Robert Campbell – Page 4 – Slugger O'Toole

A U-Turn on Abortion?

Robert Campbell on May 1, 2015, 4:25 pm

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David Ford (Alliance), the Justice Minister in the NI Assembly, issued a consultation (which I wrote about here) about reform of abortion law in N Ireland, though he restricted it to fatal (lethal) foetal abnormality and pregnancy after rape and incest. Following this, he issued his recommendations (which I discussed here), including: After full and careful consideration of the evidence submitted, I have concluded that to change the law along the lines outlined in the consultation paper is the right …

New abortion proposals published…

Robert Campbell on April 17, 2015, 12:56 pm

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The Department of Justice in N Ireland issued a call for members of the public to discuss whether abortion should be allowed here in cases of ‘lethal’ foetal abnormality or for pregnancy following rape or incest, as I indicated here. The DoJ indicated that they did not wish to open the debate around abortion beyond these limits. The DoJ has now published the findings, and David Ford, the Minister, stated: My department has just completed a consultation exercise on the …

Gay conversion therapy—pray your gay away

Robert Campbell on April 15, 2015, 4:52 pm

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A conference was held yesterday (Tuesday 14 April) in London about ‘gay conversion therapy’. Its organisers included various ‘christian’ groups; it was reported in the Independent (here), Guardian (here) and Daily Telegraph (here). Parts of the meeting were closed to the press, to allow private discussion. One of the organisers’ concerns was that any opposition to their motives curtailed their ‘religious freedoms’. The recent history of homosexuality in the UK has seen remarkable changes, particularly in the last few decades. …

The Lady, the Pope and the Dwarf; the surprising history of why the UK tax year starts on 6 April

Robert Campbell on April 6, 2015, 8:03 am

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On this day in 1753, many honest, upright citizens of England and the British Empire began paying the taxes for the previous year. Such taxes were due on New Year’s Day (or the day after, the story is confused), and these worthies had refused, for 11 days, to pay up. How so? Prior to 1753, the legal year in England and beyond began on 25 March which they called ‘Lady Day’. This is the Feast of the Annunciation, when the …

Bloody foreigners coming over here and taking our medicines

Robert Campbell on April 3, 2015, 4:52 pm

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Last night, during the party leader’s debate on TV, Nigel Farage was told that he should be ashamed of himself when he sort of said that people with HIV/AIDS come to the UK to get free treatment. But, of course, that’s just a part of his party’s xenophobic, keep the others out message. Firstly, his figures aren’t quite accurate. Secondly, the ‘foreigners’ refers to people born abroad. It’s not clear how long these people have been in the UK; and …

Meningitis B vaccine and the cost of life

Robert Campbell on March 29, 2015, 1:50 pm

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The BBC reports today (here) that agreement has been reached between the Health Secretary, Jeremy Hunt (the one-time ‘Hulture’ Secretary, as James Naughtie nearly described him) and the suppliers of the Meningitis B vaccine. No exact date has been set for the introduction of the vaccine, though it will be added to the schedule of vaccinations (available here). The introduction of a vaccine against the B-strain has been delayed by a year while the Health Secretary and the suppliers discussed …

The Germanwings tragedy. A personal reflection on mental health problems…

Robert Campbell on March 26, 2015, 7:31 pm

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The media are reporting that the recent crash of Germanwings flight 4U92525 was a deliberate act by the co-pilot. Can this be so? Is this possible? Yes. I know no more than you about what happened, or the mental state of the co-pilot. There’s no doubt that similar incidents in the past were related to the mental illness of the pilot. There have been too many ‘single vehicle road traffic collisions’ where it’s abundantly clear that the driver of the …

After almost 70 years, the murder of Patricia Curran casts a long shadow

Robert Campbell on March 25, 2015, 5:57 pm

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Magna est veritias et prevailabit (Great is Truth and it will prevail) —Cicero (?) (Photo: Belfast Telegraph, Patricia Curran at centre) In the early hours of 12 November 1952 the body of Patricia Curran, the daughter of a judge, was ‘discovered’ by her brother, Desmond, just off the driveway to the family home at The Glen, Whiteabbey. She had been murdered by being stabbed 37 times. Desmond on lifting her up thought that she breathed; she was brought by the …

The Captain of the Men of Death

Robert Campbell on March 24, 2015, 1:24 pm

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Yet the captain of all these men of death that came against him to take him away, was the consumption, for it was that that brought him down to the grave. —John Bunyan Today, 24 March is World Tuberculosis Day (and here) and the anniversary of the day in 1882 when Robert Koch announced his finding of Mycobacterium tuberculosis as the causative germ of TB. TB, in those days was a major cause of death, accounting for perhaps 20% of …

The past is another country

Robert Campbell on March 22, 2015, 4:02 pm

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The past is a foreign country; they do things differently there. —LP Hartley A recent post about the ‘Curragh Incident’ (here) surprised me by the number and content of the replies. It was a short piece about a single event, though one that seems to have made the British government realise that they could not impose ‘Home Rule’ on all of Ireland by force. Though often called a ‘Mutiny’, this is technically incorrect. I could have written at much greater …

On this day in 1914, The Curragh Mutiny took place…

Robert Campbell on March 20, 2015, 12:57 pm

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On Friday 20 March 1914, around 60 Army officers offered to resign their commissions rather than obey orders. They were based at The Curragh, the chief barracks in Ireland; what happened become know as ‘The Curragh Incident’ or ‘The Curragh Mutiny’. The (third) Home Rule Bill for Ireland was passed in 1912, anticipating an autonomous parliament in Dublin. The original Dublin based parliament, previously subordinate to London, had achieved a larger degree of autonomy in the 1780s; It was abolished …

Drug Decriminalisation

Robert Campbell on March 6, 2015, 9:48 am

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Channel 4 showed a documentary a couple of days ago about cannabis. One of the commentators was Dr David Nutt, once the government’s chief drugs adviser until he suggested some decriminalisation, when he was very unceremoniously sacked. Cannabis now comes in two varieties, the original ‘hash’ and modern ‘skunk’. Skunk is a hybrid, and is certainly more dangerous than hash. Without criminalisation, skunk probably would not have been developed, according to the Channel 4 programme. Skunk was developed in the …

Austerity and Health

Robert Campbell on March 5, 2015, 12:45 pm

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For the last 30-plus years, the dominant politico-economic theory in the West has been ‘neo-liberalisation’. Roughly, this believes in the pre-eminence of the market, that the market is always right, that government should be small and not provide services. The response of neo-liberalism to bad times is austerity. A retrenchment of state services, and an emphasis on debt reduction. What effects does austerity have on health? It’s not so easy at this stage to be factually certain, for statistics often …

Women; they miss nothing, and here’s why

Robert Campbell on February 27, 2015, 9:08 pm

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It’s distinctly uncomfortable for us men, but some women are, biologically, much more equal than we are. Of course, women can do all sorts of things that we can’t, like having babies, but this is far worse. They have better colour perception. Well, perhaps 20-50% of them do. And they can use it against us, well against some of us. And around 5% of them are really super in this. Now, I’m sure that you recall that we have three …

What colours are #thedress ?

Robert Campbell on February 27, 2015, 3:48 pm

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We were told this morning that the internet had been ablaze all night with the most urgent question in the world’s history. Exactly what colour was #thedress ? Most people thought it was blue and gold; a minority saw it as blue and black. A quick check with the colour picker in Photoshop shows that it’s blue and black, even if it doesn’t look it. The Journal.ie produced one of the best explanations of the phenomenon. So, we should see …

The ‘control’ of women

Robert Campbell on February 25, 2015, 4:45 pm

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A recent post here by Belfast Barman got me thinking about just why men have a ‘need’ to control women, to be the ‘master’. To try to understand, we need to go far back in time. The lineage of Homo Sapiens is now clearly differentiated from the Neanderthals, with whom we once co-existed. The control of fire, and the invention of cooking meant that much more energy was available, and this lead to larger brains. It’s now clear that though …

Confronting the challenge of poverty and inequality…

Robert Campbell on February 8, 2015, 11:45 am

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We often think that poverty is inevitable, and many people (think that they) know by itself that poverty is a cause of illness and social problems. The poor are always with us, they say, rather misreading Deuteronomy and St Matthew. Attitudes today are rather different from Victorian times, when the poor were seen as either ‘deserving’ or ‘non deserving’, groupings which were subjective and moralising. If you were ‘deserving’, you got into the workhouse; too bad if you were deemed …

Your 60 second guide to ‘three-parent’ babies…

Robert Campbell on February 3, 2015, 5:59 pm

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The Westminster parliament will discuss ‘mitochondrial transfer’ or ‘three-parent’ babies today. Concerns about the ethics and safety of this have been raised. If parliament agrees, such procedures will become legal in the UK. There has already been considerable discussion and debate about this, as Polly Toynbee describes. The problems seem to centre around the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA), and confusion of this with the DNA which we inherit from both our parents. A chicken’s egg is a cell; the yolk is …

What is a ‘person’ – the thorny question at the heart of the abortion debate

Robert Campbell on February 3, 2015, 9:02 am

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The NI Department of Justice has recently begun a review of the abortion laws in N Ireland; this was limited to the place of abortion in cases of fatal foetal abnormality, or pregnancy as a result of actions, such as rape and incest, which are criminalised. The Human Rights Commission was recently granted leave to pursue a judicial review of the abortion laws in NI. The leader of the SDLP, Dr Alasdair McDonnell has “unequivocally” rejected calls for abortion. According …

On this day 31 years ago, a 15 year old school girl gave birth at a grotto in County Longford…

Robert Campbell on January 31, 2015, 9:22 am

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On 31 January 1984, Ann Lovett, a 15-year old schoolgirl from Granard, Co Longford, gave birth in the open beside a grotto to the Virgin Mary. She was found later, bleeding heavily; both she and her infant son died. The Wikipedia article is quite short, and well worth reading. The story broke some days later, with considerable interest from the media. From the Examiner: Everyone wanted to know how a girl from a family of nine siblings in a town …