[bryony]

Whoa!

This thread was only marginally relevant to this forum in the first place. Now it is completely out of hand, with valued contributors to the forum at each other's throats. However tempting it is to join the fray, it now has nothing to do with our topic, and has become a highly polarised and divisive discussion which is more political than anything else. Another recent thread raised complaints because it merely touched without acrimony on religion, another topic which tends to be destructive of reasonable debate, but there the participants were disclosing religious beliefs only to explain aspects of their positions in an on-topic discussion, which seems to me admissible, not to polarise that discussion by bringing in highly controversial external issues.

I am also never keen on petitions which merely seek support for a single alleged solution to a problem, rather than one that invites votes for or against with at least some admission by the petitioner that alternative action (or none) may be more appropriate.

Hi Annabel,

You're right.

Some of us are old enough to remember when global destruction was a very real threat by people who wanted to destroy freedom. Some of us are too young to know what that's like. There will be a void of understanding.

Since then the cultural marxists have found better ways to do it, inch by inch, by infiltrating the culture and implementing political correctness. Slowly but surely, for the best of reasons, Orwell's Newspeak will be implemented, where certain concepts cannot even be thought about.

Meanwhile vulnerable people suffer for other people's principles/activism, instead of taking the safe course.

I won't be contributing any more to this thread - anything further would be a waste of time and space.

B.