This would mean widening eligibility for assisted dying to include people who “may not be approaching death for a considerable period of time”, it said.
Critics have warned that the Bill could be a “slippery slope”, with safeguards eroded over time and a rising number of people seeking an assisted death.
They have argued that similar laws introduced in Canada, the Netherlands and Belgium have seen their eligibility criteria widened and protections “progressively relaxed or removed”.
But the committee said that it can be “very difficult” to predict life expectancy and recognised it might be better to leave decisions to clinicians on whether an illness is deemed terminal.
Clinicians have held the line – real strictly – on the Abortion Act, right?
After the first couple of years in Canada, once the “novelty” had warn off, the statistics reveal an exponential year on year rise in assisted deaths.
The people pushing this are dishonest and stupid. They couldn’t even wait to pass it before dismantling the “robust safeguards”.
And can we have a debate about the death penalty now then? Would be funny to watch the same people arguing against it.
Maybe it’s what people want?
Should people be allowed to smoke cigarettes?
Tim, I hope you are aware that this is a Worstall Bee In Bonnet topic, not because you have anything useful to say, given that this is your blog and the rules presently allow you to say pretty much whatever you want.
I can’t believe how stupid most politicians are. You think most of them would have learned by now that before you create a law think first how the people you despise would use it…
And Martin, there was a brief debate on GB News about that after Axel did his Mussie thing and the Leftie said the death penalty was “barbaric and shameful that anyone would suggest it in the 21st century” after telling us all that assisted dying was a “kindness”…
Southerner: Worstall’s bees-in-his-bonnet is part of what gives his blog its enjoyable character.
NiV: Maybe it’s what people want?
Nobody is stopping them topping themselves.
If young Worstall and I aren’t wearing the same bonnet, we’re certainly buzzed by the same bees. Remember RICO? We only abandon the normal rules of justice in extreme circumstances involving a very small number of specific groups. Terror laws? And is there a reason no one is charged with treason anymore? Is it because it’s been the mission of the Uniparty for the last 30 years?
The former Canada: Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths
It’s orders of magnitude deadlier than COVID:
The country’s fifth annual report since euthanasia was legalised in 2016 showed around 15,300 people underwent assisted dying last year after being successful in their applications.
This is an ethnocide of the natives so they can be replaced more quickly:
Around 96% of recipients identified as white people, who account for about 70% of Canada’s population. It is unclear what caused this disparity.
The second most reported ethnic group was east Asians (1.8%), who account for about 5.7% of Canadians.
However, the most recent Canadian election was decided by idiot Boomers. For everybody under the age of 60, the cost of living was the biggest issue facing Canadia. For over 60’s, the main issue was seething about Donald Trump, so they just reelected the people who rammed 10 million Indians into their country and seized people’s bank accounts over a cold.
Brown hand, life support machine plug, zzzzzzz…..
“Nobody is stopping them topping themselves.”
I didn’t say there was. That’s not the question.
Smoking kills.
Therefore selling somebody cigarettes is assisting them to commit suicide. Someone not approaching death for a considerable time.
Therefore selling cigarettes should be banned, unless your doctor gives you permission and a psychologist confirms you’re mentally competent and you fill in all the government paperwork, etc.
Because the worry is that tobacco companies might try to influence people with manipulative adverts trying to get them to take up smoking, for their own profit.
So tobacco advertising should be banned, too.
And old people, who are judged not to be mentally competent or subject to influence should not be allowed to smoke.
And then we’ll start on drink, and suicide-by-liver-damage.
And then bacon butties and suicide-by-heart-attack…
It’s a familiar story.
Whose decision is it? Whose life is it? People are allowed to kill themselves slowly and painfully with lung cancer, and people are allowed to assist them by selling them the cigarettes for profit without all these consent safeguards. If you’re an adult, and don’t have diagnosed dementia or a similar mental disability, you’re assumed to be mentally competent to decide the matter for yourself. If people want assistance with dying quickly and painlessly, why is that any different in principle? Maybe they think that’s better than the alternative? Should markets be free?
NiV – Should markets be free?
Kids, think of how much GDP will rise when we bump off grandma!
@Steve,
It’s not about GDP. It’s about the freedom to buy whatever goods and services you want, without interference from the government and the busybody bansturbators.
If a new product appears on the market, and sales go through the roof, wouldn’t we normally think that’s a good thing? Maybe it’s just very popular?
NiV – If a new product appears on the market, and sales go through the roof, wouldn’t we normally think that’s a good thing?
The product is death
“The product is death”
The product is an end to suffering.
NiV
I didn’t say there was. That’s not the question.
“Nobody is stopping them topping themselves” is a statement and an answer, not a question.
Those who want assisted dying want someone else to do their dirty work because they lack courage or foresight or both. And, additionally, they selfishly ignore the inevitable institutional, professional and familial moral hazards that assisted dying involves.
Your analogy with smoking doesn’t work. Smoking generally damages health over time and may kill; but it’s not a form of suicide, which requires the intention to kill yourself – and most smokers don’t intend to kill themselves. And people are generally free to smoke. Meanwhile, people already have the option to end their own lives, if they wish. There is already a free market in suicide: you are free to end your life any time. So we don’t need institutionalised assisted suicide with all the concomitant state regulation and moral hazards.
Eat a roast peacock, drink some falernian and open your veins in a hot bath like an ancient Roman….
Slippery slope? It’s the bloody Hahnenkamm.
“Those who want assisted dying want someone else to do their dirty work because they lack courage or foresight or both.”
Or access to the necessary materials, or the expertise to know what method results in the least chance of suffering. Or because by the time they want it, they’re no longer capable (or deemed capable of consenting). Try doing it when you’ve been paralysed in bed for six months, with brain damage, blind, hallucinating, and with tubes jammed down your nose and throat, slowly going mad from boredom and terror.
“And, additionally, they selfishly ignore the inevitable institutional, professional and familial moral hazards that assisted dying involves.”
Dying – assisted or not – has always been an area full of moral hazards. There’s a pretty heavy moral hazard in effectively torturing someone to death over a period of months, which those who wish to ban it blithely ignore.
“Smoking generally damages health over time and may kill; but it’s not a form of suicide, which requires the intention to kill yourself – and most smokers don’t intend to kill themselves.”
Smokers make a trade-off between the pleasure smoking brings versus the risk of an earlier death, and by smoking they are accepting both. It’s part of the whole package being purchased. This understanding is a requirement of informed choice.
Smokers are seeking pleasure, and death is part of the price. Suiciders are seeking an avoidance or end to suffering, and death is part of the price. It’s not identical, but it’s difference of degree rather than principle.
“And people are generally free to smoke.”
Heh! Have you seen the price of them? Try lighting up a cigarette in a pub and see how free you are.
But it’s not whether people are free to smoke, but whether people are free to help them. A world where people are ‘free to smoke’ but where selling cigarettes is banned is playing with words.
“So we don’t need institutionalised assisted suicide with all the concomitant state regulation and moral hazards.”
So don’t regulate it. It’s only ‘concomitant’ because people choose to make it so.
Let’s have a free for all blood thirsty capitalist approach to death dealing and allow people to be killed without any regulation (unless by the state for rapist or murders for reasons).
With the bonus it’ll also solve the problem of generational inequity by allowing granny to be bundled into the suicide booth after a (witch) doctor from the 3rd world signs off the request from the family (having receive a brown envelope stuffed with cash).
@NiV
The product is an end to suffering.
I’m in favor of that, but only when it is the person being killed that is suffering. What we are concerned about is that the bar gets raised again and again till some elements of society believe their “suffering” could be alleviated by buying a nice new car if only they could persuade their elderly relatives into departing a little sooner. The next step is that the elderly become pressured for not ending their life and passing on their wealth. In time it becomes their expected duty, and are hated for not doing so. The hate leads to them “suffering”, and you have a cure for that.
“…signs off the request from the family…”
It’s not up to the family, and it’s not up to you. It’s up to granny.
” The next step is that the elderly become pressured for not ending their life and passing on their wealth.”
They can pass their wealth on anyway. Just make a gift.
Should we ban the elderly giving gifts to their family, in case they have been pressured into doing so? Should we ban anyone giving gifts to anyone in case they’ve been pressured? Where does it stop?
When are people considered to be adults, responsible for handling their own affairs? When must Nanny State step in to control their every move in case they’ve been ‘pressured’ into making a bad decision not in their interests?
Or access to the necessary materials,
The necessary materials are widely available
or the expertise to know what method results in the least chance of suffering.
Mr Google is the suicide’s friend
Or because by the time they want it, they’re no longer capable (or deemed capable of consenting). Try doing it when you’ve been paralysed in bed for six months…
(1) There many things that people no longer deemed capable of consenting may be denied. Life’s tough. (2) Many services cannot be accessed and objectives achieved by those in poor health. So, similarly, equal access to suicide is not possible – unless you plan ahead! (3) And palliative care continues to improve.
Acceptance of risk does not imply intention. Thus when I drive my car, I accept the risk that I might be injured or killed, but I do not intend my injury or death. So the difference between your smokers and and suicides is one of kind, not merely degree. And your analogy is false.
So don’t regulate it. But assisted suicide would need regulating. A free-for-all would lead to widespread murder. The problem is that the various forms of regulation have proved inadequate. So assisted suicide is a non-starter. On the other hand, suicide isn’t.
“The necessary materials are widely available”
For sale? That’s “assisting”, right?
Class A drugs? A Helium gas cylinder? I think the seller might guess what they’re for.
“Life’s tough.”
Yep. That’s the attitude.
“So, similarly, equal access to suicide is not possible – unless you plan ahead!”
Yes. Exactly. Living wills.
“Thus when I drive my car, I accept the risk that I might be injured or killed, but I do not intend my injury or death.”
You intend to risk it.
“A free-for-all would lead to widespread murder.”
You still need consent. But you don’t need a great deal of regulatory infrastructure to get proof of consent.
“It’s not about GDP. It’s about the freedom to buy whatever goods and services you want, without interference from the government and the busybody bansturbators.”
If you think assisted suicide is about freedom, I’ve got a bridge that you might like. Its about the State being able to bump people off when they fancy it, and chalk it all down to ‘assisted suicide’. Thats the end game here – sign here Grandma, we need your bed. Afterwards they’ll be able to say to the deceased family that ‘all the protocols were followed’, all the paperwork will look perfect. And the one person who might be able to say otherwise will be dead. Very convenient.
the statistics reveal an exponential year on year rise in assisted deaths.
But isn’t that what you’d expect? Like any product or service introduced to the market, take-up starts low & rises with market penetration. If it’s exponential it must be a popular service.
@Theo Those who want assisted dying want someone else to do their dirty work because they lack courage or foresight or both. … people already have the option to end their own lives, if they wish. There is already a free market in suicide: you are free to end your life any time. So we don’t need institutionalised assisted suicide with all the concomitant state regulation and moral hazards.
Eat a roast peacock, drink some falernian and open your veins in a hot bath like an ancient Roman….
Since you know so much about it, Theo, would you care to give a demonstration? We’ll hold your coat. And I’m rather against state regulation. And it’s state regulation that prevents it.
Like NiV I’m in touch reality. It’s remarkably difficult to top yourself. Most people attempt it fail. And failing can leave you a lot worse off than before the attempt. I actually have an end of life kit. A very strong sedative can be administered orally, by intramuscular or intravenous injection or rectally. (Drugs do actually pass more effectively through the membranes down there than other routes) Self administered injection would be favourite. But one can’t guarantee one can inject sufficient to be lethal before one is prevented by the action of the drug itself. And I don’t much like the idea of the mess I’ll be leaving behind. One can’t tell people what you intend or they may try to prevent you. So some poor soul’s going to be getting the surprise, aren’t they? Or the smell.
The slippery slope thing. If you’re going to involve the state or the medical profession undoubtedly. Wouldn’t trust either. So why involve them? This should be entirely a personal decision with no interference either pro or anti.
NiV – weren’t you rather critical of the Supreme Court / Equality Act thing?
But like they said the last time, legislative confusion, and public sector organisations illegally goldplating their own preferences onto legislation, will never happen again.
Jim – this is why they want to kill Gran:
Owner-occupiers aged 60-plus now hold a record estimated £2.89 trillion of net housing wealth in homes worth a total of £2.95 trillion, according to the latest assessment of housing wealth from property firm Savills.
Think of all the money to be made selling mortgages to immigrants after we liquidate the elderly and infirm.
BiS – And I don’t much like the idea of the mess I’ll be leaving behind. One can’t tell people what you intend or they may try to prevent you. So some poor soul’s going to be getting the surprise, aren’t they?
Comment ate my last reply, but the surprise would be your own. Don’t kill yourself, Hell is big enough.
For the death eaters: shouldn’t you try focusing that mental energy on living? We’ll all be gone soon enough and likely sooner than we wanted. I didn’t realise we had so many 19th century Russian novelists.
“This should be entirely a personal decision with no interference either pro or anti.”
Lol. You think the State is going to give you freedom to do what you want, even in death? They aren’t going to let private unregulated Death Clinics pop up all over the place. Everything will be regulated to within an inch of its life (ha ha) and you will be strictly forbidden from getting topped outside the State’s grasp. They want to be totally in control of this, so they can get to decide who is ‘suicided’.
Clinicians: those people who were murdering patients with ventilators and Remdesivir?
Those clinicians?
For sale? That’s “assisting”, right?
No, because kitchen knives, head-covering plastic bags, piano wire, razor blades, etc, etc have many uses.
You intend to risk it.
‘X intends to risk F’ is not equivalent to ‘X intends F’!!
…you don’t need a great deal of regulatory infrastructure to get proof of consent.
Indeed, but you do to prevent coerced consent.
I should like to lawfully assist the dying of quite a lot of people not at present terminally ill. Most of them are politicians. Can I have the law soon please?
I am Canadian. And my father was one of the “early adopters” of MAID. So I do have some of that “lived experience”, though (necessarily) slightly removed.
Dad was pretty well prepared. He had set things out years before, including a very well reasoned explanation on paper of why he would choose this. Summary: he did not think life was worth living bedridden with no hope of improvement.
When he went through with it he had stage 4 cancer of the prostate, though it had metastasized. Sudden onset. In May he had an elevated PSA level on his annual exam; by early August he was in chemo; he died in early December.
Usually you die *with* prostate cancer, not of it. I think he might have been an exception. Its aggressive nature meant he probably cut short some months of being in a hospital bed doped up on increasing doses of morphine.
At the time it was new and there were a number of checks and balances. As well as occasional roadblocks. The hospital he landed in was the local one, but it was run by Catholics. So he had to get transferred to a different one. And find a doctor willing to assist. And a 10 day waiting period between formally asking for it from a doctor and actually going through with it.
And the doctor asked him if he would mind if some (3) of his interns would be able to view the process. He consented, but this might also have been a bit of a gut check.
It would have been really hard to argue with his reasons at the time. I didn’t. Some days I think I should have.
On the other hand, my mother is a different story. She is suffering from dementia with some memory loss. She has taken the exact wrong lesson from this and says she wants MAID whenever she’s angry about something. It’s an attention-getting tactic.
I don’t know if she would have been accepted back when my father died. I don’t know if she would be accepted now. I do take some comfort that she’s unlikely to be able to push forward, research it, and jump through any hoops that remain.
After all, she also let her driver’s license expire and she keeps making comments about getting it back. I got tired of her comments and said that if she did go apply and take the test and passes I would not object.
So far, no actual movement forward.
All of this talk of coercion, Theo. I find I’m being coerced into doing things or not doing things I do not want or do want to do almost constantly. Mostly no doubt with your approval. But this is somehow different?
It’s remarkably difficult to top yourself. Most people attempt it fail.
Says the man who thinks that I’ll be fined for taking my elderly neighbour’s garden waste to the local tip! Many suicide attempts are a ‘cry for help’ and/or are unplanned by irrational and/or stupid people, so of course they fail! The ancients rarely failed: the opening of your veins and arteries in a hot bath is remarkably efficient.
As for the mess, I once found the body of a young man who had slashed his throat while hanging himself. After the police etc had been, my wife and I cleaned the walls and carpets for his mother. It was very sad but not disgusting. Even a normal death can be messy: the bladder empties,the anal sphincter leaks, etc.
“NiV – weren’t you rather critical of the Supreme Court / Equality Act thing?”
The main thing I was critical of was the media misunderstanding around what it means and how it works and what the Supreme Court actually did. The rules on toilets and changing rooms aren’t defined by the government through legislation – they’re defined by the owner of the property in question. They were before, and still are.
“But like they said the last time, legislative confusion, and public sector organisations illegally goldplating their own preferences onto legislation, will never happen again.”
Same goes for both sides.
“The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple principle, as entitled to govern absolutely the dealings of society with the individual in the way of compulsion and control, whether the means used be physical force in the form of legal penalties, or the moral coercion of public opinion. That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign. ”
It’s none of the government’s or society’s business what people do with their own lives. Butt out.
Jim
Everything will be regulated to within an inch of its life (ha ha)
And funeral directors increase their prices in line with the cost of living (ha,ha)…
M – it’s incredibly painful when we see our parents age and sicken. It’s a role reversal from when we were very small and they had to take care of us, but worse because we all know none of us are getting off this rock alive.
Life is so fleeting that even moments of pain can be precious. I know when my last grandparent died, she didn’t want to go. At that point the cancer had taken away her sight and put her through agony, but she clung on to every moment of life until the end.
I hope I can find her courage when it’s my time.
Theo – Many suicide attempts are a ‘cry for help’ and/or are unplanned by irrational and/or stupid people, so of course they fail!
That’s not even the worst part. The worst part is that we know, from fishing people out of rivers after they jump off a bridge, and cutting men down from trees after they’ve half-strangled themselves, that most people who try to kill themselves *immediately* regret it. We have the testimony of survivors to tell us so.
NiV – It’s none of the government’s or society’s business what people do with their own lives.
Yes it is. If we want to live in a society rather than as beasts, it’s very much other people’s business whether or not Our NHS becomes a national death service.
I wish you would step back from that ledge, my friend.
“Yes it is. If we want to live in a society rather than as beasts, it’s very much other people’s business whether or not Our NHS becomes a national death service.”
Why?
BiS
All of this talk of coercion, Theo.
See Jim @ 12.54, above: If you think assisted suicide is about freedom, I’ve got a bridge that you might like. Its about the State being able to bump people off when they fancy it, and chalk it all down to ‘assisted suicide’. Thats the end game here – sign here Grandma, we need your bed. Afterwards they’ll be able to say to the deceased family that ‘all the protocols were followed’, all the paperwork will look perfect. And the one person who might be able to say otherwise will be dead. Very convenient. And it would help cut a deeply indebted state’s pension bill…
I find I’m being coerced into doing things or not doing things I do not want or do want to do almost constantly.
Me, too. Yet I can still take my elderly neighbour’s garden waste to the local tip without a fine!
Mostly no doubt with your approval.
Mostly not, probably.
But this is somehow different?
Because it is about a human life. And nuance. In 1982, my father attempted suicide after a diagnosis of terminal bowel cancer. I arrived unexpectedly and saved him. He had a few more months of happy life before the metastases reached his brain. At death in1983, he had a brief period of “terminal lucidity” in which he expressed huge gratitude for his extra months of life. He revoked his 1982 intention/consent to die…
@NiV
Where does it stop?
The obvious end state is that as controls get eroded it becomes a perfectly normal and seemingly “legal” way to murder someone. I can have you killed simply by getting a couple of signatures on the paperwork, drugging you heavily and delivering your senseless body for disposal.
NiV – Why?
Did you just fall to this planet in the form of David Bowie recently or something? I’m sure you don’t want me to regale you of Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes on the theory of society. Stuff every schoolboy knows.
Well said, Steve: @ 3.25pm and @ 5.24pm.
NiV
Why?
Because we are social creatures (conservatism or socialism), not atomised individuals (liberalism or hyper-liberalism).
Liberalism – classical liberalism – doesn’t say we are atomised creatures. Rather, that it’s not the government’s place to define or enforce how we’re social creatures. Barring third party harm that is.
As, actually, Burke’s conservatism says the same thing – little platoons.
Liberalism – classical liberalism – doesn’t say we are atomised creatures.
It doesn’t say it but implies it by its emphasis on individual rights and civil liberties. A classic liberal assumes the individual is the fundamental unit of society, a conservative assumes the fundamental unit is the family, and a socialist assumes that collectives are the fundamental social unit. Political Theory 101.
Assisted suicide should not be connected to life expectancy, health, or anything like that. There is one and only one criterion that should apply: does the person want to die. Regardless of how irrational their reasoning may appear to others, it’s not appropriate to overrule it. Some people seem perfectly healthy with a good life and want to die. Others have severe disabilities, chronic illnesses, or are in severe pain and yet want to live. It’s not our place to tell them they are wrong and impose our choice on them. We should merely allow them to implement their own decision without interference. So the only major check is to ensure that any assistence is provided to people who genuinely want to die and are not about to be murdered instead. It’s obviously permissible to try to persuade them to change their mind just as we already try to persuade people in pretty much all aspects of life.
@Steve – “Assisted dying now accounts for one in 20 Canada deaths”
Ideally it would be 20 in 20 and nobody who wanted to live would have to die. But, unfortunately, that’s not possible.
– ” most people who try to kill themselves *immediately* regret it. We have the testimony of survivors to tell us so.”
That is very unconvicing for two reasons. Firstly, it seems quite plausible that the ones whose desire for death was strongest might have been more thorough in ensuring success. And secondly, given how our current society is determined to overrule an intention to commit suicide, anyone whose regret was that they failed would be much better off pretending they regretted trying rather than letting others know they regretted failing and intended trying again as soon as practical.
“Where does it stop?”
With the need to get informed consent.
“The obvious end state is that as controls get eroded it becomes a perfectly normal and seemingly “legal” way to murder someone.”
It’s like anything you need the owner’s consent for. Should you be able to sell your house? Clearly, yes. It’s your house. Does the purchaser need your consent to take posession? Clearly yes, or it’s theft. So if we allow people to sell their houses, and the controls on that are eroded to the point it just takes a signature on a letter through the post or to a website, then it becomes a “seemingly legal” way to steal people’s houses by getting a signature on a form and posting it.
Except that people know that, and nobody wants to pay over money for a house and then discover the person you bought it off didn’t own it, or claims afterwards they didn’t really consent. So purchasers make stringent checks made to ensure the seller really gave consent and they can prove it in court.
There are two sets of controls to consider. The ones providing evidence that you really did give informed consent, and the ones limiting what goods and services you can buy or obtain from other people. The first, it is in the interests of people’s freedom to strengthen. The second, it is in the interests of people’s freedom to loosen.
“I’m sure you don’t want me to regale you of Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes on the theory of society.”
I’d like you to at least tell me how they are relevant. Name-dropping philosophers isn’t an argument.
If there is an argument I’ve not heard before that demonstrates that personal freedom from interference by society except in matters of unconsented harm is a bad idea, I want to hear it.
“Because we are social creatures (conservatism or socialism), not atomised individuals (liberalism or hyper-liberalism).”
We’re both. We’re individuals who have to sacrifice a portion of their freedom in order to be able to live together. The question is, which portion?
You can go to one extreme with the totalitarians who say you must sacrifice all your freedom to the state and live in a Big Brother, tutto-nello-stato dictatorship, or you can go to the other extreme with the anarchists which results in an unstable, all out war of everybody against everybody. But like a societal Laffer curve, there is a position in the middle that achieves some measure of both liberty and stability.
You can also choose to sacrifice only the minimum freedom needed to live in a society without stepping on one another’s toes. This is the basis of the Harm Principle and private property and free trade and so on. You get the maximum individual freedom consistent with everyone else having the same freedom.
Within the limits of not doing harm to others without their informed consent, we can build any social structures we can think of by trading goods and services and rights with one another voluntarily, for mutual benefit. Free trade is a social structure, that emerges spontaneously from individuals acting in their own interests, subject to respecting one another’s rights and freedoms.
“Rather, that it’s not the government’s place to define or enforce how we’re social creatures. Barring third party harm that is.”
Precisely!
@Charles: “There is one and only one criterion that should apply: does the person want to die. Regardless of how irrational their reasoning may appear to others, it’s not appropriate to overrule it.”
Not true. When I was really depressed the only thing that ‘cheered me up’ was the thought that I could end it by killing myself. Medical intervention prevented this. It is appropriate to overrule irrational actions.
Theo – thank you
ZT – Same. I would express it slightly differently: I want to kill myself when I forget that God loves us.
You can forget anything when you’re depressed and catastrophising, except the things that hurt you.
But God does love us. Every life matters. People try to kill themselves to escape pain, but those people just need help managing the pain. Not a push.
What kind of faithless men would we be if we saw a brother in distress, and offered to kill him? Sometimes in our lives we all have pain, we all have sorrow.
Steve
What kind of faithless men would we be if we saw a brother in distress, and offered to kill him? Sometimes in our lives we all have pain, we all have sorrow.
Let’s see now –
– a Labour MP?
– Richard Murphy?
– A Grauniad Journalist?
– A member of the Greens, SNP or Libdems?
– A member of JSO, XR and IB and myriad other ‘Environmentalist’ groups.
The list could go on….
VP – all of them would fail the Voight-Kampff test
Steve:
Do you make up these questions, Mr. Holden? Or do they write ’em down for you?
Reminds me of the joke about a New Labour MP back in ’97…
New Labour MP goes to get his hair cut but has headphones on
Barber says that he can’t cut the hair with the headphones on but the New Labour MP says they can’t be taken out. Barber starts to cut the hair and decides to whip the headphones off. The New Labour MP drops dead.
Shocked, the barber picks up the headphones and takes a listen.
He can hear the dulcet tones of Peter Mandelson saying:
‘Breathe in, breathe out’….
Says the man who thinks that I’ll be fined for taking my elderly neighbour’s garden waste to the local tip!
You’re profoundly ignorant, Theo. You don’t think I know the law on this? I used to run a company produced & disposed of waste. It’s actually a very sensible law to prevent commercial flytipping. You are allowed to transport your own household waste to a collection site & that’s it. Not other peoples. The law catches the flytippers at the only point they’re really vulnerable. When they have the waste on a vehicle. So a license is required to transport waste not your own. Failing to have a license incurs substantial fines. And as the waste is your neighbour’s & not yours you’re breaching the law over using the tip. You’re flytipping.
Since what I was engaged in produced considerable amounts of valuable waste. Things like kitchen units & appliances, bathroom equipment we were replacing & needed transporting I was always careful to buy it off my customers & create supporting documentation for the transactions. Therefore our vehicles were transporting our own materials. Actual waste we had removed by a licensed company. The performance & cost required to get a waste transport & disposal license wasn’t worth it. So maybe that’s how you can legally clear your neighbours’ garden waste. Buy it off of them. See you in court, Theo.
“I’m sure you don’t want me to regale you of Rousseau, Locke, and Hobbes on the theory of society.”
Weren’t they responsible for the concept of individual rights? Look at the fuck up that’s turned out to be. It’s in the process of destroying society.
“Weren’t they responsible for the concept of individual rights?”
Hobbes was an ardent Royalist and after the English civil war argued that humans are motivated by selfishness and greed and thus man’s natural state was a savage battle of all against all, living in “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short”, and could only be made into civilised society by making them subject to a strong system of regulation forcing them all into the same mould and opinion. The ideal society was a leviathan made up of millions of people all acting in accord with and under the control of the king. It was an argument for totalitarian dictatorship, the divine right of kings, loyalty to the state, and all that malarky.
Rousseau, by contrast, argued that man’s primitive nature was peaceful, living in harmony with nature, only seeking to satisfy their immediate needs, a “noble savage”, and that the source of inequality was private property. Society was a tool of the landowners to regulate ownership, to cement their control and privilege over others, and it was the jealousy and competitiveness this engendered that led to conflict and war, and the evils of poverty and slavery. He acknowledged that it was no longer possible to return to the era of the noble savage, but that people could keep the degeneracies of civilisation at bay by agreeing to a “social contract” in which they agreed to follow the general will of the rest of the population and restrain their greed. In essence, a trade of obedience in exchange for peace and some measure of liberty.
Locke’s position was that man was rational, and in his natural state acknowledged that “being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in his life, liberty, or possessions.” Individuals freely chose to join together in society for common benefit and thus required a system of rules and regulations to arbitrate disputes. People had “natural rights” to life, liberty, and property that had to provide the foundation for and be protected by civil society.
Thus, Hobbes saw society as a necessary dictatorship to control our savagery, Rousseau saw it as the people’s bargain with the evil capitalists, and Locke saw it as a mutually agreed sytem for arbitrating disputes and safeguarding natural rights.
I think a lot of the arguments here are Hobbesian. Freedom would allow people to sin, and thus they need to be restrained with lots of rules and regulations for their own good and the good of society. It’s the authoritarian position. I much prefer Locke. While I don’t think people are so rational in their natural state, I think they can be educated to see how it makes sense. There have to be some rules, to stop us stepping on one another’s toes, but the optimum is the minimum necessary, not the authoritarian maximum.
It’s all very interesting, but it doesn’t explain why: “If we want to live in a society rather than as beasts, it’s very much other people’s business whether or not Our NHS becomes a national death service”.
If we’re following Hobbes, we surely ought to be asking what the King thinks about it. Will he give the bill Royal Assent?
” So a license is required to transport waste not your own. ”
If you are a business. Not if you are a private individual.
https://www.gov.uk/register-renew-waste-carrier-broker-dealer-england
Quote: You must register if your business does any of the following:
transports waste (a carrier)
buys, sells or disposes of waste (a dealer)
arranges for someone else to buy, sell or dispose of waste (a broker)
Waste carriers licences apply to businesses, not private individuals, assuming they aren’t being paid to shift someone else’s waste (in which case they probably would be considered to be operating as a business).
@Jim
Take it from me, if you’re caught hauling someone else’s waste they will treat you as a business. The onus will be on you to prove you’re not. Quite rightly. And not easy to prove a negative. A lot of the bods do flytipping do not operate as registered businesses. In Theo’s case, what’s the difference between what he’s doing & somebody working on the black, gardening, using the council depot as free tip when he should be paying tip commercial rates? The reason that Theo’s getting away with it is probably because it’s small amounts infrequently, It is, however, clearly a breach of the requirements for using the facility. The waste you’re tipping must be YOUR’S. Not someone else’s. So probably prosecutable.
When I was clearing my late father’s house prior to selling I had several trailer loads for his local tip. I got the hairy eyeball on the third. But I’d armed myself with a recent council tax bill in his name proving the property was in the council’s bailiwick, my ID & a death certificate copy. So they were reluctantly satisfied. I can understand this. Stuff just doesn’t evaporate at the tip. Council’s have considerable expense getting rid of it.
@BiS: you’re talking about a completely different issue, namely what the rules are for using council tips. It may indeed be a council rule that the waste has to be yours to be able to dispose of it there for free. But thats not the point in question, which is does a person need a waste carrier licence to carry waste (anywhere, not just to a council tip) that isn’t theirs IF they are not doing it as a consequence of trade? And the link above is quite clear, no, if you are not a business you don’t need one. As indeed you appear to have confirmed by the example of clearing your late fathers house. You weren’t ‘in trade’ so you didn’t need a waste carriers licence, even though the waste wasn’t yours.