I dunno, you could say that cost is a factor, because the NHS can’t do everything, so they have to prioritise based on the funds they have.

But on the other hand, given that assisted dying is only set to be offered to people who are thought to have 6 months left to live, I assume there won’t be many people using the NHS in this way, so surely it would be a very small part of the NHS budget.

Maybe at the very least they should decriminalise the assisting of someone ending their life in certain cases, so that if somebody helps their relative go to Dignitas in Switzerland, they won’t be breaking the law.

With a mathematically representative EU parliament then France and Germany shouldn’t be able to control anything by themselves because like you say, their combined population is less than half of the EU

The parts of Ukraine that have been invaded by Russia have not been liberated, they have been subjugated to the rule of the Kremlin. And as I said before, “elections” in Russia are rigged. It’s not just ballot stuffing, it’s also the fact that genuine opposition candidates aren’t allowed to stand for election.

And as far as I understand, Zelenskyy and Poroshenko were both pretty pro-EU all along.

I don’t know why you’re going on about a “nazi problem” when Russia has plenty of far-right activists themselves.

The key point though is that it’s up to the people of Ukraine to decide if they want referendums. It’s not for an imperialist power like Russia to impose their own demands that Ukraine should hold referendums.

If Ukrainians wanted another leader like Yanukovych then they could have elected one in 2014 or 2019, but they didn’t.

Maybe Ukraine should have another election but it would be difficult when much of their land is illegally occupied by Russia.

Liberated regions like Kherson, liberated from the Russian invaders? Maybe they have had local elections, I dunno.

I suppose that complexity involves international ties, and some voters realise that their jobs are dependent on internationalism, so they don’t want to vote for right-wing isolationism. But some people are happy to vote for isolationism anyway, because they want to reduce immigration in many cases. Who knows what the future holds, but I guess we now have four years of Trump leading the free world to find out.

I think it would be good if the Donbas and Crimea could democratically decide their future, but I don’t believe the referendums held by Putin’s regime, given that the Russian regime rigs elections (that video shows ballot stuffing in Russia).

I don’t see how Ukraine, or Ukrainian far-right elements, provoked the war. The war was begun by Russia who sent their troops (illegally of course) into Crimea and the Donbas in 2014.

In 2022 I think a lot of Ukrainians definitely did want to fight back and many people signed up for the military. They didn’t want Russia conquering their country.

Wanting freedom from the dictator in Moscow is not idiotic.

People on /pol/ quite often post views which are actually leftist, but they hate brown people so much that they can’t bring themselves to abandon the far-right.

I think that most western countries are converging on economic, taxation and liberal values that align.

Well illiberal leaders have been elected in the US, Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, and maybe more will follow… but yeah who knows.

If the bribes/threats aren’t public then why are you sure they happened?

Boris Johnson… went to Kyiv to bribe and threaten Zelensky into backing out

What did he bribe/threaten Zelenskyy with? I thought what he said to Zelenskyy was “decide what you want, and the UK will support your decision either way”.

Yeah fair enough. I wonder what will happen in the future. Maybe a federation will never happen, who knows.

The second username is just a suggested Reddit username, I have one on my Reddit account because I was too lazy to think of an original name. It doesn’t mean you’re a bot.

And the first username looks like it belongs to somebody who owns a 2017 Subaru Impreza.

Maybe some Brits will think “why’s he in bloody France then, he should be at the Cenotaph”, and perhaps that’s why other prime ministers chose to be in London.

Maybe it should be a federation… although that obviously won’t be realistic for years to come. And France and Germany alone are a way off from a majority if you have a representative parliament… France and Germany together is about 150 million people, but there are around 450 million people in the EU.

I’m not saying the Dems need to go further to the right to win elections, but they just need to appeal to middle America I guess - people who probably don’t see themselves as on the left or right. Like the OP pic of this thread points out, Biden won in 2020, and he’s a pretty centrist politician.

for military cooperation I think it might be good not to be too trigger happy

True. I guess maybe for some actions, a two-thirds majority of votes could be required. I dunno.

Majorities might produce bad decisions sometimes but the alternative is that you have leaders making decisions that the majority of people don’t like… which is arguably worse.

As for the veto, I wonder if the EU will dislike that sort of thing in the future, especially if greater EU co-operation is seen as necessary in order to compete with (and defend from) large powers like the US and China. If one country vetoes something that the majority of Europeans want, is that good? Maybe not.

Fair points. You’ve reminded me of what was said by Bonnie Greer on British TV the other night (she’s an American/British author, originally from Chicago). She was saying how Trump is just a transactional businessman who is only interested in what other parties (such as Europe) can do for him.

Yeah maybe the veto thing is a bit silly. Maybe these matters could be decided by a majority vote in the EU parliament.