No Time To Die

Killing with Kindness

‘OK. Maybe not all murderers. Just the worst ones. Not crimes of passion. Or when the murderer is a juvenile. But kiddie killers definitely. And serial killers. And some rapists. And terrorists. Definitely suicide bombers. If their bomb doesn’t go off. But then again maybe that’s what they want. So not them. But people like Ian Huntley definitely. Definitely Huntley. I’d press the button myself……’

This used to be the sort of answer you’d get, if you asked people, especially men, if they supported bringing back the death penalty. Nowadays, not so much.

According to YouGov, support for capital punishment has dropped to around 40%. Although this jumps back up to almost 60%, for the killing of a child.

As you might expect, capital punishment is more popular with traditionally ‘law and order’ Conservative types. (58% broadly supportive) While progressive Labour voters are much, much less keen. (23%)

I find this confusing.

When you think about it, it is the left which should be pro capital punishment.

After all, killing people is the one thing socialism absolutely excels at.

100 million at last count.

And that’s even before you include the bonus 4000 pensioners Starmer’s socialist government seems intent on wiping out by Boxing Day, after withdrawing the Winter Fuel Allowance.

Personally, I find the right’s enthusiasm for capital punishment baffling.

The side which on pretty much all other issues, demands an ever smaller state, wants to reign in government excess, and attempts to block bureaucratic overreach, seems keenest to hand the state the greatest power of all.

The power to decide who lives and who dies.

I have always been opposed to the death penalty.

Not because I have any love for murderers, terrorists, and killers (Sorry Hillary, but you’re just not my type). But because I don’t really trust the government with the power to issue me with a parking ticket.

So I absolutely do not wish to grant it the power to take my life.

The Assisted Dying Bill has just passed its first reading in Parliament, by 330 votes to 275.

Whatever you think of the bill, at least it proposes a quicker and more humane system than Labour’s current arrangement for helping the old, sick and vulnerable achieve dignity in death. Which seems to entail leaving them, broken hipped and desperate, on the side of a freezing road. Waiting five hours (Five Hours!!!) for an ‘Our NHS’ ambulance that never turns up.

My own position is that in an ideal world I would probably support assisted suicide.

But I don’t know if any of you have noticed, but despite the best efforts of Klaus Schwab, Tony Blair and er, Rory Stewart, we don’t yet live in an ideal world.

And though the proposed rules governing assisted dying seem broadly reasonable, proportionate, and compassionate right now, I’m not convinced they will stay that way.

Because every time the state grants itself a new power over our lives, it abuses that power. Overreaches, expands its mandate, and over steps its boundaries.

Every. Single. Time.

Terrorism laws have been abused to snoop on parents trying to get their kids into the best schools.

The same laws have been used to target, intimidate, harass and silence journalists, shut down debate, and stifle Free Speech.

While Public Health laws were used to lock us in our homes, close our schools and shut down the British economy for the best part of two years to combat a virus which only really posed a danger to the very old, the very sick, and the very fat. I cannot believe this is what parliamentarians had in mind when those laws were written, way back in 1984. (1984! Irony alert!)

There are literally countless other examples.

No government can be trusted. Especially this one.

Forget the lies it told us in its fake manifesto, a miss selling scandal so grievous it has prompted two and half million disgruntled voters to demand a redux.

Our Deputy Prime Minister can’t even be trusted to tell us where she lives. The Chancellor of the Exchequer can’t be trusted to fill out a CV. And the (ex) Transport Secretary can’t be trusted with a work mobile phone.

I wouldn’t trust lot to put the bins out. Let alone with the power of life and death.

And that goes for all governments. I’m just picking examples from this rotten lot because they happen to be the ones who are, for the moment at least, officially in charge of lying to us.

The new laws governing assisted dying will not only change, and potentially shorten, the lives of millions of people, they will fundamentally and permanently alter the relationship between the all powerful state, and the increasingly impotent individual.

While providing the government with an important new factor to consider when doing its sums.

I mean really. If you don’t think someone in Whitehall is already crunching the numbers to work out how much this new law could potentially save the NHS each year.

Then I have got a one way flight to Switzerland to sell you.

And I can imagine Ed Miliband, bug eyed with delight, cooking up a future where Net Zero meets Logan’s Run. And old people with too high a carbon footprint are encouraged to sacrifice themselves to save the planet.

Offset your family’s emissions, recycle Nana and save £££££s on your energy bill!!!

Ridiculous? Perhaps. But when Ed and the Labour government are already falling over themselves to sacrifice your children’s entire future to the gods of Net Zero. Then why not your gran?

To be honest I was in two minds about writing this post. It’s a sensitive subject for sure. And my usual flippant tone doesn’t quite suit the gravity of the issue.

But during the last couple of weeks Sadiq Khan has allowed the Assisted Dying pressure group, Let Us Choose, to advertise at Westminster Tube Station.

I saw the ads, posted a Note on them, and became engaged in the conversation.

I’ve been thinking about it a lot since.

The ads, you can see one below, are vulgar, tasteless, and crass.

The theme from M*A*S*H

They seem to be trying to make suicide look upbeat, attractive, and fun. Or at least are working very hard to normalise the idea. This one immediately reminded me of the 2004 advert for the original apple iPod.

These people aren’t idiots. It’s clearly meant to.

Actual Apple iPod ad 2004.

The main thing I couldn’t understand, is how they were approved in the first place.

As I said in the Note, Sadiq Khan will not allow you to advertise cakes on the London Underground.

The justification for this stupid diktat is that that the mere sight of a delicious iced bun will ‘promote obesity’. Driving slack brained, highly impressionable Londoners, straight into the nearest Greggs to gorge themselves on a pastry.

And yet despite his clear assumption that TFL passengers are highly suggestible, Pavlovian poodles, Khan has declared it perfectly acceptable to ‘promote suicide’ on the frequently depressing, soul sapping Underground.

TFL even provides a scarily handy method for the most suggestible to top themselves, right there. In fact there’s usually another one due at Westminster Tube Station every three minutes or so.

I genuinely don’t think I have seen anything quite so reckless, dangerous and irresponsible, since Keir Starmer handed David Lammy a passport.

But maybe I’m just catastrophising.

After all we’re assured that there are stringent safeguards in place.

That the criteria for eligibility will be strictly policed, and restrictively narrow. That two doctors must sign off on each case. And a judge must give their approval.

All this sounds pretty rigorous, and well considered. But it isn’t really.

The close involvement of the medical industry is not as reassuring as it might, at first, seem.

After all, every trans surgery on a minor has been signed off by a qualified doctor. Every pernicious pointless, destructive, devastating covid restriction was underwritten by the supposedly well informed and benign medical establishment.

And judges? Well what qualifies a judge to er…judge someone’s medical condition? We don’t ask brain surgeons to preside over shoplifting trials.

(I’m joking of course. No one goes on trial for shoplifting.)

Surely judges will be minded to take the advice of the doctors and simply rubber stamp their decisions.

In the end, judges should stick to what they do best. Locking up nanas. Blocking deportations. And administering two tier justice.

It’s also easy to predict that human rights legalisation will be used by ideologues and progressives in an attempt to expand the groups eligible for voluntary euthanasia.

You can already sense these shrill solipsistic scolds starting to hijack the issue. As they attempt to set the narrative and police our speech. Demanding that the language around this debate be sanitised to excise the offensive ‘S’ word. Suicide.

These are the dunderheads and zealots who find ‘discrimination’ everywhere, and in everything.

They will no doubt scream bloody blue murder that while some identity groups are covered by the legislation, others are missing out on the opportunity to be killed with state approval. And it simply isn’t fair.

At the moment the legalisation only covers those with severe physical conditions. It doesn’t take a genius to see that extending the criteria to include mental issues, which are currently expressly and intentionally excluded, will be the very first ‘human rights’ battleground.

One thing is for sure. Over time, the supposedly strict criteria will become looser, broader, and more liberal.

This isn’t a stretch. It’s exactly what has happened over the years with the expansion of access to both abortion, and gender reassignment surgery.

Ultimately, and yes I know this is potentially a long way off, we could end up at a point where so many barriers are breached, so many safeguards sidestepped, with so many groups included, that we effectively end up offering death on demand.

Or even when there’s no demand.

That’s what has happened in Canada. Where people seem to be offered the chance to be euthanised for everything from depression, to loneliness, and even poverty.

Yes. These are edge cases.

But as suicide by state becomes normalised, they are likely to become less and less edgy.

Growth of Assisted Dying in Canada.

Already over 4% of deaths in Canada each year are as a direct result of their assisted suicide MAiD system. (All the statistics you don’t want are here)

In some areas of the country that has risen as high as 7%. I am no expert on Canadian affairs. But I will stick my neck out and say this.

I’d bet my record collection (Lots of Taylor Swift. All of Galaxie 500. More ZZ Top than on balance, would seem sensible) that the parts of Canada where the assisted suicide rate rises from an eye watering 4% to a mind boggling 7%, are not the richest, most prosperous, or best educated, parts of the country.

Some people believe that all this legislation does is hand them the power to choose the time and manner of their own death. I’m concerned that it actually hands the government the power to sanction the premeditated killing of some of its most vulnerable citizens.

There was a suspicion during covid that many old people were shuffled off to care homes and then left there to expire so as not to ‘overburden’ our all singing, all dancing, pot banging, cancer patient dodging, NHS.

If a system invites abuse, it will inevitably be abused.

Which is why I, like many others, worry that what starts with

‘I’m in huge pain. My quality of life is non existent. I want to die.’

Ends with

‘Gran is a huge pain. We want her bungalow. She has to die.’

We cannot predict exactly what malpractice, abuse, or scandal will come to light in the future as a result of this government legislation, but this bill has got the politician’s mealy mouthed phrase

‘…we must learn the lessons of these tragic events to ensure this never, ever happens again’,

written all over it.

I’m going to leave this here. It’s such a sensitive, emotive subject. I’m genuinely conflicted.

I’ve heard people say this decision by parliament is a ‘dark day’ and ‘means parliament is morally bankrupt.’ I don’t agree with any of that. I genuinely believe that pretty much every MP, (actual human beings let’s remember, whatever we think of them en mass), who voted for this bill was motivated by compassion, and a genuine desire to end suffering.

And besides. I think we have enough rancour and division in our society already, without creating a whole new battleground.

In the end, both sides of this debate can probably agree on one thing. That the place we are trying to get to, our ultimate destination, is death with dignity.

Which is a laudable end point.

The problem is, that if we have to go through the government to get there, we will most definitely, assuredly and inevitably, end up somewhere else.

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Thanks for reading Low Status Opinions.

If this debate is affecting you or your family at the moment. Or has done in the past. Then I sincerely wish you all the very best.

God Bless You.