How much you want to bet this is just the first wave of such stories?

Thousands of elderly people are being forced to have tubes fitted so they can be artificially fed if they want to be admitted to a care home, a major report warns today.

There is no evidence that tube feeding prolongs life, and it deprives patients of the pleasure and social contact involved in normal eating and drinking, says a Royal College of Physicians working group which recommends that artificial nutrition should only be used as a last resort.

The report found that many care homes across the country are making it a condition of residence that people, often in the advanced stages of dementia, have a tube fitted into their abdomen.

“This is an invasive procedure with a risk, so it should not be undertaken lightly,” said Dr Rodney Burnham, chair of the working group. “One of the concerns we had was that we felt in many places there were cases where this was done without proper thought.

“This is a widespread problem. Many care homes say they will not take a patient until they have had a gastrostomy. There is no reason for them to do that. They should have nursing support.”

This would be abuse even if it turned out to prolong the life of these patients by 3 years – which I gather is most unlikely. Who wants to live like that? I am not a pro, but I do have some experience with these things, and I can tell you that forcing elderly patients – even those whose dementia is so advanced that they barely know who they are anymore – to “live” according to what’s least inconvenient to random caregivers is not compassionate.

I’m afraid we’ll be seeing more and more stories like that one, because we live in a world that values independent and unfettered living above all else, and where those whose presence is inconvenient to us (from “unwanted” babies to handicapped people to old dementia patients) aren’t welcome.

It’s a fine mess we’re in.

There’s a bad idea:

Verbal abuse isn’t pleasant. Nobody likes to be called a fat cow, or crazy or stupid, but when life’s a bitch because your partner is crude, mean-spirited or cruel, who ya’ gonna call? Traditionally you call your mom to vent, or a friend, or a therapist – or nobody, you just deal with it – but if a new bill backed by the government is passed by France’s parliament, the French will indeed soon be able to call the police when their partner bad-mouths them and he will be charged with “psychological violence.”

I assume it is always going to be “he” that gets charged, since in the longish BBC news article about this proposed innovation, including interviews with women psychologists and lawyers, I saw no mention of men being victims, only perpetrators. That tells me the bill is ideologically inspired by feminists, who seem to think that women are too fragile to fend off an insult from their boyfriend, too timid to give as good as they get, or too stupid to know where the front door is and use it.

[…]

If a woman, or a man, believes his partner is deliberately inflicting psychological cruelty on him, it is his responsibility to insist it stop, or insist they get help, or walk out. Allowing the state to decide and punish the offending party (and how would you do that? Fines? A jail term for calling your girlfriend ugly?) basically says people have no moral agency to set the rules of engagement in their most intimate relationships, essentially an idea so totalitarian that even Communist countries have never tried to implement it (Communists bugged people’s homes to ferret out politically incorrect thoughts, not to monitor domestic intimacy).

Now there are of course cases where verbal abuse leads to actual physical abuse. And there is also such a thing as verbal cruelty that is bad enough to be considered abuse. Certainly in some cases police intervention is warranted. But a bill that would allow anyone to call the cops any time their partner loses it and calls them something unpleasant? That’s just crazy.

Love the headline on this story: “Beware of friends offering sperm”. Go ahead and read the rest of the story if you want. The details don’t really matter – everything you need to know is right there in the headline.

Fortunately for me, I am not single and I did not gain any weight during the holidays.

Put on a few extra pounds this holiday season? Don’t expect a welcome mat from BeautifulPeople.com, a dating site who recently made like a high school bully: belittling and booting members for weight gain.

According to the Guardian, the site has just expelled 5,000 members for packing on the pounds. To add insult to injury, the site’s founder, Robert Hintze, stated, “Letting fatties roam the site is a direct threat to our business model and the very concept for which BeautifulPeople.com was founded.”

_______________________

Andrea adds: This sort of thing gives me cause to ponder why the divorce rate isn’t higher. Again.

_______________________

Brigitte puts on her cynical hat: Probably because the people who sign up on that site aren’t looking for marriage…

_______________________

Andrea again: Understood. But my point poorly made was that marriage doesn’t happen in a vaccuum and a culture that sells “beautiful” people for sex online, of their own free will, is missing the point entirely on what it means to be in meaningful relationship.

First rule of style: Do NOT, repeat NOT, over-accentuate your widest bit, especially if it’s not quite as shapely as it used to be. If you have a normal, full or curvy figure (i.e. if you don’t look like a skinny 12-year-old), “jeggings” really aren’t so hot.

It’s four thousand o’clock and I just got home from a trip down the east coast of the U.S. (some sightseeing, some visiting of friends, some driving through awful blizzard in upstate New York), and I just thought I’d take a minute to express appreciation for the person who first came up with the idea of a snow tire.

It’s not very profound, but it comes from the heart. Thank you.

A quick and simple way to be a better government: Don’t go ahead with this silly plan.

Parents face being banned from the school run as part of a controversial attempt to combat childhood obesity.

Health chiefs hope introducing residents-only parking areas near schools will encourage pupils to walk or cycle instead.

A French psychologist says your husband’s infidelity is actually good for your marriage.

Maryse Vaillant claims French men should stop being castigated for being serial womanisers and that keeping a mistress can actually improve their marriage.

In a controversial new book on the effects of infidelity on married life, Men, Love, Fidelity, Miss Vaillant says her aim is to “re-habilitate infidelity”.

According to figures cited in the book, an estimated 39 per cent of French men cheat on their wives at some stage in their life.

“[Most] don’t do it because they no longer love them, on the contrary,” she said. “They simply need breathing space. For such men, who are in fact profoundly monogamous, infidelity is almost unavoidable”.

Well, then, if they can’t stop themselves from cheating, they’re not exactly monogamous, are they?

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ErrzjGCi3gY]

First this, now this:

Uganda will soften its proposed anti-gay legislation, but the government denied on Wednesday that it was bowing to an outcry in the West over a controversial bill that could have seen homosexuals put to death.

Ethics and Integrity Minister Nsaba Buturo told Reuters that the revised law would now probably limit the maximum penalty for offenders to life in prison rather than execution.

“There have been a lot of discussions in government … regarding the proposed law, but we now think a life sentence could be better because it gives room for offenders to be rehabilitated,” he said in an interview. “Killing them might not be helpful.”

Well, you know. They’re not quite ready for Will & Grace reruns. In my book, life in prison should be reserved for really horrible crimes, and say what you want about homosexuality and homosexual sex (between adults), a crime it shouldn’t be. Anywhere. But it’s a (tiny, very tiny) step forward.