I thought that too, but the map for the UK is very weird - there is no direct connection between what looks like Birmingham and what looks like Manchester or anywhere in the North West of England. So, no West Coast Main Line? Instead they have the rail line veering off towards the peak district.
I don't know whether they're decades out of date or just plain wrong - the West Coast Main Line was "opened between 1837 and 1881" according to Wikipedia.
I would say normalizing armed law enforcement wearing masks and refusing to provide any ID is utterly bad for the COUNTRY.
Or maybe it's only bad for the people who get assaulted or shot by them and have no way of recourse. Let's hope that's not you, eh?
I got shudders just re-reading it when I came across:
'“It’s too late to vid your wife,” the fasrad said. “There are
three emergency-rockets in the stern; if you want, I’ll fire them
off in the hope of attracting a passing military transport.”'
No one is forcing parents to vaccinate your kids. It's just that in sane societies we say you can't use a public school if you're not vaccinated and otherwise healthy.
A moment's thought will tell you that it's to protect kids that are at risk from infectious diseases (e.g. immunocompromised cancer patients) that cannot be vaccinated.
So most people would agree that it's unfair that a cancer patient cannot attend a public school, through no fault of their own, because a parent wants their healthy kid to attend the school unvaccinated. We balance the rules accordingly.
> No one is forcing parents to vaccinate your kids.
Yes, they are. If your kids are not allowed to attend school, then you are being forced to vaccinate them because you may not have other options. Claiming otherwise is gaslighting.
> It's just that in sane societies we say you can't use a public school if you're not vaccinated and otherwise healthy.
So do those parents get a voucher for the funds pertaining to their child’s public education, if they’re prevented?
Of course, we just don't agree on when it is acceptable. Between the ages of -.75 and -.50, it's generally legal to. Shifting the Overton window to make it legal for ages up to, say, 15, would be one for an ultra-left wing party to throw out there, just to disrupt the national conversation.
No they are not. If you abuse them you can be put in prison and unlike property you can't sell them or use them as collateral. Propertarian ideology is delusional.
I used the word “property” in quotes because I am just repeating the word the earlier comment used. I’m not suggesting you can sell people. You’re attacking a strawman.
Regardless - my point stands that children belong first to the parents. Using words like “abuse”, which aren’t applicable to this situation at hand, is just a way to appeal to emotion rather than acknowledging that states taking over parental judgment is explicitly authoritarian.
It is for parents to judge what medical care is appropriate. You’re making it seem like everyone must consent to injecting whatever the government tells them, which is dystopian.
No, children are not dolls for parents to neglect as much as they want with no legitimate justification. Are they allowed to withhold food too? Keep them from getting school? Marry 12 year olds off?
If they want to homeschool, yes that is their fundamental right. Not everyone has to share the same culture or knowledge or way of life. As for food - do you think all Arab households should behave their children taken away when they withhold food for religious fasting?
I understand that you don’t understand that religious fasting is literally “withholding food” - which you had a problem with until you flip flopped apparently. Sigh.
I didn't amuse your goal-moving example because it's not related and you're not bringing it up in good faith.
I have never met in my entire life, in America, a family that engaged in religious starvation fasting. Not Catholic, not Jewish, not Muslim. Their fasting rules were eating bland food or only at certain times of the day. And it's for a limited period of time.
But if a family makes a child go without eating for any prolonged period of time not for a medical necessity (pre-surgery, for instance), yes, they should get a a check-in from social services.
And to go even further, if you only feed your child bad foods on purpose - like only bread and potatoes every day, when you can afford real food and diversity - you should also get a visit from social services.
I seriously don't get why you're defending people like the Turpins. Do you genuinely not understand why these laws are necessary and why it is pivotal we have basic protections for children from their parents? You don't even need to look past Hollywood with Honey booboo and Justin Bieber and all that lot to see how dangerous parents can be, let alone the insidiousness and commonality of the lower-profile cases.
Again, a number of sitting members of legislation in 2025 are arguing that children as low as the age of 12 should be allowed to be married off to adults who then (if they haven't already) rape them. And that child cannot legally get divorced without their parent's consent!
In one hearing the politician admitted to knowing an example! So you can't even say "well it never happens."
I can't believe it needs to be argued: in any just and equitable society, children have a right to a basically healthy upbringing. That means socialization, education (both physical and mental), healthcare, nutrition, and protection from those who would do them harm.
They are not "lesser people" or property of their parents. It is a practical reality that some of their rights must be ceded because they are incapable, but their parents are meant to be guardians and not owners.
They're very much applicable to the situation at hand. Abusive parents are a common enough phenomenon that it can't be handwaved away, and istm that abusive behavior is just taking this ownership idea to its logical conclusion, since there are few/no restrictions on exploiting or even destroying your own property as long as it doesn't impact others.
Abusive parents are extremely rare. It should be hand waved away to give most parents the freedom to parent that they fundamentally deserve. Withholding a vaccine isn’t abuse - it’s just a legitimate decision to live differently and judge risks and benefits differently. What you’re arguing for is a highly controlled authoritarian culture with no room to think differently from the powers that be. Free societies value individual rights above societal ones exactly to avoid this basic authoritarian trap.
The people who actually study this say you could not be more wrong. They probably also say you should stop randomly making things up and should consider what else you're also wrong about.
"Approximately 1 in 4 children experiences child abuse or neglect in their lifetime ... 91% of the time, the perpetrator is a parent." - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK470337/
"Statistics provided by the Department of Children and Families (DCF) ... show that in about 82% of substantiated abuse cases the alleged perpetrator was the birth parent." - https://www.cga.ct.gov/PS98/rpt/olr/htm/98-R-0509.htm (adoptive parents are in there too but counted separately, in case you're wondering)
I don't care how you slice the numbers, there's no way to get from 23% of children (90% of 25%) in the US having abusive parents to abusive parents being "extremely rare" unless your definition of "extremely rare" here is utterly insane.
Searching for things that confirm your view isn’t the way you find answers.
As an example, your first link isn’t even a real study. Hosting some text on a .gov website doesn’t make it correct. And Statpearls is basically a low quality scammy source. But you don’t need to know that about its reputation - just reading your own link’s content would make it obvious that it is REALLY low quality - in this case written by a couple random grad students.
Since we’re cherry picking things, I’ll quote this from your own source, which shows that even when you use very broad definitions, abuse is extremely rare:
> In the United States, Child Protective Services estimated that 9 out of 1000 children are victims of child maltreatment.
> > In the United States, Child Protective Services estimated that 9 out of 1000 children are victims of child maltreatment.
That's in literally just the one year (2012) and just within cases reported to CPS that year. There's an absolutely massive difference between that and the actually relevant statistic which covers the span of childhood and also isn't limited to just CPS referrals which the CDC calls out as likely underrepresentative.
All of your examples tell me you need to find a wider circle of news to read.
At the very least you're repeating propoganda. Every one I could easily refute, but what would be the point? I'm not going to convince you. You're happy in your bubble.
But don't think for a moment that you are certainly right.
Your comment is just meaningless words disconnected from reality.
And a very large number of people agree with me on some level.
We saw the evidence of that at the last election.
So my "bubble" is pretty large actually.
What about yours?
Read the transcript.
"...the sunny places, think about Muscat in Oman, or Las Vegas in the US or Johannesburg in South Africa. So places like that get more than 90% of the way to 1 GW constant electricity with those cloudy days. In a place like Washington or Madrid, you're in the high 80s. So 88% in Madrid, if I remember correctly. And then for Washington, it would be somewhere there as well.
And then if you have the bad luck to be stuck in Birmingham, in the UK.
That's a cloudy place. And you barely have, like, two very, very sunny months, like in the middle of the year in summer when it's actually, it is actually sunny. Most of the time it's various degrees of cloudy. So even there you have more than 60% of the way to 24/365"
So it's not as big as a drop-off as you might think with solar+battery. And that's not accounting for wind being a much better performer in the UK.
I don't know whether they're decades out of date or just plain wrong - the West Coast Main Line was "opened between 1837 and 1881" according to Wikipedia.
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