Devaluing wouldn't help Ireland. Defaulting on the bank senior debt (i.e. defaulting against the ECB, which is the holder of that debt) would.

Did you read the actual article or the previous one? The British government's *current* position is *not* neutrality - it is that the members of the euro have a duty to ensure that it does not break up, and to deliver fiscal union to achive that. The British government is *currently* telling the Irish to vote Yes. I am pointing this out, and asking whether, for the sake of at least a little balance (we shan't achieve balance - we shall always be implicitly urging a Yes), we should comment on whether the Irish No campaign would be correct if it claimed that a currency union with Britain would be possible. One more time: The British government's *current* position is to tell the Irish to vote Yes (and will inevitably remain so). I am asking whether it should say anything about what might be available if the Irish voted No.

A number of commenters appear still to fail to grasp the point. I am not saying that the British government should urge the Irish to vote No. I am not even (as it happens) urging that the British government *should* offer the Irish a currency union in the event of an Irish No. I am merely pointing out something I think has not been widely recognised: namely that the British government will have to make a choice, here, in the event of an Irish referendum, and the neutral thing will not be to persist with the British government's current "must keep the euro together" policy.

And that was before recent events, and before the new Treaty...

The key similarity is that in both cases the leadership set itself against the Party. The problem in the 1990s was not caused by "a few rebels making a lot of noise". If the Maastricht rebels had represented no higher a percentage then their numbers, they would have been of little relevance. Their power came mainly from the fact that everyone knew they were the voice of the majority of the Party. A key difference between then and now is that whereas then the rebels represented perhaps only 2/3 of opinion in the Party, today's rebels represent more like 90%. The leadership simply cannot stand against that and survive.

Another pedant replies: You actually wrote "There have been treaty-related bills since Maastricht, of course - Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon - but all of them have been recommended by Labour Governments". But that isn't true! There is currently a treaty-related bill before Parliament (involving a very significant amendment of the Treaty) that was introduced by a Conservative-Liberal government.

TypePad HTML Email Another pedant replies: What you actually said was “There have been treaty-related bills since Maastricht, of course - Amsterdam, Nice, Lisbon - but all of them have been recommended by Labour Governments”. But that isn’t true! There is a treaty-related bill before Parliament, as we write, that has been recommended by a Conservative-Liberal Democrat government.

Matthew - why no mention of the Open Europe link? The content of the letter its virtually a copy-out of the Open Europe report published on Monday.

Don't forget Sajid Javid - PPS to George Osborne.

It's not true, Paul, that this is the first Treaty-related bill introduced by a Conservative prime minister since Maastricht. There is, at the moment, a bill going through the ratification process introducing the major Treaty amendment agreed late in 2010. Why do you think that doesn't count?

Ahem, Paul. You might have mentioned this piece, offered in this parish: http://conservativehome.blogs.com/platform/2011/03/when-should-a-conservative-support-a-revolution.html

Well, I could have added "old or young" to the list, though one might have accused me of begging the question. Of course, there have been times and places where children did not attract the moral protections of people. They could be sacrificed to the gods or simply abandoned if the weather was bad. Your suggestion is that there might be an asymmetry, or perhaps better a hump, in personhood - it is harder to lose it than to gain it; the threshold for personhood might be crossed in the direction of becoming a person and then the threshold might shift down. One could certainly imagine that. Perhaps someone that had once been free might not cease to be a person just because he was enslaved. But, whilst obviously possible, I'm not sure what recommends itself to you about this idea. I can't see why - separated from the specific case of personhood in respect of age/development - you would find such an asymmetry intellectually or morally attractive. Why, in other words, is your position anything more than an excuse for a conclusion you have come to by other means? Are you really saying that you think the natural default position would be to assume such an asymmetry would exist?

How does arguing that embryos should be covered by the same universal framework of homocide law as adults equate to having "no respect for the value of human life" or "open the door to murder"?

A fertilized chicken egg is not a chicken. Neither is a fertilized chicken egg an instance of the chicken animal (as a tadpole is an instance of the frog animal). It does, however, *contain* an instance of the chicken animal inside its shell. That is what pecks its way out at hatching. A human embryo is analogous to a chicken embryo (not the chicken egg, shell and all). Just as the chicken embryo is an instance of the chicken animal, or a tadpole an instance of the frog animal, or a joey an instance of the kangaroo animal, so a human embryo is an instance of the human animal. My position here isn't scientifically contentious. It really isn't. You are focusing upon the wrong part of the discussion. If you want to contend that an embryo is not a person, you need to argue that not all human animals are people. There are lots of ways you might do that. You might, for example, argue that to be a person one must be sufficiently intelligent. So babies would not be people, for example. Or you must argue that to be a person one must be able to breathe unassisted. So a sick human animal on a ventilator, following a car accident, would not be a person (even if she might eventually be expected to recover - she would therefore become a person again). Or you must argue that to be a person one must have a certain face shape. So a human disfigured in a fire or a human born with a misshapen skull would not to be a person. There are lots of arguments you might make. Or if your interest is not in the measure of personhood but, instead, in defending abortions, you need to argue (say) why hospitality should not be offered to this human animal (this embryo) when it would be offered to that one. Such arguments are certainly possible - indeed, in some cases decisive. But the claim that animalhood begins at conception is not the right thing for you to dispute - it's a badly losing wicket.

Well, *mainly* it argues that the impermissibility of abortion does not follow from a foetus' being a person (a point I explicitly grant). And I explicitly argue that a tadpole *is* an instance of the frog animal, and a caterpillar an instance of the butterfly animal - not an especially contentious claim, I think - whilst Thomson appears to regard it as obvious that an acorn is not an instance of the Oak tree plant. (If it is not - and perhaps it isn't - I suggest that is because of some ways plants differ from animals.)

You are missing the point. I have specifically argued that it is wrong to have any special opinions about aborting foetuses that would not apply to the killing or withdrawing of hospitality from other people. I support abortions in precisely those sorts of cases in which I support killing or withdrawing hospitality from other people; and I oppose abortion in precisely those sorts of cases in which I oppose killing or withdrawing hospitality from other people.

Not at all. Many animals can survive being frozen and defrosted. For example, that is true of the common wood frog.

Further to this, it is, of course, the case that my view that Jews and slaves and ugly humans and stupid humans and so on should all be treated as people is a "religious" point of view. Many religions and philosophies would dispute this (perhaps most) - that is, of course, a key reason why pan-human moral specialness is an unusual doctrine. So if *that* is what you meant by saying my beliefs are informed by my religious views, then of course I agree!

I don't need to define "person", because I do not need to commit to a position on questions such as whether there could be aliens that are people or computers that are people. I do need to define the claim that all human animals are people. I did so: "By “is a person” I mean that every human animal attracts that special moral status we apply to people, when we think of the limitations on how we can treat them and our duties towards them (e.g. hospitality) – as opposed to the duties/limitations we have in respect of, say, other animals such as dolphins or dogs."

Strictly speaking, *human* ova were only seen in the 20th century. I meant "mammalian ova".

The question you raise - as to whether she can have a person using her resources that she doesn't want there - is a very apposite one, and a central issue in the abortion debate. It is indeed precisely the question I raise in the OP as to when people have a duty of hospitality that should be enforced legally. We do believe that there are such duties. For example, if you come home and find a baby you do not know sitting in your kitchen, it will not be legally permissible for you to carry it outside your house and leave it in the street. You are legally required to offer it hospitality. In Australia, if you are on a long desert road and you see a car broken down by the side of that road, it is not legally permissible for you to drive on and leave the person to her fate. You have a duty of hospitality and assistance. It is thus well-established that there *are* duties of hospitality, and it is not always the case that you can simply reject the provision of hospitality. One of the key questions in the abortion debate is when you have a duty of hospitality to someone living inside your body.

No, she wouldn't. She would only be charged with murder if the circumstances would lead to a charge of murder for the killing of another human animal. But many killings of humans are not murders (at least not legally so). For example, Rose and Grace attard ("Jodie and Mary") were co-joined twins. Their separation involved the killing of Mary (cutting her heart in half). That was not legally a murder, because (a) Mary would shortly have died anyway; and (b) it was regarded as necessary to save Jodie. Many killings of people are not murders. I do not seek to make them all be murders. I seek only to treat all human animals as people.

Where did a religious argument feature in the above? I am aware of many religious arguments *against* the idea that all human animals are people. For example, according to many religions a person arises from the combination of a body and pre-existing soul which becomes connected to the body at some point in its development. For that reason, under this religious outlook, there can be human animals that are not people. I reject this ensoulment theory. If you want to call rejecting religious doctrines that involve ensoulment a "religious view" then of course you are free to do that, in much the same way that being an atheist can be described as a "religious view". But I'm not sure where that line of description takes us in the present discussion. To me it is a sufficient condition for being a person that one is a human animal. Perhaps there could be other things called "people" - maybe sufficiently intelligent computers or aliens etc.. But in respect of human people, it is enough to be a human animal.

Well, let's see. Euripides contended that males planted pre-formed seed in women. Hippocrates had contended that there were too kinds of seed, male and female, whilst Aristotle thought the the man provided the form whilst the woman provided the matter. The Aristotelean position was still taken seriously into the Middle Ages when theorists such as Giles of Rome still contended that the form was the sole provision of the man. The dispute was really only finally resolved in the nineteenth century, once human ova could be seen through microscopes. The key theorists are usually regarded as Karl Ernst von Baer and Lazzaro Spallanzani. Calvin Bridges later (early 20th century) identified how the sex of the new animal was determined by the sperm. I hope that helps.

What are you referring to by the “official statistics”? The official statistic that most interests me is the 2011 Budget, which states that the total scheduled cuts in spending to 2015/16 will be £95bn (£80bn to 2014/15) - see Table 1.1. Are you saying that spending isn't falling yet? Well, no it's not - and wasn't scheduled to do so. The spending cuts aren't intended even to begin until 2011/12, and the big ones aren't scheduled until 2013/14. I would prefer them to have started earlier, but instead they did more of the early work by tax rises. That's not optimal, but it's simply nonsense to claim that spending isn't scheduled to be cut.