Britain Archives | Page 46 of 46 | MelaniePhillips.com

Where do we draw the line on the right to life?

December 6, 2016December 12, 2016 Melanie

Scientists will propose at a conference tomorrow that human embryos used for experimentation should be kept alive in the laboratory for double the present legal limit of 14 days. Such an extension, they argue, would bring significant insights into congenital conditions, heart disease and cancers. The only argument against it, they say, is the risk of a public backlash. That particular concern is echoed by the philosopher Baroness Warnock, who has warned that opponents of embryo research will seize on attempts to extend the limit as an opportunity to try…

Britain

It’s time for an outsider to clean up the Met

November 28, 2016December 12, 2016 Melanie

Over the course of this month alone, there have been three devastating findings against the Metropolitan police. The commissioner, Sir Bernard Hogan-Howe, will retire next February. The rules were recently changed to allow the appointment of a foreign national. Whether the new commissioner comes from abroad or outside the police service, the time has now come for an outsider to cleanse these Augean stables. My Times column (£)

Lady Hale is not fit to be President of the Supreme Court

November 26, 2016December 6, 2016 Melanie

The president of the Supreme Court, Lord Neuberger, is to retire next summer. His deputy, Baroness Hale, was considered the favourite to succeed him. Until, that is, Lady Hale made an extraordinary comment in a lecture she delivered to law students this month in Kuala Lumpur. A few days before, the High Court ruled that the government couldn’t use the royal prerogative to trigger Article 50 of the Lisbon treaty and start Britain’s exit from the EU. In the ensuing uproar, the press accused the judges of throwing a spanner…

Britain USA

Trump and Corbyn Have More in Common Than You Think

November 24, 2016December 6, 2016 Melanie

Just like the Labour leader, the US President-elect is protectionist, isolationist and dead against globalisation You will, by now, be familiar with the argument: that Donald Trump’s triumph in the American presidential election represents a kind of social and political apocalypse. That his victory came at the hands of fundamentally irrational, bigoted, disgusting extreme right-wingers beyond the pale of civilised values. It is axiomatic that there can’t be any good reason behind voting for him, so it is assumed that 60 million Americans were duped by ‘fake news’ which must now…

Britain

Royal Sense of Duty May Die with the Queen

November 21, 2016December 6, 2016 Melaniebritish, monarchy, queen

Our sovereign might be the last to believe in a higher cause than family or personal desires A sly joke that did the rounds during America’s traumatic presidential election campaign featured the Queen saying to the American people: “Having second thoughts?” The suggestion that America may have lost something of immeasurable worth when it declared independence from Britain in 1776 is, however, not altogether a joke. The British monarchy is probably the most well-known and yet the least understood institution in the world. That’s why The Crown, the drama series…

Britain

A Prejudice Unlike Any Other

November 10, 2016December 6, 2016 Melanieantisemitism, britain, jewry

It’s been an average kind of week for Jews in Britain. Here are a few recent items which you may have read in the Jewish Chronicle. A speaker at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies claimed that Zionists were mobilising subversive power to “outlaw” criticism of their activities, “Zionism was a parallel movement to Nazism” and Zionists “conspired to try and increase antisemitism in order to force Jews to Palestine”. Sheffield Hallam University in South Yorkshire was ordered to compensate a disabled Jewish student for failing to address his…

Britain

Why the Judges Have Got it Wrong on Brexit

November 7, 2016December 6, 2016 Melaniebrexit, britain, eu, may

Legal experts have challenged the High Court’s judgment more effectively than Theresa May The High Court ruling that parliament must give its consent before Britain can begin to leave the EU is redolent with irony. The argument that parliamentary sovereignty must not be overridden was brought by people who themselves want Britain to remain in the EU and who so negate the sovereignty of parliament. Conversely Brexiteers, whose cause is the restoration of parliamentary sovereignty, put themselves in difficulties by inveighing against a ruling which seeks to uphold that same…

Britain

If You Don’t Marry, Don’t Expect the Benefits

November 1, 2016December 6, 2016 Melaniebritain, marriage

Those particular about their ‘lifestyle choice’ have been undermining marriage for decades Tomorrow the Court of Appeal will hear a case brought by a man and a woman who want to have a civil partnership which the law won’t allow them. Civil partnerships, introduced in 2004, provide a range of legal rights to “two people of the same sex” but not those of the opposite sex. Rebecca Steinfeld and Charles Keidan, who have been living together for the past six years, claim this discriminates against them. According to the equal…