Published on
24 March 2014
We have argued previously on this blog against Physician-Assisted Suicide (PAS) (here and here). In both instances we sought to make a rational case against based on the premise that helping anyone to end his or her life is contrary to the value of liberty: with destruction of an individual’s life goes destruction of the […]
Published on
11 March 2014
Liberty is a premise upon which physician-assisted suicide is routinely advanced. Some of those suffering from serious and incurable illness or distress seek to argue the case that their suffering is a bondage from which only death can free them. Such suffering is, of course, naturally subjective in the sense that what one person might […]
Published on
3 March 2014
To the delight of secularists and ‘animal rights’ activists the Danish parliament last week passed a law banning Kosher and Halal methods of slaughter on the grounds that these violate the rights of animals. Dan Jørgensen, the Danish minister for Food, Agriculture and Fisheries told Denmark’s TV2 that ‘animal rights come before religion’. Unsurprisingly, Jewish […]
Published on
14 January 2014
Into another year the Jimmy Savile inquiry rumbles on. Today The Guardian runs a front-page article about a lawyer representing around sixty victims who is calling for a judge-led inquiry that should have access to evidence collected by other investigations. The extent of this scandal in particular, and the more widespread, even routine, sexual abuse […]
Published on
18 November 2013
Posted in Conscience, Culture, Human Life, Human Rights, Legal Affairs, Moral Philosophy, Morality in Public, Virtue
‘In any legal system, whether a given norm is legally valid, and hence whether it forms part of the law of that system, depends on its sources, not its merits.’This working definition of ‘legal positivism’ has a certain notoriety, even while it provokes disagreement. This legal tradition is popularly understood, and with some rationale, to […]
Published on
28 October 2013
‘We don’t do God’ said Alastair Campbell. In an increasingly secularised world the idea that religion might play any constructive role in public life is ever more considered a relic of the past. Religious institutions are considered at best well-meaning repositories of old thoughts in beautiful buildings the like of which we shall simply not […]
Published on
9 October 2013
Posted in Civil Liberties, Conscience, Culture, Human Life, Human Rights, Morality in Public
In the aftermath of horrible deaths at parental hands of Baby P., Daniel Pelka, Hamzah Khan and Keanu Williams, questions are naturally being asked as to what more might have been done by way of prevention. Unsurprisingly, the parents of these poor boys have been sentenced to prison. On paper perhaps, and technically, the local […]
Published on
1 October 2013
With publication of a series of YouGov polls the State’s funding of religious education is once again in the news. Secularists have renewed their assault on all things religious, and public and religious leaders have responded saying that State-backed faith schools are a ‘precious right’ and that it is wrong to drag children into an […]