Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[crazy canuck]

100 years ago would be six years after WW1. In WW1, I would understand a ban on beards: gas masks don't work as well with beards.

I think 100 years is just figurative. Looked it up and it was 1916.

Although that is a problem with time I keep having. I'm still regularly surprised that the sixties are more than 40 years ago Ageing gracefully, as you can well imagine.

Don't worry, I am still adjusting to the 60s being more than 20 years ago.

[PJL]

I can remember the 40th anniversary commemorations of D-Day and that is now as far away as we are from today with the 80th anniversary coming up, as it was to the original landings. Now that's scary.

[Josquius]

All this talk about beards and not a single joke about closeted homosexuals

[Sheilbh]

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, leader of the Democratic Unionist Party (and who has just brought them back to Stormont), has been arrested on rape charges. They apparently related to allegations of a historic offence.

A 57 year old woman has also been arrested on for aiding and abetting.

Apparently he was questioned and charged on Thursday night.

[Tonitrus]

Similarly I think US military broadly frowns on tattoos, while UK forces would have no recruits without tattoos and the only restriction is no face tattoos. Again I think it's often a rite of passage to get tattooed on deployment.

That has changed quite a bit...the USAF even allows visible neck tattoos now (with some restrictions on placement). 

[Sheilbh]

Another new MRP for the Times - and yet again, catastrophic for the Tories

I actually think this underestimates the impact of the Lib Dems/tactical voting - and I think it's overestimating the SNP. On both of those points different polling companies are getting different results which suggests something in the model. But on both fronts I think tactical voting will have a bit impact and I think there's no way the SNP are getting 40+ seats:


Map, if accurate (as I say I think the SNP have too many and the Lib Dems not enough)


Labour really need to increase and keep up the pressure

Edit: Looking at the map I think you could walk from the Tweed to Dover without leaving Labour seats...

[Josquius]

There's a nasty belt of lib dem and tories across north Yorkshire and Cumbria.
Richmond must fall!

[Sheilbh]

There's a nasty belt of lib dem and tories across north Yorkshire and Cumbria.
Richmond must fall!

Apparently Richmond would only be about 2% from going Labour which is insane.

On Cumbria I think Tim Farron is basically impossible to beat. Once the Lib Dems get into an area they can be very difficult to get out again

Edit: And worth pointing out that MRP has the Tories on about 25%. Which is a little higher than a lot of the recent polling - things can get worse for them

[Sheilbh]

Totally separately - plus ca change. From a historian on Twitter

Dr Anton Howes
@antonhowes
Mad fact I just learned: the room temperature of a coal-heated London house in the 1740s in winter was usually as low as 10 degrees Celsius (50 Fahrenheit). During the night-time often below freezing.

And this is remarked on as very cold, for room temperature, by a Swede!
He even comments that 20 Celsius is considered by the English as far too warm! And notes how inefficient the chimneys were for heating rooms. Describes sitting by the fireplace feeling toasty on one side while frozen on the other!
So I actually managed to find a superior, newer translation. And it's even worse than I thought. He actually says it was NEVER above 10 degrees. And while one day it was at about 10 (8 when the door was opened due to smoke), the range on other days was 5-8 and 4-7 degrees.

Edit: Also just seen the Matthew Parris colum I am ambivalent on assisted suicide. But this is slightly terrifying both in thinking that the sanctity of each individual human life is one of the weak arguments (and only religious) but also in his view of the strongest objection and his response...

We can't afford a taboo on assisted dying
The argument against it is that pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths – that's not a bad thing
Matthew Parris
Friday March 29 2024, 9.00pm, The Times

The late Michael Foot, that cerebral thinker, superb orator and calamitous Labour leader, once taught me a truth I've taken to heart. In any debate (Foot said) a good speech identifies the weaknesses in the other side's case; but a great speech confronts its strengths.

As the Scottish parliament begins work on a bill to legalise assisted dying — a measure I'm sure is overdue — I could spend these thousand words on weaknesses in the objectors' case. I could tackle the religious objections, which are irrelevant unless you believe in a divinity who has sanctified all human life, and absurd if you aren't then a pacifist. I could tackle the argument that near-miraculous deathbed recoveries have occurred: yes indeed, but one Lazarus cannot justify a million torments. I could tackle the argument that unscrupulous relatives impatient for their inheritance may try to talk a sick person into ending it all. They may — but they'll need to involve the certifying doctors in their plot. All these "what if" and "what about" arguments can be resisted, and in the fierce continuing debate, they will be. But count me out.

Anecdote, too, I won't be drawn into. True stories will be enlisted on both sides. There will be tales of those who suffered to the last yet finally found God, or peace, or meaning. Or stories of loved ones for whom an assisted death was arranged, and who died blissfully happy and relieved. Anecdote can be telling, moving; but it shouldn't clinch an argument.

So I'll try here to follow Michael Foot's advice. Let's acknowledge and confront the strongest argument against assisted dying. As (objectors say) the practice spreads, social and cultural pressure will grow on the terminally ill to hasten their own deaths so as "not to be a burden" on others or themselves.
I believe this will indeed come to pass. And I would welcome it.

I don't dispute the objectors' belief that once assisted dying becomes normalised we will become more apt to ask ourselves for how much longer we can justify the struggle. Is life still giving us more pleasure than pain? How much is all this costing relatives and the health service? How much of a burden are we placing on those who love us? How much of a burden are we placing upon ourselves? We will notice others asking themselves these questions and we'll feel empowered by changing social norms to ask them ourselves. Discussion will become more open. It will become common practice to pose this question without embarrassment, and to weigh the answer up.

But it's not as if these questions are new: they already haunt and have always haunted many afflicted by intolerable misery, indignity or suffering. That's simply how people think: it's natural. It's right. If assisted dying becomes common and widely accepted, hundreds of thousands — perhaps millions — will consider choosing this road when the time comes; and in some cases, even ask themselves whether it would be selfish not to.

In short, a taboo will be lifted — and taboo is potent. What today is criminal could tomorrow become (as its proponents tend to insist) a sad but permitted option in a relatively small number of special and agonising circumstances; but within a decade or more be seen as a normal road for many to take, and considered socially responsible — and even, finally, urged upon people. Such (say objectors) is the wedge of which the Scottish proposal is just the thin end.

Yes, but what's wrong with the thick end? It will be a healthy development. In this century the future holds an almost cosmic struggle between, on the one hand, the old world with our ageing populations and inflexible economies, and, on the other, the raw and unbridled energies of an emerging, younger, nimbler and very different world, led by countries like China: all relatively new to prosperity and unencumbered by our western populations' sense of entitlement.

We in Europe and North America (and, for instance, Japan, Australia and South Korea) are increasingly weighed down by low birth rates and high longevity. It's more than a decade since in Japan sales of nappies for the elderly overtook sales of nappies for babies. One Japanese town is now recycling used incontinence pads into fuel for heating. Here in Britain it has become a common joke that our country has become a massive health service and attached care homes sector, with a state as a mere appendage, rather than the other way round.

A proportionately ever-smaller working population carries an ever-larger cohort of elderly and retired citizens, supported by state pensions and advances in medical science that sustain us into ever-longer retirements. When I was a child the average male lived to about 65, the age of male retirement. The average female lasted about ten years beyond her retirement age at 60. In 2020 the average male had lived on more than 20 years (the average female nearly 30) beyond retirement.

Good news? Often not for the final years of these extended retirements, often characterised by immobility, ill-health and dementia: and typically wildly expensive, cornering resources to fund our health and social care sectors. This imbalance helps explain governments' desperate reliance on immigration — to the rage of electorates who won't face the fundamental question: how are our economies going to pay for the ruinously expensive overhang that dare not speak its name: old age and infirmity?

It may sound brutal, but I don't apologise for the reductivist tone in which this column treats human beings as units — in deficit or surplus to the collective. For a society as much as for an individual, self-preservation must shine a harsh beam on to the balance between input and output. To protect its future, a healthy society must adapt its norms, its cultural taboos and its moral codes. This does not usually happen by decree but by a largely unconscious general creep. People begin changing their minds, often unaware of why.

I suspect — and believe I notice — that our culture is changing its mind about the worth of old age when coupled with crippling degeneration, incapacity, indignity and often suffering. If I'm right, our growing interest in assisted dying may reflect a largely unconscious realisation that we simply cannot afford extreme senescence or desperate infirmity for as many such individuals as our society is producing. "Your time is up" will never be an order, but — yes, the objectors are right — may one day be the kind of unspoken hint that everybody understands. And that's a good thing.

....Yikes.

[Tamas]

Well, perhaps he could have dulled all that edge, but this is the key I think:

I suspect — and believe I notice — that our culture is changing its mind about the worth of old age when coupled with crippling degeneration, incapacity, indignity and often suffering

I typed up the brief story of my grandparents' last years but decided against posting it. Point is, we are all going to die. Having a say in when and how is the only dignity, the only human act, that we can salvage from the process of dying.

When our current cultural attitudes and laws around death emerged, just making it to age 40 was a fair success and more importantly keeping ill people alive was rarely possible. This has luckily changed. Our culture must change with that fact. What is happening now is moral cowardice damning a lot (most) people to a torturous and undignified end of their lives.

[Sheilbh]

But I think the next sentences are key:

If I'm right, our growing interest in assisted dying may reflect a largely unconscious realisation that we simply cannot afford extreme senescence or desperate infirmity for as many such individuals as our society is producing. "Your time is up" will never be an order, but — yes, the objectors are right — may one day be the kind of unspoken hint that everybody understands. And that's a good thing.

And I think this is the problem with it as a purely personal choice (the ultimate liberal perspective, perhaps), is that it's still in a social setting.

My biggest concern is that you can't have that sentence without the "unspoken hint" that you should politely, quietly die (I mean we already know how powerful a message "protect the NHS" is here).

I'm also a little concerned that thought process won't end with the elderly but move to other groups we, as a society, kind of undervalue/want out of sight.

And I know he thinks it's a weak point but I think our cultural attitudes flow from the idea of each human life having worth and value - and I do slightly wonder where we end up if that cultural value shifts or is perceived as purely religious hokum. His own view of a unit of net input and output for example is one alternative - a cold desiccated one (and what could be more British than that).

[Tamas]

I don't want to defend that guy's take specifically, I think the right answer to the problem of taking care of old people is to find a way to do olot, not to kill then off.

But for me your argument of human life having value is an argument for my position not yours.

If somebody wants to die to end their suffering and you say "no because letting you do that raises problems I have to deal with" then the only life you are valuing there is yours, most certainly not the suffering person's.

[Tamas]

I think those arguing against assisted suicide haven't internalised the fact that what happens to those wishing to die (the growing old and suffering bit) will happen to them as well.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah - I get that but I think the challenge is that we are not free self-determining individuals all equally able to make decisions. For want of a phrase, we live in a society (and one that I think is pretty callously indifferent to the elderly - or others who need care).

I'm not convinced it's possible to do the first bit of the radical individual choice, without the last bit - the unspoken hint, social pressure etc. I mean this is Britain - like 99% of our behaviour is because of unspoken social pressure. I feel like Switzerland maybe would be the model I'd be most inclined to follow.

And I worry how this intersects with other problems in our society. We've all spoken about the need to be a self-advocate sometimes in the NHS and as well as experiencing people in old age really suffering, I've also had family members who've had real nightmares on the NHS because they don't want to kick up a fuss (that social pressure), they don't feel as comfortable or able challenging someone in a white jacket as I or others do. It may be an unintended consequence, althought arguably not after that article he's made the subtext text.

Edit: I suppose the other side of that is if we were a society that actually valued the elderly and the infirm and others who might want to take advantage of this, I'd be more comfortable with it because I think it'd be more likely people were making affirmative choices on their own terms.

Edit: Incidentally - and at the risk of perpetuating stereotypes - the presence of the elderly in Taiwan was really striking. Lots of families walking around with their grandparents, or just adults out (I assume) with their elderly parents and it was similarly present in advertisements. Again I know that's a stereotype but it also felt pretty shaming to be honest.

[Josquius]

Assisted suicide is indeed a really tough one.
In theory it should be completely fine. It's your choice whether to live or not.
But in practice, yeah. The argument that there'd be a lot of outside pressures and exploitative people holds very true.
Checks on it would need to be rigorous.
And you just know it'd be very inconsistent with some healthy but mildly depressed people wanting to go whilst other decrepit walking corpses would insist on every treatment going to fight for life.

The need to kick up a fuss in the nhs thing is painful. It's something lots of people have really learned and will carry into all aspects of life leading to rampant Karenism