An Irish palliative care specialist has spoken against assisted suicide, saying death is not a solution.

During Palliative Care Week in September, themed “Living for today, planning for tomorrow”, Dr Regina McQuillan, spoke to the Irish Times about the issues with assisted suicide from an end-of-life care perspective.

McQuillan, who is a palliative care consultant, opposed Ireland’s Voluntary Assisted Dying Bill 2024 on behalf of the Irish Palliative Medicines Consultants Association when it was being debated. The Bill has stalled following a change of Government.

McQuillan stated that assisted suicide “creates the idea that for some situations, death is a solution to some problems”, and suggested that it should not be seen as a healthcare issue, but rather as “a societal response to distress”.

The doctor added: “research shows that most people look for assisted suicide or euthanasia when they lose independence”.

She criticised discriminatory attitudes towards disabled people and reasoned that people need help to live well rather than viewing a life dependant on care and support as one not worth living.

“Families up and down the country are being torn apart to deliver profits for big gambling corporations. If we’re serious about addressing this crisis, we must start by banning gambling advertising.”

That's th stark warning from Will Prochaska, the Director of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads,as new figures sahow that Britain is in the grip of a gambling epidemic.

Almost half of adults in Britain gambled in the past month, according to new statistics from the Gambling Commission.

The annual survey on gambling harm revealed that 2.7 per cent of adults in the UK (around 1.4 million people) experience problem gambling, an increase of around 100,000 from the previous year.

It identified slot machines and in-play sports betting – where customers bet on a sports game in real time – as particularly harmful.

Chief Executive of the Gambling Commission Andrew Rhodes said: “This year’s findings deepen our understanding of consequences from gambling and provide crucial insight into risk profiles among those who gamble most frequently.

“We strongly encourage operators to use this evidence to consider the risks within their own customer bases.”

He mentioned a number of measures that have been introduced to curb gambling harm, including light-touch financial vulnerability checks for those spending £150 a month, banning auto-play and slowing the speed of online games, as well as tightening age verification in betting shops.

While the Gambling Commission said that the increase in problem gambling was “statistically stable”, Will Prochaska, the Director of the Coalition to End Gambling Ads, disagreed.

He stated: “The Gambling Commission releases these statistics as if nothing is wrong. But there’s something very wrong when over a million people have a gambling problem and millions more are being harmed.

“Families up and down the country are being torn apart to deliver profits for big gambling corporations. If we’re serious about addressing this crisis, we must start by banning gambling advertising.”

One of the very first laws passed by the Bolsheviks after their seizure of power in Russia was the legalisation of abortion. Since then, an estimated 291 million unborn babies have been murdered in Russia, making the death toll more than ten times the number of Russian lives lost in the devastating Second World War.

While the number of abortions in Russia is now much lower than it was in Communist times, abortion is still legal and widely used in the country. The Putin government has tried various things to reduce the number further, but has fought shy of an outright ban.

Among those stepping into the breach to try to save the Unborn is Natalia Moskvitina, president of Women for Life. Her organisation, which has saved more than 9,000 babies from abortion, is working hard to create a culture of life in Russia. 

“From the very beginning, we simply took each pregnant woman and offered her a psychologist, a doctor for a second opinion, a lawyer, financial assistance, cribs, strollers, basically everything you might need when you find out you’re pregnant,” she says.

“But we realized that it was like fighting windmills. You endlessly look for these strollers and cribs, (and) search for money so that a woman isn’t afraid to be left alone with a baby in her arms,” she added. “But ultimately, laws need to be passed and the medical community needs to be retrained, and we started to focus on that closely.”

Speaking of the abortion mania which swept the world in the last century, she has this to say

“As this (pro-abortion) plague began to spread throughout the world, the mentality of society as a whole has changed. And the great misfortune is that it has especially affected women,” she said. “A woman began to equate the right to an abortion with the right to freedom itself. In other words, if you can’t terminate a pregnancy, it’s as if you’re in slavery.”

“But what was forgotten is that abortion itself is slavery, especially for women, because the psychology of accepting evil changes a woman entirely at her core. And women have become embittered,” she added. “(And) not just women, but society as a whole, and not only Russian society, but the world at large.”

“We are seeking comfort, seeking pleasure, we are mired in hedonism; we are not Christ-centered. And this is a big problem, because we have forgotten that a child, a family … is the clearest marker of happiness.”

Woke entertainment giant Netflix has ended this week having lost an estimated $25 billion in stock value in the latest row over its trans indoctrination productions.

On October 1, Elon Musk encouraged his 227 million X followers to cancel their subscriptions following troubling accounts of the giant streaming platform pushing radical transgender messaging on young children and teens.

In one of many posts calling for the boycott of Netflix, Musk wrote “Cancel Netflix for the health of your kids.”  The post has been viewed over 90 million times and has received 1 million “Likes.”

By Friday, “Cancel Netflix” was trending on both X and Google as searches reportedly reached an all-time high.

Britain should re-examine current ‘hate crime’ laws to tackle its “free-speech crisis”, a Peer has warned.

The founder and General Secretary of the Free Speech Union, Lord Young of Acton, has been commissioned by Conservative Party Leader Kemi Badenoch to lead a policy review on freedom of expression.

Writing in The Daily Telegraph he called for a new “unambiguous standard” based upon Lord Justice Sedley’s famous remark: “Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.”

The Peer illustrated his concerns with reference to comedian Graham Linehan’s recent arrest by five armed police officers at Heathrow for a social media post claimed to be ‘stirring up hatred against trans-identifying men’.

He branded such examples “tantamount to criminalising certain thoughts, with courts tasked with peering into the minds of defendants to discover what they were thinking while committing a crime.”

Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.Lord Justice Sedley, 1999

Lord Young said: “One of the things I’ll be looking at is whether some speech crimes can be replaced with something more like Sedley’s standard. Instead of stirring up hatred against people with ‘protected characteristics’ being an offence, would it not be simpler – and fairer – to just make inciting violence a crime, regardless of who’s being targeted?”

He also called for non-crime hate incidents (NCHIs) to be abolished, saying the “police’s dogged investigation of hundreds of thousands of ‘non crimes’ in the past 10 years when so many actual crimes go unsolved risks turning them into a laughing stock”.

Netflix has lost an estimated $15 billion in value over the last few days after Elon Musk encouraged Netflix’s 226 million subscribers to cancel their subscriptions following multiple troubling accounts of transgender messaging to young children, tweens, and teens.  

The bad news for Netflix began Monday when Libs of TikTok posted a clip from “Dead End: Paranormal Park,” one of several animated series aimed at kids produced by Netflix.  

“This is not ok,” Musk declared.  

When Libs of TikTok issued a second post Wednesday on X highlighting another Netflix series, Musk doubled down, urging parents to “cancel Netflix.”  

“‘The Baby-Sitters Club’ pushes TRANSGENDERISM on KIDS, shames characters for ‘misgendering’ and demands hospital staff refer to and treat a boy as a girl,” Libs of TikTok wrote. 

“INSANITY,” said LoTT. “This show is rated for CHILDREN. CANCEL NETFLIX.”

“Cancel Netflix” soon became the top trending topic on X, as the streaming platform hemorrhaged tens of thousands of subscribers and stock market value.

As of yesterday, Netflix shares have fallen an additional 1.04 % today after plummeting 2.3% on Tuesday and an additional 2.9% on Wednesday. 

“It somehow gets worse for Netflix,” noted America First commentator Rogan O’Handley, a.k.a. DC Draino on X.

“First they release a trans cartoon for kids from a guy who celebrated Charlie’s murder,” Handley said. “Then Elon Musk says he’s cancelling his Netflix subscription which triggers a boycott.”

"Go Woke, Go Broke" - it can be true, if we all join and and help to make it so. Cancel Netflix NOW!

The nation of Slovakia has rejected European Union legislation by amending its constitution to enshrine recognition of only two sexes, ban the practice of surrogacy, and restrict adoption to heterosexual married couples.  

By doing so, the Slovak nation of 5.4 million people has asserted the primacy of its own laws over those of the EU and taken a strong stand in defense of the family and Christian morals. The amendment states that Slovakia retains sovereignty in matters of “national identity,” especially regarding “fundamental cultural-ethical questions.” 

“The Slovak Republic recognizes only two genders, namely male and female, which are biologically determined,” states the amendment that won approval in the nation’s parliament on Friday.  

The amendment also establishes that only married couples can legally adopt children, making it impossible for homosexuals to adopt. A Slovakian amendment passed in 2014 defines marriage solely as a union between a man and a woman. 

The amendment, which political observers predicted would fail, narrowly passed with the required three-fifths majority – 90 votes of the 150-seat council – after 12 conservative opposition lawmakers joined the ruling coalition. 

Parental consent is now also required for students to participate in sexual education. 

When the amendment was first published in late January, Slovakia’s nationalist Prime Minister Robert Fico echoed President Donald Trump’s inauguration speech, “There are two sexes, male and female,” defined at birth.

He further asserted an imperative to champion “the traditions, the cultural and spiritual heritage of our ancestors,” to construct a “constitutional dam against progressive politics,” and restore “common sense.”

President Peter Pellegrini indicated that he would sign the amendment. 

“At a time of enormous division within Slovak society, a constitutional majority is an important signal that there is agreement on a specific issue across the political spectrum, and it must be respected,” said Pellegrini after the vote.

In a fiery speech at CPAC Hungary 2025 in May, Prime Minister Fico emphasized that he would continue upholding the country’s traditional Christian family values.

In hs May 29th speech, Fico stressed that the essence of Slovakia has been built on hundreds of years of traditional Christian family values, specifically, the ideas that marriage is between a man and a woman and that there are only two genders, and he will work to uphold these sacred values. The prime minister has a long history of affirming Christian family values and opposing globalism.