[Tubby Isaacs]

And even if it was just about willpower, who gives a shit?
Make it easier for people to be healthy, lower the cost long-term
Stop pretending everything's a zero-sum morality play and we're all performing for God/mammon, w/e

Seems to be a pretty unhealthy dicotomy for overweight people like me-- there's the "caused by society" for the relative poor, and "you fat bastard" for everyone else. I'd certainly come in the latter category. Something to make me want to eat less, if I could afford it (I'm not particularly fat, but I am prediabetic) or the NHS could afford it would seem to be a good idea in all sorts of ways.

[Tubby Isaacs]

I've got a funny feeling the Tories, with their US Right influece, are going to go really hard against assisted dying. Whereas anti-abortion has never worked here, I wonder if "evil young people kill granny with connivance of the NHS" could do.

[Killer Whale]

I get the feeling that there are a lot of Tory-leaning people in late middle age/early old age that are eagerly waiting for their parents to die in order to cash in property and fund their retirement.

[Crabcakes]

I've got a funny feeling the Tories, with their US Right influece, are going to go really hard against assisted dying. Whereas anti-abortion has never worked here, I wonder if "evil young people kill granny with connivance of the NHS" could do.

The Mail are certainly soiling themselves about it, with some banner nonsense about right to die becoming duty to die.

Funny that such concern about old people being unwillingly dispatched never seemed an issue when Boris was spouting it in regards to Covid.

[Youngian]

I get the feeling that there are a lot of Tory-leaning people in late middle age/early old age that are eagerly waiting for their parents to die in order to cash in property and fund their retirement.

My mother had a bad death and bought the subject up for me helping her death along. It was an emphatic no partly for the selfish reason that I benefitted from her death and didn't fancy a prison sentence. I was never keen on the idea and disliked it even less after this incident due to the pressure cynical relatives could put on elderly relatives. But then there was the nightly pain and the loss dignity of hearing an 80 year old woman crying out for her mum and begging to die. So I changed my mind again but the assisting should be carried out by medical and social care professionals.

[Youngian]

30p Lee was asking for people's opinions of this difficult subject as he probably wasn't sure which side the wokes are on.
People on the right and left are sympathetic to assisted dying as a result of their own life experiences. And there's opposition across the political divide. Even religious conviction is not a good indicator as to where you may fall on this one.

[Andy McDandy]

About 10 years ago, the author Terry Pratchett brought the issue up (he was on the side of allowing it). As I recall, the Mail was torn - on the one hand, the's freedom of choice, reduction of cost/burden on the state, the whole quality of life question, and the desire not to piss off the fans of one of the country's best selling authors (although IIRC Hitchens waded in calling PTerry a "second rate scribbler of fairy tales"). On the other was the Mailite compulsion to control the lives of others, and what we might call the squick factor that accompanies anything involving the fundamentals of life and death.

In those places in what we might call the civilised world where assisted dying is legal, there are plenty of legal caveats and checks to ensure people are not forced into making decisions. The implications on all aspects of a person's death and its impact have been carefully weighed up. As a result I don't buy the majority of arguments against. Indeed, I sense that from the right there's even a dog in the manger aspect to it - "Why do they get a death on their own terms while muggins here has to succumb slowly to the reaper's grip...".

[The Weeping Angel]

Various people I follow on X are convinced we're going to do what Canada has done which is kill the elderly.

[Andy McDandy]

Have Canadians actually done this, or have people on Xitter convinced themselves that they have?

[Malcolm Armsteen]

Very good friend of mine's partner developed Creutzfelf-Jakob disease - a cruel, prolonged death. Because they were not married her legal next of kin was her father, a rather fundamentalist Catholic who believed she should not be helped out of her misery - and misery it was, with terrors and waking nightmares, but should 'confront her mortality'. When she was eventually admitted to a hospice her end was quick, and merciful, unlike the one he had planned for her.

My father, when in extremis, was dependant on morphine - palliative care in 1969 was pretty primitive. My mother had been given enough morphine to give him a peaceful end (our doctor was a very practical Scot) but a health visitor came and had him admitted to hospital, where they kept him alive and suffering for another week. She bitterly regretted that.

All this leads to a conversation I had with my GP (a marvelous woman who smoked and drank and gave no fucks whatever) about not trying too hard to avoid a heart attack, which she referred to as the easy way out, and to be much hoped for.

[Abernathy]

Have Canadians actually done this, or have people on Xitter convinced themselves that they have?

Of course Canadians haven’t actually done this.

[Abernathy]

I have a horrible feeling that Kim Leadbetter’s Bill won’t get past second reading. Too many arseholes like Danny Kruger around, and too many new Labour MPs not prepared to stick their necks out.

[davidjay]

Very good friend of mine's partner developed Creutzfelf-Jakob disease - a cruel, prolonged death. Because they were not married her legal next of kin was her father, a rather fundamentalist Catholic who believed she should not be helped out of her misery - and misery it was, with terrors and waking nightmares, but should 'confront her mortality'. When she was eventually admitted to a hospice her end was quick, and merciful, unlike the one he had planned for her.

My father, when in extremis, was dependant on morphine - palliative care in 1969 was pretty primitive. My mother had been given enough morphine to give him a peaceful end (our doctor was a very practical Scot) but a health visitor came and had him admitted to hospital, where they kept him alive and suffering for another week. She bitterly regretted that.

All this leads to a conversation I had with my GP (a marvelous woman who smoked and drank and gave no fucks whatever) about not trying too hard to avoid a heart attack, which she referred to as the easy way out, and to be much hoped for.

I may be wrong but I suspect that in these days of forensic post-mortems and lengthy investigations, there's less euthanasia than in the days when doctors would pay house calls.

[Youngian]

I have a horrible feeling that Kim Leadbetter’s Bill won’t get past second reading. Too many arseholes like Danny Kruger around, and too many new Labour MPs not prepared to stick their necks out.

Can't recall if it was under Brown or Cameron when a legal deadlock arose with assisted dying, juries were refusing to convict distraught relatives but the government and parliament didn't want to touch it. Instead they passed the problem onto the DPP Keir Starmer to rewrite the prosecuting guidelines. A pragmatic but cowardly way forward and I doubt Keir was impressed by the government monkey plonking such a contentious issue on his desk.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Looks like it was Brown.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/feb ... guidelines

[Youngian]

A very political response from Brown, keeping his hands clean by asking a civil servant to solve the problem and then condemning the result.
There's millions like myself who cared for a loved one fade away in agony and are very conflicted. Not so much for an elderly couple but when its a will beneficiary involved, assisted suicide feels more uncomfortable. The present system that Starmer mapped out still means the police investigate if events look fishy without having to drag distraught elderly spouses through the courts.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Labour going ahead with the £1.3bn sickness benefit cuts. This is a very bad move.

[Tubby Isaacs]

Not sure whether Reeves or Kendal is to blame for this stuff. I'd guess that Reeves has demanded them. She does though bring something important to the table in that markets and the Bank (so far) trust her, and earns the government extra space. I don't at all buy "another Liz Truss event coming", but there's a cost to the government not being trusted. We're not in the George Osborne situation of virtually free money being turned down just to stick it to Gordon Brown. I'm not sure what Kendal brings to the table.

Reeves does take the current deficit seriously, which I (and about three other people, one of whom is Ed Davey and the other two are German) also take seriously. It sounds like we'll get lots of tax rises to help towards fixing that, whereas Hunt just scheduled a load of cuts as a trap. But there's such as a thing as a false economy within a budget. And this cuts is it. The OBR expects a grand total of 10,000 out of 400,000 to get into employment. That's a lot more people winding up destitute and there's a financial cost to that.

[Philip Marlow]

I’m not sure how many MPs read their copies but this is genuinely one of the most depressing books I both own and recommend.

[Tubby Isaacs]

The Independent here pretending that the EU "exit bill" (ie liabilities accrued during our membership) wouldn't have had to be paid anyway, just to stick it to Starmer.

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/p ... 30357.html