Friday, December 08, 2023
Tra, La, La.
An unnamed teacher at Red Bud High School in Illinois reportedly called an LGBT club "Bubbles" to keep its true meaning hidden from parents, violating the district's policies. Emails obtained by Parents Defending Education show the teacher explaining how to hide information from parents, including not inviting parents into Google Classroom. Read more. Freedom Post. |
The Insanity Never Ends.
Sun Prairie Area School District in Wisconsin is being investigated by the U.S. Department of Education's Office of Civil Rights for allegedly failing to properly respond to a sexual harassment complaint after an 18-year-old trans-identifying student exposed his genitalia to four freshmen girls in the girls' locker room. The senior boy, who was not in their class, reportedly announced he was trans and stripped down in front of the girls. Read more. Freedom Post. |
And AGAIN - The Insanity Never Ends.
A set of Christian parents in Colorado is demanding answers from the Jefferson County School Board after their 11-year-old daughter was assigned to sleep with a trans-identified boy on a cross-country school trip to Philadelphia and Washington, D.C. The parents, who said they were assured that boys and girls would not be roomed together, allege that school officials lied to the other girls in the room about the situation and expected their daughter to do the same when she found out the roommate was a boy. Read more. Freedom Post. |
A Tad Barbed Maybe But Littlejohn Is Highly Accurate.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12839261/tory-mps-illegal-migrants-british-people-richard-littlejohn.html
Thursday, December 07, 2023
Rishi - I'm Guessing That Your Days As PM Are Numbered.
Robert Jenrick's brutal resignation letter in full as immigration minister quits
Read Robert Jenrick's resignation letter to the Prime Minister below.
Naive Or What?
Bethlehem Christians visit US with appeal or peace plan.
A trio of Christian leaders are visiting the US capital carrying a letter signed by churches in Bethlehem, the city in the occupied West Bank long heralded by Christians as the birthplace of Jesus Christ, urging President Joe Biden and congressional lawmakers to push for a permanent ceasefire in Gaza and work to establish lasting peace in the region. CT.
Blogger: 'A permanent ceasefire?' - How does this happen? How would that have worked with Hitler and Stalin? Christians must face reality. Not to do so shames the faith!
Foetal Sentience.
Bill on foetal sentience has first reading in House of Lords.
(Photo: Getty/iStock)A Bill on foetal sentience has had its first reading in the House of Lords this week.
The Foetal Sentience Committee Bill was introduced by Lord Moylan and seeks to "make provision for a Foetal Sentience Committee to review current understanding of the sentience of the human foetus and to inform policy-making; and for connected purposes".
In 2020, the All Party Parliamentary Pro-Life Group published a report summarising developments in medical science and academic research that included evidence that babies can feel pain in the womb, possibly as early as 12 weeks.
Pre-born babies undergoing NHS surgery for spina bifida are given pain relief from 20 weeks onwards, but this is not provided for babies being aborted at the same stage of gestation.
Today, more babies are surviving an extremely premature birth and guidance from the British Association of Perinatal Medicine permits doctors to intervene in the saving of babies born at 22 weeks.
Welcoming the bill's first reading, pro-life group Right to Life UK said it was "significant given the rapid developments in scientific knowledge relating to the development of the unborn child as well as developments in medical science since the Abortion Act was passed in 1967, and the abortion time limit was last changed over 30 years ago in 1990".
Right to Life spokesperson Catherine Robinson said: "Experts are increasingly providing evidence that suggests that unborn babies may feel pain from as early as 12 weeks gestation, well before our current 24-week abortion limit. Such evidence should be taken into account in our abortion law and when the Government is developing policy." CT.
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Bad Religion Damages The Christian Faith.
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"Tirian had never dreamed that one of the results of an ape setting up a false Aslan would be to stop people believing in the real one."
CS Lewis, The Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle. (Not read 'em? It leaves a gap in your understanding of Christianity.)
Re: NHS: Please Can We Learn From Those Who 'Do' Rather Than From Those In The UK Who Pontificate?
Why Labour believes Australia has the answer to fixing the NHS
During visit to Sydney to see ‘urgent care’ neighbourhood clinics, Wes Streeting hails country's approach: spending less but achieving more
ByLaura Donnelly, HEALTH EDITOR, IN SYDNEY1 December 2023 • 9:00pm
Wes Streeting wants to turn healthcare on its head.
To that end, the shadow health secretary has flown more than 10,000 miles, embarking on a whirlwind tour of Australian healthcare to see what lessons the UK can learn.
The case couldn’t be more urgent. For one thing – as Mr Streeting jocularly points out, to his Australian health officials – “you keep nicking all our doctors”.
It’s not a claim they can deny. The brain drain of UK medics to Australia has only intensified in recent years.
As Mr Streeting visits health facilities and meets officials across Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney, British accents ring out at every turn, with tales of deserting Northamptonshire, Yorkshire and west London for a better life Down Under.
There has long been a pattern of young British medics seeking to spend a few years in Australia, with some putting down roots.
But it is absolutely clear that the exodus has increased in recent years.
At every visit, medics tell how they are increasingly being lured not just by a lifestyle of sea, surf and sand, but by the promise of lucrative work, under less punishing working conditions in a health system which is not buckling under the strain.
Mr Streeting is in Sydney, on a visit to Maroubra Medicare Urgent Care Clinic.
The unassuming health centre, in a suburb of the city, is one of 38 which the Labor government has opened since being elected to office in May last year, with plans for 20 more by the end of this year.
Last month, Mark Butler, the health minister, told the Australian parliament that so far the sites – which are open 8am to 8pm – have significantly reduced pressures on emergency departments.
Around half of presentations to A&E are classed as “semi or non-urgent” he told MPs – and areas with the new units have seen the number of such cases turning up in emergency departments fall by one fifth.
One third of cases are dealt with at weekends, one fifth in the evenings, and one in three patients are children under the age of 15, he told MPs.
In introducing the policy across Australia – a country which develops many of its health policies on a state rather than federal basis – Mr Butler had a fight on his hands.
Mr Streeting met Mr Butler on Tuesday in Canberra in a series of meetings to help UK Labour develop its health policies, and learn from the Australian party’s electoral success.
The Australian Medical Association, the country’s equivalent of the British Medical Association (BMA), has bitterly opposed the drive, seeing it as a threat to the current system of GPs.
“It was really striking talking to Mark Butler at this stage in the life of the Labor government in Australia,” Mr Streeting reflected after touching down in Sydney.
“He’s got the scars on the back from taking on vested interests and taking on opponents of reform.”
In the UK, the BMA has a long history of rejecting such changes.
Back in 2008, the union led a campaign against Labour’s plans for a network of polyclinics, leading the normally mild-mannered Alan Johnson to accuse it of a “ludicrous misrepresentation” of the then government’s proposals.
With the union still more militant today, Labour is braced for pushback to its latest policies – but Mr Streeting expresses a determination to “be the patient’s champion” in changing the fundamental shape of health services.
“What I want to do is turn the NHS on its head,” he tells senior officials and GPs at the urgent care clinic.
“To move it from a system that is overly focused on hospital care, with so much late-stage diagnosis, basically a sickness service, to a neighbourhood health service, that gets to people faster, diagnosing and treating faster, and crucially joins up care, so patients no longer feel like they are being pushed from pillar to post.”
Doing this isn’t just about major reform – but also about getting some basics right: like helping the NHS hang on to its workforce, he suggests.
In the UK, patient satisfaction with GPs is at a record low.
But so too is GP morale, as measured by a number of surveys, while the numbers cutting their hours, or opting for early retirement keep rising.
Mr Streeting believes that tackling this also means reforming the GP contract to reduce bureaucracy – instead of a system where family doctors are measured and paid against compliance with hundreds of targets.
What are neighbourhood health centres?
The idea of bringing GPs together with other services in a mega clinic or “one stop shop” is one that has long been talked about.
Expand to read more
Speaking to senior managers and GPs at the Maroubra clinic, he says: “The extent to which they are tied up in red tape is just absurd. With the [GPs] Quality and Outcomes Framework we are so centrally prescriptive about what GPs’ activity and focus should be.
“That becomes the driver for everything, so GPs spend so much time ticking boxes and filling out forms, and drawing down funds, rather than being able to focus on the needs of the patient in front of them, and their community.”
Mr Streeting has already promised to increase pay for GPs who ensure patients can see the doctor of their choice, insisting the move would be cost neutral, with less funding for those who retain a “like it or lump it” approach.
“We need to bring back the family doctor,” he says.
If this brings to mind a rose-tinted vision of days of yore, the shadow health secretary says his case is also rooted in rather more hardheaded economic grounds.
“At the moment the situation is the worst of all worlds,” he says, highlighting research by the King’s Fund comparing the relative costs of GP and A&E usage.
“We are talking £40 for a GP appointment versus more than £400 for an A&E attendance” he adds, saying the NHS is too often throwing “good money after bad service”.
International league tables show that Australia’s health services outperform those of the UK on a wealth of measures: life expectancy, mortality from cancer, heart attacks and strokes among them.
Health systems compared
Australia consistently outperforms the UK in a number of key areas
Australia
UK
More doctors and nurses
(per 1,000 people)
Life expectancy at birth
4
88.3 years
Doctors
3.2
12.8
80.4 years
Nurses
8.7
More hospital beds
(per 1,000 population)
Lower share of GDP
spent on health
3.8
9.6% per GDP
2.4
11.3% per GDP
SOURCE: OECD HEALTH AT A GLANCE 2023
Much of this comes down to diagnostics: Australia has four times as many CT, MRI and PET scanners relative to its population, along with more doctors, nurses and hospital beds.
Interestingly, it achieves this while spending significantly less on health, at 9.6 per cent of GDP compared with the UK’s 11.3 per cent, according to latest comparative data from the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD).
Getting better outcomes
Mr Streeting says: “In terms of OECD countries, we are lagging behind. And in fact, one of the reasons I’m here in Australia this week is because they are spending less on health care and getting better outcomes.”
Asked about the risks Labour faces in getting its electoral strategy right on health, he has no doubt – and also says such an approach would put the future of the health service in peril.
“The biggest risk to the NHS now is that we retreat to our ‘comfort zone’ and tell ourselves this is just about investment, and isn’t about reform,” he says.
“If we just pour ever-increasing amounts of taxpayer money into a broken system, we will continue to get worse health outcomes than other leading economies. And I genuinely fear for the future sustainability of the NHS in that situation.”
The politician points out that the NHS is already soaking up 44 per cent of government spending.
“I don’t think we can afford to go higher than that as a percentage,” he says, firmly.
“It weighs heavily on my conscience that every extra penny that goes into the NHS is a penny that could have been spent on child poverty reduction, or school standards or crime and policing. It’s also money that could go back into taxpayers’ pockets.” DT.
Well. Look At The Huge Numbers From Different Religions Who Have Immigrated To The UK. The Figure Is Hardly Surprising.
Nearly a quarter of young Brits open to banning the Bible.
Nearly a quarter of young Brits would ban the Bible if they felt its pages contained 'hate speech', according to a poll.
Last month, polling group Whitestone Insights asked 2,088 UK adults if they agreed with the following statement: "Unless the offending parts can be edited out, books containing what some perceive as hate speech should be banned from general sale, including if necessary religious texts such as the Bible."
Young people aged 18 to 34 were the most likely to agree with this statement (23%), followed by 35 to 54 year olds (17%). Over-55s were least likely to agree (13%).
Lois McLatchie, of the Alliance Defending Freedom UK, expressed concern about the results in an appearance on GBNews.
She said the UK only needed to look to Finland to see the consequences of "shutting down Christians". Former Minister of the Interior, Päivi Räsänen, was last month acquitted of hate speech charges for the second time after a four-year legal battle. She was criminally charged after tweeting a Bible verse on marriage and sexuality.
"We may no longer be a majority Christian population here in Britain. That's even more reason to protect freedom of speech and belief for all," said McLatchie.
She said that worrying steps towards censorship had already been taken under the Conservative government, including the arrest of street preachers for quoting the Bible in public and pro-life campaigners being taken to court for praying silently in their heads near abortion clinics.
"Censoring one type of belief because it fails to fit with the dominant orthodoxy of our day is no better than imposing the illiberal blasphemy laws of the Middle Ages.
"We need a robust defence of religious freedom from those who craft our legislation and we need to educate the 'be kind' generation on the truly hateful consequences of censorship before this type of thinking creeps further into reality."
Wednesday, December 06, 2023
Furlough Scheme Wrecked The Economy BUT You Could Bet Your Last Dollar That This Is Precisely What Labour Would Have Done.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-12829735/hugh-osmond-furlough-destroyed-british-work-ethic.html
Sounds About Right.
Boyzone’s Shane Lynch: ‘The music industry is Satanic’
Boyzone’s Shane Lynch talks demons, deliverance and working his way back to the light. PC.
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True.
In new letter, US evangelical leaders support Israel's right to self-defence.
Southern Baptists and other evangelical leaders call on policymakers to protect the lives of innocents and say Hamas is the enemy, not Palestinians. CT.
Debate Is Dead. Democracy Is Has Almost Fully Departed.
A few years ago, when professional athletes were criticized for kneeling during the national anthem, it wasn’t always because critics disagreed with the cause that athletes were claiming or because of the irony of multi-millionaires denouncing the nation to which they owed their success. Many fans just didn’t want to see football turned into yet another stage for political activism. Even when a cause is just, healthy societies have spaces where differences can be put aside in pursuit of a common experience, whether it’s something as trivial as a televised sporting event or something as important as forming the next generation of civic leaders.
High school debate has long served this second role. The National Speech and Debate Association is the largest league of its kind in the nation. For nearly one hundred years, it has trained students to reason and speak effectively about issues significant to people and society. According to its Wikipedia page, the NSDA serves more than 140,000 students and coaches each year. It would be reasonable to think that the debaters who rise to the top of this league have become masters of reason and argument, able to speak persuasively on a range of topics. That is no longer the case.
In a clip that recently went viral, the final round of the 2021 Tournament of Champions at the University of Kentucky featured two young women of Team A, one of whom identifies as transgender, and who apparently decided they would win the round by “out-woking” their opponent. They began the round by refusing to debate the resolution, which was about the costs and benefits of the International Monetary Fund. Instead, they highjacked the forum to protest the plight of transgender debaters, made the round “a debate about debate,” and promised to “occupy the debate space until trans debaters can participate safely.”
In a saner time (and league), such behavior would result in an immediate loss. However, that did not happen at this prestigious tournament. Instead, the young men of Team B immediately conceded the round and joined a 45-minute discussion on how debaters who misgender their opponents should automatically lose. One even offered, “It’s important to recognize that debate is not about winning an argument. It’s about making sure everyone feels okay and making sure everyone feels safe.” The judges then praised Team A for their “courage” and crowned them the national Public Forum Debate champions.
It would be easy to criticize these students for making a joke out of a competition that generations of their peers worked hard to win. However, that would miss the point. These debaters didn’t invent these tactics or the ideology upon which it is based. They were taught to turn every forum into an opportunity for activism, to dismiss and denounce anyone who questions their claims, and to play the victim to be rewarded. It’s the same training that taught the “Just Stop Oil” activists to deface and destroy priceless works of art to draw attention to their cause. Most recently, a pair of Just Stop Oil climate vandals took hammers to a famous painting in the National Gallery in London.
The painting had about as much to do with fossil fuels as the IMF has to do with transgender debaters. To activists, however, that irrelevance is irrelevant. Their ideology, they’ve been taught, is the only thing in the world worth talking or doing anything about, and they will actively hijack or destroy all other human pursuits until everyone shares their singular obsession.
This reveals why such an all-consuming ideology is dangerous, no matter what you think of the causes behind it. The notion that no one should be able to do, pursue, appreciate, argue, or think about anything else but your cause is a form of intellectual tyranny that, if tolerated widely, can quickly erode the foundations of a free society. If everything must be sacrificed to your ideology, then it’s much more than a cause that demands justice. It’s an idol that demands worship.
“Good philosophy must exist,” wrote C. S. Lewis, “if for no other reason, because bad philosophy needs to be answered.” Such bad philosophy, he warned, doesn’t always take the form of “cool intellect” arguing wrongly, but often manifests as “muddy heathen mysticisms which deny intellect altogether.” I can think of few better descriptions of a debate tournament won by “out-woking” your opponent.
This Breakpoint was co-authored by Shane Morris. For more resources to live like a Christian in this cultural moment, go to breakpoint.org.
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SO One-Sided!
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