Gay marriage
The government has proposed to allow gay couples the full rights of marriage. The first country to do this was the Netherlands in 2001, but the world’s first gay ‘wedding’ is often reported as that between 74-year-old Axel Lundahl-Madsen and 67-year-old Eigil Eskildsen in Copenhagen City Hall on 1 October 1989, the day on which the Danish Registered Partnership Act came into force.
—While hailed by gay activists around the world at the time, registered partnerships would now be regarded by many as illiberal. Gay couples were banned from adopting children and, in the case of women, from undergoing artificial insemination. Although the ban on adoption was later lifted, Denmark still does not allow full marriages between gay couples, and ceremonies may not take place in church.
Turning Somalian
Brendan Barber, leader of the TUC, says David Cameron is trying to refashion Britain in the manner of his ‘ideal society’, Somalia, ‘where the state barely exists’.
Somalia % of population UK
70 No access to fresh water 0
77 No access to sanitation 0
13 Reporting assaults 2
22 Primary school enrolment 97
1 Internet users 70
73 Happy with standard of living 88
Source: UN Human Development Index
What it’s all in aid of
The government has said it will give the equivalent of £750 million in aid to India over three years. How does this compare with the spending priorities of the Indian government?
Sources: Indian Union Budget; Economic and Political Weekly; Dweep I. Chanana
Par for the course?
Two racehorses were electrocuted in an accident at Newbury. Over the past four years, 625 horses have been killed on British racecourses.
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