Death or Dishonour?

One story breaking in the UK concerns the right to choose how you want to die.
I've been following it since it first appeared as an interview in a magazine and have watched as it has 'topsied' it's way round the global media.
I think, last time I look, it had morphed into 'Execute the Elderly' - which, quite frankly, was NOT what the story was about at all.

In a recent interview, a British philosopher explored the idea that we should be allowed to actively choose to die, if that is what we want. She was not talking about suicide brought about by depression or grief.
She was talking about extending the power of 'living wills' or 'advance directives' to accommodate your wishes if you became incapacitated, physically or mentally.
At the moment, these documents, drawn up well before any mental impairment takes place, are a valuable aid to doctors and relatives who might have to make a decision about the continuation of treatment or the application of 'heroic measures' to sustain life.
You can state, in these documents, that you do not wish to be resusitated or be artificially kept alive if, in your opinion, your quality of life thereafter, would be far below that which you would consider tolerable.
Now - before everyone starts yelling, consider this..
What YOU consider intolerable, might be another persons habitual way of life, and they might be very happy indeed, thank you very much.
The ultra fit athlete might consider a life confined to a bed, paralysed from the neck down, with only a tv for amusement, completely insufferable.
For a couch potato, it might sound like an alternative lifestyle.
However, this philosopher felt that there should be the right to ask to go further in these documents - that you should have the right to ask to be 'put to sleep' - killed, if you will - if your life changes so that to you, any point in carrying on, has gone.
Furthermore, that whoever did the deed should not be subject to the force of law because they were carrying out your will.
There was also an argument that if you felt you had become a burden on your family, had begun to have a detrimental effect on their lives, or (in the UK) a burden on the finite resources of the National Health Service, then you should also be able to leave life in a manner of your choosing, and at a time of your choosing.
All highly controversial ideas, and being debated to various degrees of fierceness over here. One of the important things to note is that she was NOT saying that families should make the decision for you - your opinion, your desires and CHOICE, should be clearly spelled out in a document drawn up legally, while you were of sound mind and under no pressure.
Opinion seems to be split roughly 50/50. Some see it as tantamount to death squads sweeping through old folks homes - others see it as a final dignity granted to you or someone you love very much. There's not much room for a half way house.
Again, before you all start yelling, no-one is talking about putting people who are currently alive, ill, suffering from dementia, handicapped or with any other health issues, to sleep, in the way you would a favourite pet.
No-one should be discussing that, because that is not the argument.
The argument is whether anyone currently mentally fit and completely competent, who is considering making a living will, could define in that will, the conditions under which they would prefer to be dead - and please, could the medical profession make it so for them?
Also, if a person DID NOT MAKE such a living will, then naturally their wishes, should they become incapacitated and unable to express an opinion, could not be known on the subject, and they would be treated and kept alive as far as was possible.
For a country like the UK, where everyone contributes to a national health care system, choices have to be made every single day about who to treat, and who to allow to die. That's happening now, and it doesn't seem to cause the same storm.
There can't be a week that passes without a story about Mrs A, mother of two young children who can't get a new cancer drug which might extend her life by a year or so because the local NHS trust deems it uneconomical - too expensive for the benefit received. Try telling that to Mrs A. Or then we have Mr D, who has had to take another mortgage on his house in order to pay for two years treatment that someone in the next authority is getting on the NHS due to variations in the policies across the UK. Socialist medicine is a wonderful thing - if you have a heart attack in the street, or an anyeurism in the bath - you will be operated on by good surgeons and not presented with a bill at the end of your stay. That's a given. BUT, as previously said, resources are finite, and decisions about where the money is spent is a subject everyone has an opinion about. There really is no easy answer. Some people have to die so that others can live. But who?
In the US, I guess it's simpler. You pay vast amounts of money for health insurance and pray you stay healthy. If you become ill, when the insurance runs out..... what happens next seems to be up to how resourceful your family is or how good your powers of recovery are.
I guess once it's all gone, you just die.
So maybe, in the US, you don't need living wills, or maybe you do. Maybe you too would want them to include a desire to be put to sleep so that you don't become a burden - not to the state, but to your family. Most of us have family who will willingly sacrifice large parts of their own lives to look after us if we dropped into a senile state. That's great. But I would hate to break my family financially. And I would HATE for my kids to have to give up years of their lives looking after me. I'm not talking about checking in a few times a week. I mean look after me, bathe me, change me, clean my face after a meal, feed me. I don't want that - for me or for them. And there's the money too. To have the house I worked hard to buy, the savings I gathered to leave to my kids to give them a kick start, all used up keeping me in watery soup and incontinence pads would be intolerable to me. The attacks from the agencies who deal with the demented elderly have been vicious - but I look at it this way. Why should their opinion about my end outweigh my own? Why should I be obliged to wander into the great solitude that is dementia, and stay there for years, suffering all the indignities that accompany that dreadful condition, simply because THEY say so? I resent that arrogance more than the alternative.
That's why, whatever your personal feelings about the subject, the debate is valuable, and should be discussed. Because the answers - like your feelings and my feeling - are personal. As would each and every decision be.
I get all the sci fi references - the Logans Runs, the Solyent Greens - but there MUST be value in having the discussion.
In the end, there is only choice. That's the last dignity left to us. Perhaps best make that choice while you can, and not have someone else make it after you can't.

Once upon a time in the west....

Once Upon A Time In The West...

I feel there's a great deal of over complicating going on. The kind of thing that is used to mystify and muddy the waters, rather than help people find things out.
In days gone by, story tellers used to change a situation or an idea into words that most people would be able to get their head round. It's something journalists should still do today, instead of, as so many do, become part of the problem.
I have written a story for you to cast your eyes over. Any similarities with situations or actual people are purely in your imagination.
Now, come with me while I take you to the magical land of the free, in a world far, far removed from this one....

Once upon a time, in a country far, far away, there was a stable boy and a knight. The stable boy wasn’t really a stable boy – he was quite a wealthy young man, but his family had been poor and when he’d been a child, he’d helped in the town stables. Luckily, he’d been a very clever and hard working lad, and his talent had been spotted. He’d worked hard to get a good education and had now made something of himself. He was now a well-known businessman in the town and had made a lot of money. Trouble was, an awful lot of other businessmen, and the people he mixed with, didn’t really like him, and didn’t want to spend too much time socially with him. They still couldn’t help remembering him as a stable boy. They couldn’t help remembering his family scraping a living in a pokey little cottage, his mum doing mending for the wealthier ladies in town and his dad picking anything that looked useful out of the piles of rubbish thrown out by the rich folk every day. They certainly wouldn’t want him marrying their daughters – no matter how much money he had. He was, after all, underneath all the fine clothes and impeccable manners, still a stable boy. But the stable boy had a big ambition. He’d fallen in love with a beautiful princess who lived in a small palace near the castle. She was everything a young man could hope for in a bride – beautiful, desirable and very well connected. If he could just marry her, that would give him the power to make changes that could benefit everyone in society – not just the businessmen. The stable boy reckoned that his background allowed him to see much more than just the beautifully tended gardens the businessmen looked out their windows on to. So he set out to woo her. And it was then he met the knight.
The knight was a whole different matter. He had come from a wealthy family and all his connections were blue ribbon. But in his youth he’d been a bit of a rebel. He’d rubbed some important people up the wrong way and had missed out on a lot of chances that he’d felt should have been rightfully his. He’d spared a dragon that everyone thought he should have killed and made a deal with it to go away instead. He’d done a bit too much carousing and had gotten a reputation for being an outsider. Now he was old, and he wanted, just maybe for the last time in his life, to achieve something really spectacular. He wanted to win the heart of the princess. So he’d spent the last few years really figuring out what the other businessmen wanted. He started behaving the way they liked to see people behave. He started to treat his servants badly and he even had little dragons that just ate grass put to death immediately so that everyone could see that he was right with them, in their camp and one of their own. The businessmen started to warm to the old knight. Sure he was cantankerous in his old age, he tended to throw things around when he got angry and he could be a bit unpredictable, but he’d learned the lessons well and they knew, that if push came to shove, he’d come out fighting for them. So they decided that, on this occasion, and only this one, he would be allowed to make play for the fair princess. But when he reached her palace he found the stable boy coming up the same road.
Quickly they both realised they had the same intention in mind – they both wanted the hand of that fair princess in marriage. And after a bit of shoving and ‘accidental bumping’ they both realised that they’d have to sort things out man to man.
They decided on a joust.
The knight was quite keen on the idea – he’d been good at jousting as a youngster and was fairly sure he could remember the techniques and how to stay aboard his horse.
The stable boy knew that, at some point in his life, he’d have to get in the ring and joust at some time, so he’d used some of the time he’d spent in the stable to practise jousting – and he was really quite good at it, which came as a bit of a surprise to the knight. For the whole day the two charged at each other, their lances striking blow after blow against the other’s shield, their horses tiring beneath them and neither of them seemingly able to strike the final blow.
Eventually their sturdy animals were too tired to go on, so the two rivals took to the ground and fought on foot. Shoulder to shoulder, sword against sword. Young against old. Money against knowledge.
By this time a crowd of townspeople had gathered to cheer them on, or to jeer as one missed his target or fell over his own foot in the heat of battle.
Even the princess woke up from her afternoon nap and started watching out of one of the windows high up on the turret she slept in. She’d been told by one of the ladies in waiting that if she stood on a chair and leaned so far out that you were in danger of falling out the window, that you might be able, on a sunny day, to see Alaska from there, but the princess thought that sounded like too much effort, and had never tried. She was MUCH more interested in what was going on outside at the moment.
Then the two fighters had an idea, and they turned to the baying crowd. Some were peasants, dressed in rags and barefoot. Some were townspeople, who looked after shops and small businesses. They were too small to appear on the big business radar, so they tended to get overlooked a bit. Some of the crowd were really anti-dragon, and they were rooting for the knight.
"You know us," they cried as one. "You’ve seen us fight. You’ve seen the way we deal with people, with problems and with each other. You’ve spent the day watching us in action. You decide who gets the princess."
Well, what are you going to do?

Stretching the physique

I'm still watching the Olympics - this year, Britain's success has made it a tad more interesting than usual.
However, I'm struck by how very odd some of - nay, MANY of - our (the world) athletes are looking. It's a bit of a freak show.
I hate to say, but Michael Phelps is positively mis-shapen. Fantastic athlete he may be, but he just looks bizarre, all arms with a tiny head.
Our runners are becoming pockets of muscles on legs; or skinned whippets if they go distances.
And why is the sprinting considered 'the blue riband' events? Cycling/hurdling/running/swimming - the 'sprint' is the elite sport? Why? Why should someone being able to run fast for 10 seconds be more honoured, more respected, than someone who can run for 30 laps and then sprint finish?
Sports people. Frankly, who needs them?

Olympic Heat

The temperatures might be high in Beijing, but they're soaring in our living room. Thanks to the influence on my teenage daughter, all sports, or more specifically, sportsmen (sorry ladies, you don't get much look-in) are given air time by virtue of their hotness. And I don't mean whether they're working up a lather!
If there's no-one that comes up to the fairly discerning standards she sets, then the event is not watched. She refuses to watch anyone that's 'ugly' in that sure-of-herself way that only the young and selfish can impose on the rest of us mere mortals.
Big noses, facial hair, body hair, bad haircuts - they're all liable to have you removed from our screen after a very short time - whether you're in gold medal position and doing the best performance of your entire life or not.
I was, for instance, under instructions to get her up at 07.30 this morning, over-riding the usual standing orders for the summer holidays that say she's not to be disturbed before 10am.
That was so that she could watch young Tim Daly doing his thing on the diving board.
"Look at the six pack on him!" she roared, in a spectacularly unladylike way, though I have to confess to mixed feelings when looking at the young lad. Yes, indeed, his six pack was impressive - in fact I didn't realise a lad of that age was capable of developing abdominal muscles like that - and then I felt a little embarrassed for even thinking such highly personal thoughts about a lad younger than my own son.
So, we watched young Mr Daly's diving exploits (though the full armpit hair of the very first divers drew a load 'eeyuch' from her) together, her drooling and me searching around for an older model to focus on.
She's getting quite into the swimming now. And the diving of course, with young Mr Daly still to compete in the singles events. I suppose I should be glad - at least he's roughly the same age as her. I have a feeling, in a few months time, it'll be a case of lock up your sons for all my neighbours. No man will be safe on the streets of Edinburgh. She'll lead a pack of feral girls to hunt down stragglers, or those who have made the mistake of having their earphones in when the warning sirens go off.....
But I will admit, it's a new way to look at the Olympics.
If you were going to give out a gold medal for 'hotness', who would you award it to.....