Italy recently waved goodbye to the loose living showman Prime Minister Silvio Burlusconi. It was a sad day for the tabloids – for years Burlusconi had generously provided them with headlines about his playboy lifestyle – but an ambiguous one for Italian voters.
For anyone not familiar with the contours of the latest debate on abortion, MPs Nadine Dorries and Frank Field have proposed an amendment to the Health and Social Care Bill which would have the effect of preventing the British Pregnancy Advisory Service and Marie Stopes International from providing crisis pregnancy counselling.
This week Unison, the UK’s biggest trade union, called for a halt to coalition reforms to the NHS. With spiraling waiting lists, and large budget deficits in many Trusts, the union argues that now is "the worst possible time to bring in a major, untried, untested reorganisation".
Speaking with characteristic moderation, Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks argued this that the recent riots showed that ‘something in our moral ecology has gone astray’. Politicians and commentators have been ploughing a similar furrow. David Cameron has said the riots are a sign of ‘slow motion moral collapse’ in parts of the population. Ed Milliband basically agrees, though inevitably he has tried to create some clear red water (both ‘culture’ and deprivation matter).
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Earlier this year, the Human Genetics Commission (HGC) gave approval to preconception genetic tests that would determine whether people are carriers of diseases which could be passed on to their children.
Just under a year ago, as the big beasts of the Conservative and Liberal Democrat parties hammered out the details of a coalition deal, it seemed like British politics had been turned on its head.
Leisure centres on the Western Isles may be forced to open on Sundays under new equality legislation, according to a recent article in The Guardian.
David Cameron seemed to get on well with the Pope. He had to, of course. In spite of what Stephen Fry and Peter Tatchell would have liked him to say to the Holy Father, the Prime Minister knew that there was precious little to gain and much to lose from reminding His Holiness of the very real differences between British government policy and the Vatican’s. In circumstances like this you hold your tongue and say nice things.