"Chula’s powerfully thought-provoking book shows the folly of treating Western high culture as merely a tool for self-flagellation. Properly embraced, it can be a route for engagement with the equal wealth of other cultures, rather than division" https://t.co/8XTMD7JGuq

@alexanderchula is joining me on Thinking Class in November. I bumped into Alex at @BijanOmrani's book launch earlier this year and enjoyed a conversation in passing. Happily, Bijan reacquainted me with him and we now have the opportunity for a more in-depth conversation.

Press release - Assisted suicide Bill in jeopardy as majority (two-thirds) of Peers speak against Bill across two days of debate

Ten things we learnt from the first Lords debate on the assisted suicide bill:

Please join me at the Shute Festival in Lyme Regis for a conversation with @alexanderchula about his remarkable book "Goodbye Dr Banda: Lessons for the West from a Small African Country" 25 Sept 3pm. Booking link in next post...

Excellent piece by @ddhitchens in @firstthingsmag Amazing how the psychopathic origins of assisted dying get so overlooked. Hard not to see our legislators in a similar light, given their indifference to professional concerns about the vulnerable. https://t.co/9LtveNVS8Q

Touching the Assisted Suicide Void https://t.co/wYbAdhDx0R @ddhitchens lifts the dark veil of the assisted suicide polemic. As a palliative care physician, https://t.co/miP7hwBZ6p @alexanderchula’s example is all too familiar. The foolishness of MPs leaves me speechless.

Africa accounts for only 4% of global carbon emissions despite having 17% of the world's population.  Yet Western institutions keep telling us we can't use our own resources for development.  The World Bank says we "no longer have an opportunity" to develop using fossil fuels.

The *Health Secretary* is retweeting this.

We will fight this bill at every stage in the House of Lords. We halved its majority in the House of Commons at third reading, and one day we will extinguish the idea that there are some lives that are not worth living.

@AlexanderHorne1 If the House of Lords abdicates its constitutional powers in these circumstances, it has no reason to exist.

"Now, splendidly, everything had become clear. The enemy at last was plain in view, huge and hateful, all disguise cast off. It was the Modern Age in arms." After this week I feel like Evelyn Waugh at the time of the Nazi-Soviet Pact in 1939. The politics of 'progress' has

Feel the same way about the UK euthanasia law under debate today. The opponents have been valiant, but the larger problem is that UK proceduralist, Scrutonian conservatism was incapable of generating the culture war that should have happened years ago.

In Britain, you can give people drugs to end their life, but not sell them cigarettes. A woman can end her baby’s life 10 minutes before it's born. This country will save money killing the vulnerable but spend millions keeping Axel Rudakabana safe & well in jail. What a mess.

Disgusted that Jess Phillips, who is well informed about coercive control, domestic violence, and vulnerability voted for the assisted dying shitshow. Shame on the lot of them.

This is not a manifesto bill. This is not a money bill. This is not a bill which the House of Commons has passed twice in two consecutive sessions. Peers have the absolute constitutional right to reject it.

This week hasn’t felt like a policy change or legislative tinkering. It’s felt like a noxious shift in Britain’s entire moral setting.

.@kimleadbeater you are misleading the House before today’s vote. You know the Royal College of Psychiatry - the experts in capacity & coercion - has explicitly opposed your bill. It breaks my heart that you would use a sleight of hand to mislead MPs and the public in this way.

One thing I have learnt from some years in politics, victory or defeat are rarely final. So you keep on fighting.

We will

MPs have just voted in favour of the Assisted Dying Bill. Those who govern us have decided the elderly and ill may die, as may babies. In short the most vulnerable may face death because of their vulnerability. This is not civilisation. It’s barbarism.