The most vexing problem with Brexit is Northern Ireland and its open border with the Republic of Ireland to its south.

Northern Ireland was always an anomaly.  It has been a pain the neck since Cromwell imported a bunch of extreme Protestant settlers from Scotland into Ireland centuries ago.  If it were not for these  stubborn  Protestants, who are becoming a minority in their own baileywick, by the way, the island of Ireland would be united.  In the not-so-old days the Catholic Church ran the south, but does so no longer.  The religious Protestants have increasingly less to worry about.  Northerners have been moving  and trading  easily and increasingly over the border,  coming and going constantly while the whole island is part of the EU.  Meanwhile, Northern Ireland costs the English a small fortune, but contributes little to Britain economically.

The whole Brexit fiasco could be resolved by the prime Minister announcing that she is proposing a vote in Northern Ireland on a merger between  North and South. The vote would be predicated on the termination of English subsidies, and the promise by the government in London to facilitate the move of those who strongly object to unification to England, together with financial help for them to find homes and jobs.

Doing this, with the cooperation of Dublin, of course, ( I am assuming that unification would be popular with the vast majority of Irish people, even most Norterners) would remove the need for a backstop as England leaves the EU and recognises the fact that Northerners voted strongly to remain in the EU (yes!).

I acknowledge that the corollary of this idea raises the immediate question of the future of Scotland in the union.  Scotland also voted strongly to remain (yes!) So let them go if they vote to do so, with the understanding that there would be a hard border between Scotland and England.  Being a canny lot they would apply to rejoin the EU.  They might or might not vote for independence, but in any case  this is the side effect of the manoeuvering of the Leave faction, that is, the breakup of the “United” Kingdom.  “Leave” leaders have a lot to answer for.  It’s just that they take responsibilty for nothing.

Why is this anything to do with Epicureanism?  Because in Britain friends are unfriending friends, neighbours aren’t speaking to one another, the public discourse is extreme and almost violent and families are divided.  I personally favour a new referendum, but it isn’t clear that that would achieve a resolution.  If this goes on much longer the country will not only be an economic basket case but will remain bitterly divided.  Better to have a moderate resolution.  The above idea would aggrieve a small number of northern Ireland Protestants. That  is regrettable but preferable to continuing with a situation that benefits only Vladimir Putin.

Consumer groups in the US have accused Coca Cola of trying to alter the policy of the  Centers for Disease Control in relation to sugar consumption by donating $1 million to the CDC Foundation and pressing the CDC to downplay sugar consumption as a cause of obesity and bad health (diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and cancer) and  instead talk about the importance  of exercise, which, by itself, in isolation will not reverse obesity or diabetes.  There have been no investigations or regulatory activity by Congress into Big Sugar and Big Soda under Obama or under Trump, so far.  

Just another case that illustrates who runs the country.  This is a run-of-the-mill example of how the interests of the ordinary citizen are subordinated to raising cash for Party coffers . Thousands of lives were lost before previous governments actually did something to stop Big Tobacco knowingly supply products that caused lung cancer.  Eventually, warnings were printed on cigarette packs, and cigarette use dwindled.  High consumption of sugar costs the country huge amounts in terms of healthcare.   American healthcare costs per head of population are already high enough, for goodness sake.

Moderation is a key Epicurean principle.  If the government, quaking with fear before a hoard of highly-paid lobbyists, cannot even try to protect the health of unaware consumers, then at least it shouldn’t allow the industry to peddle the lie that you can drink as much sweet soda as you want as long as you get a bit of exercise.  Stand up to these lobbyists.  Drink soda in moderation!  ( Mr. Trump, are you listening?)

“The U.S. Department of Education is sending emails to about 15,000 people across the country telling them: You’ve got money.

“These are former students — and some parents of students — who took out loans for colleges that shut down between Nov. 1, 2013, and Dec. 4, 2018.  About half attended campuses run by Corinthian Colleges. They will get their money back or have their debt forgiven — an amount estimated at $150 million, all told — under a provision called Automatic Closed School Discharge.

“As part of the Obama-era crackdown on for-profit colleges like ITT Tech and Corinthian Colleges, the Education Department wrote something called the “borrower defense rule.” It specified how students could get their loan money repaid if their schools were found to be shady. Borrowers had to submit an application and show how they were being defrauded. But if the school was shut down altogether, the loan discharge was supposed to be automatic.

“Under Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the department took a series of steps to try to delay borrower defense from going into effect, as it was supposed to do in the summer of 2017. DeVos called it: “a muddled process that’s unfair to students and schools, and puts taxpayers on the hook for significant costs.”

“But the department lost in court repeatedly and also missed a key technical deadline for replacing the rule. In October, a federal judge ordered that the department begin forgiving loans under the rule. Now, the government seems to be complying with the closed-school portion of the rule, at least.

”Since 2013, 3,600 schools have closed at least one campus, according to the National Student Legal Defense Network, an advocacy group that has filed many lawsuits against the department. Education Corporation of America, another for-profit college chain, officially closed on Dec. 5, stranding another 20,000 students. So the department’s liability could ultimately mean many more millions of dollars beyond the initial $150 million being returned or canceled.

“Meanwhile, there are thousands of students entitled to automatic relief who in all likelihood don’t know it, while the U.S. Department of Education continues to try and weaken the borrower defense rule and to slow-walk the claims of students who say they are being defrauded. Thus does Betsy DeVos, who is devoted to privately funded education and wants local government out of the education “business” ( a business??!)  and who is supposed to be a referee between the ordinary citizen and grasping capitalism, treat the weak and poor, who simply want some qualifications to get a job.”  (based on an article on National Public Radio).

My comment: For-profit schools are supposed to be the Republican answer to publically- funded education. Clearly, this system is not working or workable,  and is doing no favours at all to the children (and their parents) who have entered the lottery of private education.  Kids should not have to raise loans to go to high school.  If schools are taking per-capita public money as well as charging students extra, this is unacceptable. Education for all  is the price the rest of us have to pay in taxes to have new generations grow up employable, knowledgeable and able to make their way in the world.  S it is the level of education – and general knowledge – is hardly stellar; we shouldn’t make it worse.

In February more than 76,000 migrants crossed the Southern border without authorization, an 11 year high.

76,000 illegal immigrants in one month!

This blog is liberal in outlook, and is even run by an immigrant!  However, such a big number is shocking.  Apparently, while the majority of  Latino migrants used to be men, now they are women and children, and, to the disgust of most people, the children are being separated from their mothers and no one seems to know how many separated kids there are, where they have been sent or how to match them up with a parent, so incompetent are the immigration authorities.  All we know is that they are scattered and some are being kept in jail cells or “cages”, as Democrats affirm.

The optics are dreadful; the government should be ashamed.  But not just the American Administration.  The Governments of the Central American countries of origin of the refugees should be even more ashamed, ashamed of their drug economies, the corruption endemic in the region, and the fact that so many citizens are desperate to leave.

Having said this, and sympathized with both the adults and innocent children involved, I still have very mixed feelings about this massive influx of undocumented people.  For any country the numbers are huge .  How do you cope with thousands of mothers with tiny children? Where do you put them?  How will they earn a living with small children to look after?

But there is something else.  I came to America in 1994 with a green card wbich I applied for and received before I left my home country. As soon as possible I applied for (dual) citizenship.  This turned out to be mind-bendingly bureaucratic and lengthy business. They lost my fingerprints three times. Not a process anyone would enjoy, and quite exasperating.  Nonetheless, I struggled through the process and became a US citizen, obeying the law.  I therefore feel rather annoyed that so many people should try to enter the country illegally, assume they will get in with minimal checking or surveillance.

The other aspect of all this immigration is the reaction of people who migrated and now have a settled life and jobs.  Ask them what they think of the undocumented surge and I bet they would want it curtailed.  Why? Because new migrants undercut the wages of more established migrants, which is why immigrants in the UK support Brexit – to reduce the wage competition from East Europeans just arriving.

Life is never simple. But I would maintain that obeying the law, however inconvenient, is the duty of everyone, and of Epicureans in particular.  This is because a peaceful and pleasant life is the object of living, and you cannot achieve ataraxia ignoring the law.

There has been much debate over the profiteering and mismanagement at British privatised enterprises, such as Carillion, a “stark, rotting symbol of everything that has gone wrong with the privatisation of local public services”. What has had little attention is the sell-off of public lands in the UK that started with Margaret Thatcher about 39 years ago.

Since then, all types of public land, held by local and central government alike, has been targeted. And while disposals have generally been heaviest under Tory and Tory-led administrations, they did not abate under New Labour; indeed the NHS estate, in particular, was ravaged during the Blair years. All told, around 2 million hectares of public land have been sold to private interests during the past four decades. This amounts to an eye-watering 10% of the entire British land mass, and is about half of all the land that was owned by public bodies when Thatcher assumed power. The approximate value of that land has been estimated to be £400bn in today’s prices. This dwarfs the value of all of Britain’s other, better known, and often bitterly contested, company privatisations.

Much of the public land was sold to private-sector developers, who have long been the biggest buyers of government land. This was supposed to have helped alleviate Britain’s housing problems, but it has done nothing of the sort. Land has been sold to developers, with the expectation that there would be adequate new housing created. On the contrary developers’ bulging land banks are chock-full of land acquired from public bodies, but they have chosen not to develop it. Now local authorities are in the perverse position of needing enhanced powers to affordably acquire land for a new generation of council houses because, for four decades, they have been forced to sell the land needed for social housing. The cost of this is astounding.

Now half the public land has been sold, and it would be difficult, not to mention politically highly controversial, to get much of that land back, presumably at highly inflated prices.

If today the government could take one single action that would do more than any other to help arrest the intensification of Britain’s housing crisis, halting the sale of public land would be it. To be sure, with so much of Britain’s valuable public land having gone, much of the damage has already been done But if half of it is still left. This land should be protected, treasured, and used for public benefit, before it is too late.

(Based on a new book by Brett Christophers, professor in the Department of Social and Economic Geography, Uppsala university. His book, The New Enclosure: The Appropriation of Public Land in Neoliberal Britain)

My  comment:  This has been straight theft from future generations.  It was done to benefit the Exchequer as an alternative to putting up taxes (“dear, dear can’t increase taxes on our supporters!”) Now, in no time really, that series of windfalls has been spent.  Because you cannot create new land (statement of the obvious) the value of the scarce former public land steadily goes up to the benefit of the developers, and no one else.  Few new house are being built, but the balance sheets must look great, and donations to you- know who are probably healthy, too.  I don’t know whether this whole catastrophe can be classed as corrupt, but if you think it is, I won’t argue.

Polls show that many Americans think doctors should be allowed to help terminally ill patients end their lives.

The AMA’s Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs spent two years reviewing resolutions, not so much on whether to support the practice but on whether to take a neutral stance. On 2018 the council recommended that the Code of Medical Ethics “not be amended” and continue to refer to “physician-assisted suicide,” saying that language still “describes the practice with the greatest precision.”

Doctors showed strong support for the status quo, a  position that is increasingly at odds with public opinion.  Polls show that many Americans think  doctors should be allowed to help terminally ill patients end their lives.

Among doctors some argue that physician-assisted death should be a choice for patients who are already dying and want to end their suffering on their own terms. Those on the opposing side contend that such assistance violates one of the core principles of their profession — do no harm — and could become a slippery slope to euthanasia. There’s even disagreement about how to characterize the practice. Opponents say terms such as “aid in dying” are euphemisms that obscure the harsh reality, while proponents see “doctor-assisted suicide” as stigmatizing patients who choose it.

“This is not just a medical issue,” said cardiologist Thomas Sullivan, an AMA delegate from Mkassachusetts who agrees with the recommendation for no change. “This is a social issue. This is a moral issue. This is something that many, many people are faced with from time to time, when your own parents or your own children or your brother or sister or you are faced with a terminal illness.”
Neurologist Lynn Parry, a delegate from Colorado, said she will vote to reject the ethics council’s stance and ask it to spend more time “looking at what protections for physicians, and particularly for patients, would need to be in place” for the AMA to amend its guidance.
“How we look at the universe is really driven by our personal belief system and, in large part, by our philosophies and religious beliefs, and that’s as it should be,” she said.
Her state is among those that allow physician-assisted death. Oregon led the way with a 1994 ballot measure, followed by Washington in 2008 and then Vermont, California, Colorado, the District and Hawaii. A court case established the legality of assisted death in Montana. (California’s 2015 law was overturned by a judge last month, a decision that is being appealed.)

John Radcliffe, right, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2014, watches as Hawaii Gov. David Ige signs a bill in April to legalize medically assisted suicide.  (Sophia Yan/AP)
The practice drew intense national attention in fall 2014 after a terminally ill woman named Brittany Maynard moved from her home in California to Portland so she could utilize Oregon’s Death with Dignity Act. The 29-year-old had been diagnosed with a Stage 4 brain tumor — glioblastoma, the same aggressive cancer that Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is battling — and was told it would kill her within six months. She instead set her own timeline, taking a fatal dose of barbiturates that November.
Half a year later, a Gallup poll found nearly 7 out of 10 Americans surveyed said doctors should be allowed to assist terminally ill patients in ending their lives — a notable increase from 2014.
David Grube, a retired family physician from Oregon and national medical director for Compassion & Choices, calls the current AMA policy “antiquated.”
“ ‘Do no harm’ leads to a lot of harm in medicine,” he said, with “people on breathing machines for months and all kinds of things.” He considers the “enemy” to be terminal suffering, especially the cases where doctors can’t ease patients’ pain. Since his state passed its law, Grube said, “more people haven’t died, but fewer people have suffered.”
But doctors are still debating it.
“I just do not believe that in the medical profession, which at its core is about protecting the quality and quantity of life, we should become the agent by which we hand them a prescription so they can choose the exact time and moment of their death,” said M. Zuhdi Jasser, an internist and primary-care physician who serves as an AMA delegate from Arizona.
Jasser, who presented the resolution to maintain the term physician-assisted suicide, said he plans to vote for the association to hold firm.
“The big question that I think physicians are going to be dealing with over the next five, 10, 15 years as more of these states legalize it is: Are our ethical guidelines and core principles going to be determined by cultural shifts and by popular vote or populism,” he said, “or are they going to be things that we adhere to and hold on to regardless of the shifting winds of populists’ concerns?”. (Washington Post, June 10 Lindsey Bever?