So happy for my southern friends and family, so frustrated with Northern Ireland being left behind again.

Pretty much. It’s more the prods than the catholics that are the problem in NI with regard to abortion. The DUP would fit in very well in the bible belt.

Thank you for your hard work. Once again you have put the North to shame!

She’s a horrible mix of stupidity and white privilege. She’s basically saying:

To be fair, we bury them faster. Can’t have the deceased sitting in your living room for a couple of weeks.

Yeah, the judge’s comments about that were interesting. He seemed to be saying that he was going to give them the benefit of the doubt and put those sentiments down to bad advice from the CLC “advisor”, because if they represented the parents’ true views it would be harmful rather than helpful to their case. Reading…

I’m looking for somebody who has a little age, that has adult children, that kind of can connect with the bulk of the body here, Republicans and Democrats who are going through, back home the wife, the family …

A lot of the vitriol has come from the CLC etc. egging the parents on and feeding them lies. I can understand the parents being in denial and saying anything in the heat of the moment if they believe it will save their child.

Yeah. They also ignore the fact that the British judiciary is not part of the government.

Similar, but this case is about withdrawal of mechanical ventilation - Terry Schiavo could at least breathe unaided (I think). Now, the ventilator has been withdrawn, and he is still breathing. So it may become a feeding tube issue if he continues to do so.

Some so-called “pro-life Christians” over there have form in that area, right?

Oh Mike Huckabee and Ted Cruz made sure to point out how socialised medicine means disabled children are “expendable”. Not like the poor kid’s been on a ventilator in intensive care for over a year at no expense to his family or anything...

It seems to have really taken off here after the Charlie Gard case. Yes, parents and doctors disagreed and sometimes it had to be settled by court order, but the social media campaigns now result in “armies” turning up outside hospitals to harass staff and scare patients and relatives. That leads to media attention…

I dunno if it’s made the news outside the UK, but we’re having one of our distressingly frequent of late battles between a hospital and the parents over the best way to care for a terminally ill child.

Yeah, so many inaccurate and harmful portrayals out there. And every time someone does something horrible (like a mass shooting) there are people blaming it on “mental illness” as though it’s inextricably linked with doing bad things. I’m lucky that my own mental health problems are relatively manageable, but I know…

Some people get delusions with mania though. I know of one person with bipolar who became an evangelist for a different religion in each manic phase. I met a lady who thought she was Jesus Christ, my Great Aunt believed she was engaged to the head of EMI Records and that her neighbour was trying to kill her...

Uniforms have some positives, but bring their own problems. Often schools specify specific items made by a specific company, and they’re not cheap. Where I went to school in Northern Ireland, walking through the wrong part of town in the wrong uniform would get you beaten up.

I’ve got some (fairly distant) relatives on that trajectory at the moment. When you’re at a family wedding and a 16 year old is passed out drunk before the meal because his dad was too busy propping up the bar himself to notice... that’s a bad sign.

I’ve also met a surprising number of people who say “I don’t drink alcohol any more, I only drink (beer/wine)”

Best of luck to you!