonathanbirch on January 25th, 2009 | No Comments »
Hamas militants fired 200 rockets at Israeli communities, Israel reacted in the usual way, and at least 56 civilians have been killed. The cliché is that the response is “disproportionate” (examples here, here, here and here). You can call Israel’s response ineffectual, heavy-handed, counterproductive, short-sighted, demagogic, brutal, tragic, heartbreaking — but disproportionate? This ubiquity of [...]
Filed under: 9/11, jonathanbirch, middle east, middleeast, terrorism on December 29th, 2008 | 3 Comments »
…this guy would be dead by now. Of course, if Bush were Saddam, he’d never have tried his luck. But he knew his action would be interpreted as an act of political dissent — in a country where dissent is now allowed. He may serve a jail term, but it seems far more likely that [...]
Filed under: afghanistan, al qaeda, clarepoliticsnews, democracy, humanrights, ideas, iraq, jonathanbirch, society, uspolitics on December 15th, 2008 | No Comments »
