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A Miraculous Recovery?

Forty-seven year old Brit, Paul Appleby, needed a wheelchair or frame to walk when he retired early from his mining job in 1994. Since then he has been registered disabled and has claimed 22,300 pounds ($42,000) in state benefits.

Sadly, for Mister Appleby, he was filmed recently out on the town………

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…….competing in the London Marathon.

He won’t be running again until released from his ten month prison sentence for fraud…….

……..and paid back all the money.

More HERE.

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It Really Is Time To Move On

I know this will upset many Americans. It’s not my intention to do so, but I can’t keep quiet because, frankly, I just want to scream:

“IT’S BEEN FIVE YEARS. GET OVER IT!”

Five years, and they’re still searching for human remains at the site of the 9/11 attacks in Manhatton.

Tonight, NBC Nightly News reported that human remains are being unearthed, but not the odd arm or leg, or even a finger. It’s tiny fragments – part of a finger nail; a microscopic splinter of bone – that can be tested and identified using DNA technology, but to what purpose?

Why is it so important to Americans that five years on they still wait to be told, “We identified this fragment as being from your husband……..or wife……or Uncle George.”?

Many from other countries died in the tragedy, including 67 British citizens, 23 Japanese, and lesser numbers from 34 other nations. Their loved ones have come to terms with the loss, are beginning to pick up the pieces, not wait around for confirmation of a fact glaringly obvious to them already – that their husband, or wife, or Uncle George died on 9/11/2001.

An argument is presently in progress regarding some battered stone steps on the site, down which some of those attempting to escape may have passed. Relatives want them left intact, presumably because their husband’s, wife’s, or Uncle George’s feet just possibly may have touched them.

It’s turned crazy.

America, five years later, is still clinging to its grief; refusing to let go; wanting to hang on – to nothing. There is nothing tangible left worth finding. If my wife had died on 9/11 I wouldn’t want to be told five years later, “This is a bit of her finger nail.” It would do nothing for me. Empty words, for it wouldn’t even be recognizable as anyone’s fingernail.

The time to move on is now. Fill in the site, erect a suitable memorial, and leave the dead to the ground and the living to get on with their lives.

Perhaps then, as well as the grief, some of the hate may begin to fade also.

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Is It Just Me!

More and more frequently of late I find myself forced to ask the question, “Is it me! Is it me!”

Maybe I just became less easy-going as I passed the landmark of three score years, but I find myself frequently appalled at news items others seem to welcome.

Only last week was the case of “Pillow Angel” – a mentally-retarded child whose body was medically sculptured to ‘fit’ her mind – and today I am appalled by the BBC’s report of an Israeli family who have just won a legal battle to secure control of their dead son’s sperm, with a view to impregnating a female volunteer and producing a dead man’s son.

The “father”, an Israeli soldier, was killed in the Gaza Strip nearly five years ago. His parents had his sperm extracted after his death and since then have been fighting a legal battle with the hospital authorities to have it released to them. Doctors refused, on the grounds it could only be released to a spouse (presumably, he didn’t have one), but a court in Israel has finally ruled against the hospital.

The similarity, between this case and that of “Pillow Angel”, is in the apparent right of the parents to make decisions that, it can be argued, are more in their interests than that of their offspring. The girl, “Pillow Angel”, is so mentally retarded it seems unlikely she would be cognitive of her physical transformation to adulthood, whereas life for the parents will be vastly improved by permanently keeping her as an immature little girl. In the case of the dead Israeli soldier, his needs can obviously not be better served by posthumously siring a baby to a woman he never met. The parents are simply seeking his replacement – a living reminder of the son they lost.

Have we given up on ethics? Are we now just accepting the self-centeredness of our species as a right, simply because medics are now able to perform these procedures?

Or – is it just me?

BBC report HERE.

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