In the days of Gordon Brown, socialists were more honest, however ignorant of the realites of life in the socialist paradise they envied so much in the Soviet Union. And they were motivated largely by compassion, if only for a certain class of people. The modern technocratic socialist of Starmer's Gang, riddled as it is with Fabians, is all deceits and lies and cares nothing for human lives. We are all, as barrister Steven Barrett says, meat units in the service of a state ruled by Starmer's Gang.
No doubt it will get worse. I would not be surprised if Starmer's Gang were to classify 'hard right thugs' as mentally ill, incarcerates them in mental hospitals and directs the NHS to forcefully encourage the poor souls to choose euthanasia.
Many thanks for another excellent article. I hadn't given this topic much attention till now, but this piece has clarified things greatly, and has exposed the rot at the heart of the bill: it's another bad, emotive piece of legislation. But it seems worse than just that, because it's the luvvie classes that, in their contempt and conceit and virtue-signalling, are driving this, to the detriment of those less fortunate. It seems to sum up our times.
Nigel, you rightly point out that few people will have taken the time to understand the nuances and safeguard mechanisms in the proposals. But I think most will have assumed it’s being exposed to a ‘full’ discussion in the Lords - By ‘full’ I mean the maximum allowed. To hear this may not be the case and submissions from some professional bodies have been rejected is horrifying.
We’ve been here before - as contributions by Baroness Campbell have shown: https://baronesscampbellofsurbiton.usk/ About 13 years ago, the use in the NHS of the ‘Liverpool Pathway’ became a scandal - and it was then withdrawn. Designed in the early 2000’s it was a protocol or process by which patients, thought to be ‘end of life’ could be managed in a safe and responsible way. The word responsible is important because it sought to provide guidelines for clinicians - to avoid them ‘having to make it up as they went along’ or maybe ‘go out on a limb’. All that seems OK, but on the law of ‘unintended consequences’ , Shakespearean or otherwise, terrible things happened or nearly happened. The actuality was that hospitals ‘navigated’ patients towards the pathway.
My son has a similar level of disability, and clinical condition to Baroness Campbell’s but probably not her intellectual ability. In interview, she’s described a number of occasions when hospitalised for a minor complaint, she’d had to resist suggestions from clinical staff “That she could be given palliative care ?? IE on the “Liverpool Pathway”. In my Son’s case he was admitted to hospital but not treated for 3 days. We were then given the Liverpool pathway spiel about ‘quality of life’. But as his parents (he was 25) we resisted and he survived. The full story would make distressing reading, but it contains no stupidity, or malign characters, only people, albeit trained doctors ‘Prioritising’.. His ‘entry’ into the Pathway was even supported two clinical signatures as required in this Bill.
I’m going to slightly extend your very well made point that “…the law cannot be made just for him or for individuals like him; it has to be made for everybody.” But nowadays the contrary is often prompted by campaigns in certain ‘daily’ newspapers for ‘XXXX’s law.
The guiding precepts in medical practice are ‘to treat or not to treat’ and only then, what to treat with. The ‘Assisted Dying’ bill ’ is just the Liverpool pathway in a different set of clothes.
Liverpool Pathway and now the Assisted dying bill fundamentally change the ‘to treat or not to treat’ binary decision into a 3 way treat, or not-treat, or a prescription for assisted dying. That’s why the bill is misses the moral question when all parties agree on the need for massive improvements to palliative care.
A final point. There will be individuals with conditions (e.g psychological) that may not be amenable to palliative care. Hypothetically we could say to those individuals “if we allow you ‘assisted dying’ do you agree it will probably mean 5 disabled people will also die un-necessarily in the next 12 months. That’s the moral conundrum.
I remember the Liverpool Pathway. It reminded me of Anton Chekhov's Ward 6 (1892) and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's period as the Soviet deputy for Leningrad in 1947. He similarly saw an endless stream of people needing help, the queue stretching down the street, and for whom he could do little. A sea of human misery flooded him. Miserably ashamed after signing a collective letter condemning the dissident Andrei Sakharov, Shostakovich compared himself to the unlovable Dr. Ragin in Ward 6.
The Liverpool Pathway will not be the last attempt by our Socialist NHS to get rid of difficult patients and reduce waiting lists. During the pandemic the NHS shipped out the elderly to die in nursing homes or at home to make space for Covid patients. In a bad flu season, patients have been left to die on a trolley in corridors. Just wait until Starmer's Gang, or worse, his Gang likely led by an even more hard left successor, classify 'hard right thugs' as mentally ill and are prescribed euthanasia. We will be back to 1947 when Labour proudly sang the Soviet anthem, The Red Flag, at is annual conference and cast envious eyes at the paradise of the Soviet Union, while Shostakovich was trying his best under a tide of human misery. At least in those days we ordinary people knew where we stood. Todays Starmer's Gang is all deceits and lies, but it hates Britain, individual freedom and conservatism just as much as any good communist.
In the days of Gordon Brown, socialists were more honest, however ignorant of the realites of life in the socialist paradise they envied so much in the Soviet Union. And they were motivated largely by compassion, if only for a certain class of people. The modern technocratic socialist of Starmer's Gang, riddled as it is with Fabians, is all deceits and lies and cares nothing for human lives. We are all, as barrister Steven Barrett says, meat units in the service of a state ruled by Starmer's Gang.
No doubt it will get worse. I would not be surprised if Starmer's Gang were to classify 'hard right thugs' as mentally ill, incarcerates them in mental hospitals and directs the NHS to forcefully encourage the poor souls to choose euthanasia.
Many thanks for another excellent article. I hadn't given this topic much attention till now, but this piece has clarified things greatly, and has exposed the rot at the heart of the bill: it's another bad, emotive piece of legislation. But it seems worse than just that, because it's the luvvie classes that, in their contempt and conceit and virtue-signalling, are driving this, to the detriment of those less fortunate. It seems to sum up our times.
Nigel, you rightly point out that few people will have taken the time to understand the nuances and safeguard mechanisms in the proposals. But I think most will have assumed it’s being exposed to a ‘full’ discussion in the Lords - By ‘full’ I mean the maximum allowed. To hear this may not be the case and submissions from some professional bodies have been rejected is horrifying.
We’ve been here before - as contributions by Baroness Campbell have shown: https://baronesscampbellofsurbiton.usk/ About 13 years ago, the use in the NHS of the ‘Liverpool Pathway’ became a scandal - and it was then withdrawn. Designed in the early 2000’s it was a protocol or process by which patients, thought to be ‘end of life’ could be managed in a safe and responsible way. The word responsible is important because it sought to provide guidelines for clinicians - to avoid them ‘having to make it up as they went along’ or maybe ‘go out on a limb’. All that seems OK, but on the law of ‘unintended consequences’ , Shakespearean or otherwise, terrible things happened or nearly happened. The actuality was that hospitals ‘navigated’ patients towards the pathway.
My son has a similar level of disability, and clinical condition to Baroness Campbell’s but probably not her intellectual ability. In interview, she’s described a number of occasions when hospitalised for a minor complaint, she’d had to resist suggestions from clinical staff “That she could be given palliative care ?? IE on the “Liverpool Pathway”. In my Son’s case he was admitted to hospital but not treated for 3 days. We were then given the Liverpool pathway spiel about ‘quality of life’. But as his parents (he was 25) we resisted and he survived. The full story would make distressing reading, but it contains no stupidity, or malign characters, only people, albeit trained doctors ‘Prioritising’.. His ‘entry’ into the Pathway was even supported two clinical signatures as required in this Bill.
I’m going to slightly extend your very well made point that “…the law cannot be made just for him or for individuals like him; it has to be made for everybody.” But nowadays the contrary is often prompted by campaigns in certain ‘daily’ newspapers for ‘XXXX’s law.
The guiding precepts in medical practice are ‘to treat or not to treat’ and only then, what to treat with. The ‘Assisted Dying’ bill ’ is just the Liverpool pathway in a different set of clothes.
Liverpool Pathway and now the Assisted dying bill fundamentally change the ‘to treat or not to treat’ binary decision into a 3 way treat, or not-treat, or a prescription for assisted dying. That’s why the bill is misses the moral question when all parties agree on the need for massive improvements to palliative care.
A final point. There will be individuals with conditions (e.g psychological) that may not be amenable to palliative care. Hypothetically we could say to those individuals “if we allow you ‘assisted dying’ do you agree it will probably mean 5 disabled people will also die un-necessarily in the next 12 months. That’s the moral conundrum.
I remember the Liverpool Pathway. It reminded me of Anton Chekhov's Ward 6 (1892) and Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich's period as the Soviet deputy for Leningrad in 1947. He similarly saw an endless stream of people needing help, the queue stretching down the street, and for whom he could do little. A sea of human misery flooded him. Miserably ashamed after signing a collective letter condemning the dissident Andrei Sakharov, Shostakovich compared himself to the unlovable Dr. Ragin in Ward 6.
The Liverpool Pathway will not be the last attempt by our Socialist NHS to get rid of difficult patients and reduce waiting lists. During the pandemic the NHS shipped out the elderly to die in nursing homes or at home to make space for Covid patients. In a bad flu season, patients have been left to die on a trolley in corridors. Just wait until Starmer's Gang, or worse, his Gang likely led by an even more hard left successor, classify 'hard right thugs' as mentally ill and are prescribed euthanasia. We will be back to 1947 when Labour proudly sang the Soviet anthem, The Red Flag, at is annual conference and cast envious eyes at the paradise of the Soviet Union, while Shostakovich was trying his best under a tide of human misery. At least in those days we ordinary people knew where we stood. Todays Starmer's Gang is all deceits and lies, but it hates Britain, individual freedom and conservatism just as much as any good communist.