leicsmac

On the topic of organ donation, not only should opt-out rather than opt-in be the default, but opt-out should only be permitted for agreed extremely good cause. There's far too many people that suffer and die needlessly (bolded for emphasis) because they cannot find a matching donor in time.

Assuming Robinson is still carrying an injury? Going to need Wood and Archer to be utterly magnificent. And Carse and Stokes to do a lot of the lifting too. Batting does look strongish though.

IMO The Beeb is to news reportage like Churchill said of democracy - "the worst form of (news outlet), other than all the others that have been tried". Additionally, having a news outlet not directly subjected to commercial pressure and therefore not subject to editorial slant from that source is critical, I think.

It does come back to money. Oil and gas companies have it, they want to keep it (two of the key tenets of conservatism right there), and so they value the status quo over a future where they might not get as big a slice of the pie. The vast majority of arguments I've heard (and I've heard practically all of them) against change come down, fundamentally, to not wanting short term cost and losing market control. There are no legit scientific arguments, and the environmental ones are mostly strawmen regarding birds and wind turbines or cobalt/lithium mining that they really wouldn't care about without the above economic concerns to add. The science denial is mostly just an adjutant to that belief, but a rather important one given that the policy decisions taken in its name may, one day soon, doom us all.

Apart from the bit where he's simply wanting Europe to use the cuddly American kind of oil and gas instead and overlook other ways of generating power at the expense of the future. Edit: though tbf he would be right to warn against authoritarianism regimes and dealing much with them except as a matter of utmost necessity. Pot and kettle, but also right.

Yeah, Anglophone bias plays again too.

If this is so, it's likely because it's overshadowed by the news that the most powerful man on the planet is indicating that a commonplace painkiller causes an entirely unrelated condition (to say nothing of the ableism attached by implying people on the autism spectrum are somehow defective and need to be fixed), and his UK counterpart floating ideas to make any migrant to the UK not of the right "type" (no matter their contribution to the nation) persona non grata.

...and the announcements yesterday regarding those on the autism spectrum look awfully like the crawl towards an Aktion T4. Tick another box.

All that's missing is a few details and that the timeline is a couple of years off.

There's never been any kind of differentiation (except for a very few demographic based cases) in terms of migration for them, whether "legal" or "illegal". This is just the mask slipping because they think they now have the polling power to let it slip.

Right. Don't expend the direct effort trying to control how they behave, but understanding it is really helpful I think.

This is one of those statements that The Onion could use as a satire headline but would hit far too close to the nose.

Bonkers and troubling are two very apposite words to describe it, yes.

Autistic kids on any part of the spectrum suffering from even more discrimination, and the lack of trust in even basic medicines resulting in increased incidents of death and suffering. Sorry, I should have been clearer with that first up.

The head man should have been doing that for a while now for his actions on January 6th 2021.

No doubt that they will. Not sure how much effect it will actually have on policymaking though, but it will at least highlight exactly who is responsible and why once the consequences start becoming apparent.

The cruelty is the point.

Would you mind telling more on your line of reasoning, here? Intrigued. I know invoking Godwin is rather passe these days, but the parallels with mid to late 1930s Germany is a little bit scary given the power level they have over there makes it everyone's problem.

And it being expressed like that shows off very well exactly how stupid it is.

And the self-awareness of the situation to know that the choice itself exists and can be made, yes. Use the brains that three and a half billion years of evolution have granted us, for goodness sake.

It's almost as if we're only human and profiling based on the divides we've artificially produced above all other factors is incredibly counterproductive and actually helps no one beyond the bigots.

I think this is mostly the idea, because while the policy won't change until after the elections next year (if it does), then it can be clearer now that it is being done under more severe rebuke from an increasing majority of the international community. Of course, given that they're likely not going to stop such landgrabs anyway, then perhaps the whole argument regarding timing is irrelevant as the thing is simply symbolic no matter when it's done, in which case now is as good a time as any other.

Sykes-Picot Agreement.

Timing might be off, but about time in general.

All the smarts, strength or power in the world counts for nothing unless you make the world a better place than when you came into it. And everything modern life relies upon depends on the work of people none of us here will know and likely never will. Humans are interconnected, and no man is an island. But on a more individual level, as said above, bodily health is taken for granted, so take care of it. Self-care is important.