The Critic Magazine (UK)

The early supporters of assisted suicide had sinister motivations You have to hand it to them: “Dignity in Dying” are masters of re-branding. Over recent years, the lead lobby group behind attempts to legalise assisted suicide for the sick and elderly has adopted a new name, celebrity backers, and even the colour pink in an attempt to communicate a warm and comforting image.

Reopening Troubles cases threaten the bond of trust between Britain and the soldiers who risk their lives on its behalf The Government is pressing ahead with plans to repeal aspects of the 2023 Conservative legislation dealing with the legacy of the Troubles. In doing so, it is embarking on a course that could have profound consequences for the relationship between the State and those who serve in its armed forces.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is full of thin pieties about the world order You can’t accuse Christopher Nolan of lacking a theme. In his epic film, The Odyssey, one phrase that repeats, again and again, is “Zeus’ law” and its sanctity in international life. Zeus’ law is the cornerstone of civilisation. Bad things happen when people flout it. Breaching codes of hospitality, as the coarse suitors do at Odysseus’ home in Ithaka and as the murderous Greeks do at Troy, offends heaven.

Lucretius’ ancient answer to the anxieties of human existence Poems are not usually written to change lives. But De rerum natura is no usual poem. It is, in fact, an attempt – in six books of breathtakingly beautiful Latin verse – to convince the reader to commit themselves to the one true philosophy, Epicureanism.

Sonnets from the Portuguese 38: First time he kissed me, he but only kissed By Elizabeth Barrett Browning First time he kissed me, he but only kissed The fingers of this hand wherewith I write, And ever since it grew more clean and white,… Slow to world-greetings…quick with its “Oh, list,” When the angels speak. A ring of amethyst I could not wear here plainer to my sight, Than that first kiss.

The Falklands debate offered plenty of sabre-rattling, but Ed Miliband’s sanctions on Israel produced something rarer: a serious political argument “The Argentinians can smell weakness.” Oliver Dowden was doing his best to sound menacing, like a veteran of Goose Green whispering his story before drawing on a cigarette.

The real lessons of American and Israeli trolling over the Falklands Last week, Yair Netanyahu, the son of the Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu, announced on X that the Falkland Islands “belong to Argentina”. Netanyahu Jr. is a theatre student who worked as social media director for an Israeli NGO and served in the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit. He is, in other words, a seasoned online troll. Netanyahu has no principled interest in the Falkland Islands. He was just trying to goad the UK for its “hypocrisy”.

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The AfD has won a major victory — but what will it mean in terms of political power? “We will take our country back,” Ulrich Siegmund, the top Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) candidate in the state of Saxony-Anhalt, told supporters during the state elections. It worked. The AfD won 43.8 per cent of the vote, more than doubling its result from five years ago, in an election that brought an extraordinary 77.8 per cent of voters to the polls.

Domestic abuse victims will be at risk of being pressured into ending their lives If passed, Lauren Edwards’ assisted dying Bill will deliver one of the largest rollouts of assisted death in the world. Combined with its lack of safeguards to protect domestic abuse victims, this Bill presents an enormous risk to older women. Members of Parliament should be extremely concerned about passing the Terminally Ill Adults Bill without amendments that might fully safeguard these groups.