MPs are debating whether to legalise assisted dying ahead of a landmark vote on the issue this afternoon. The legislation, which would be limited to terminally ill patients with less than six months to live, will be decided by a free vote, meaning MPs have not been instructed by their parties on how to vote. Transport Secretary Louise Haigh has resigned after it emerged that she was convicted of making a false police report a decade ago. She says she told officers her work phone had been stolen when she was mugged, but later found the phone – which had in fact not been stolen – and was advised by her solicitor not to comment when called in for questioning. Donald Trump posted his traditionally magnanimous Thanksgiving message on social media yesterday, offering his best wishes to “the Radical Left Lunatics who have worked so hard to destroy our Country, but who have miserably failed, and will always fail, because their ideas and policies are so hopelessly bad”.

A slippery slope or an act of mercy?

Today, MPs have a rare free vote on one of the most consequential issues of all, says The Economist: the right to an assisted death. Opponents point to Canada, where the scope of the law has widened and the number of people ending their lives, for all sorts of reasons, has “risen sharply”. But Canada’s criteria were relatively extensive from the outset and have been expanded by successive court cases. A better comparison is the law in the Australian state of Victoria, which is “almost a mirror image” of the bill MPs are considering. Doctors there say they’ve seen no hint of coercion (“families often try to talk their loved ones out of it”). And when the state collects feedback afterwards, the most mentioned word is “peaceful”. Many seem reassured simply having the option: a fifth of those who have been given the lethal medication never take it.

It’s no use legislating on the basis of some “ideal case”, in which the decision is entirely “rational, self-generated and immune from murky influences”, says Kathleen Stock in The Sunday Times. Or hoping that if the circumstances are “not so ideal” in some particular case – if there’s family pressure, say, or a degree of poverty that makes life look bleak – some clever and independent-minded person will be around to put a stop to things. I assume the opposite. In the minds of the terminally ill, visions of a conveniently quick death can be too easily induced by the words of others. And with our groaning NHS and log-jammed courts, as well as a “generally creeping cultural reticence to say no to anybody about anything”, rubber-stamping seems all but guaranteed.

What’s being overlooked is that we’re on the cusp of a “fundamental redefinition of what it is to be human”, says Giles Fraser in UnHerd. Opponents of assisted dying are understandably trying to downplay the religious aspect, but this is “one of those areas where the idea of God has served us well”. Western culture is founded on the idea that God is the “ultimate guarantor of the value of human life”, and that human beings are “metaphysically special”. We are about to trade this in for what? Human value “plotted on an Excel spreadsheet”? O, brave new world.

Sylvia Plath’s Tomato Soup Cake is a fabulous compendium of recipes culled from the letters, diaries and archives of famous writers, says Rachel Cooke in The Guardian. It’s not for the faint-hearted. The children’s author Noel Streatfeild’s Filets de Bœuf aux Bananes comprises steak served with bananas fried in breadcrumbs, topped with a horseradish-infused egg sauce. Crime writer Margery Allingham claims, somewhat improbably, that her homemade salad cream lasts a year. But it isn’t all dreadful. Ian Fleming’s scrambled eggs are a safe bet, if a little whisk-heavy, and Kingsley Amis’s Fromage à la Crème is “a perfect combination of egg whites, cream cheese, cream and sugar” – even though we know perfectly well he never made it himself.

Donald Trump’s diet is like something dreamed up by a child, says Gareth Davies in The Daily Telegraph: beige and fast food with “not a drop of water in sight”. He doesn’t bother with breakfast, but if he can’t avoid it then he has bacon and fried eggs. He also skips lunch, instead getting through the day on 12 cans of Diet Coke and occasional handfuls of Doritos. But he makes up for it at dinner, which tends to be a McDonald’s feast (two Big Macs and two Filet-O-Fish), KFC, pizza, or a well-done steak. I tried sticking to his diet for a week, and “I’ve never felt more unhealthy”.

Why won’t Ed Sheeran help starving Ethiopians?

In 1984, says Daniel Finkelstein in The Times, Bob Geldof watched a BBC News report describing the Ethiopian famine as “the closest thing to hell on earth”, and decided to help. He gathered a group of the biggest stars in the music business and produced the hit song Do They Know It’s Christmas? It sold a million copies in its first week, and all the proceeds went to help famine victims. That success led to the following year’s Live Aid concert, which raised even more millions, and saved hundreds of thousands of lives. “And really, genuinely, truly, I absolutely promise you, some people are actually against all of this.”

This week Ed Sheeran said he wished his voice had not been included on the latest remix of Do They Know It’s Christmas? The singer no longer wants to be associated with “efforts to save starving children from terrible deaths”. Of course, he didn’t put it quite like this. Apparently, he saw a social media post by a rapper called Fuse ODG arguing the song does more harm than good. Such critics say the song is “racist” and the accompanying appeals “patronising” while efforts to help are “colonialist” and the product of a “white saviour complex”. Oh, do me a favour. Yes, it would be better if the solutions to problems in Africa came from Africans, but it’s ludicrous to say that raising money for some of the most desperate people in the world doesn’t help. Those painting it as racist make nice folks who were about to put their hand in their pocket less likely to do so, and Ethiopians more likely to starve. Merry Christmas, Ed Sheeran.

The second ever issue of Loaded magazine in 1994 asked a bunch of famous people for their favourite crisp flavours, says Popbitch. “Which is how we know Pope John Paul II was a cheese and onion man.”

Thanksgiving may be “indirectly responsible” for the existence of Israel, says The New York Times. In 1947, the UN was debating a plan to divide the British-administered territory of Palestine into two sovereign states: one for Jews, one for Palestinian Arabs. The proposal looked certain to fail, with Arab and Muslim-majority countries opposed, and much of Europe and Latin America ambivalent. But when the UN’s American hosts called a recess for Thanksgiving on the Wednesday, Israel’s advocates launched a “furious lobbying campaign”. They won over Haiti, the Philippines, Liberia and France, and the partition plan passed on the Saturday. As one negotiator later marvelled: “On what remote, and often irrelevant, factors historical decisions may sometimes depend.”

It’s the Christmas tree at Granary Square in Kings Cross, London, says Dezeen. The sculpture – officially titled Fluorescence – is made of multicoloured aluminium panels illuminated by UV lights, and its designer Liz West hopes the 10.7-metre-tall faux fir “creates joy and encourages wellbeing”. It will remain on display until February 2025.