Probably cuz he thinks it’s a vote winner. Everyone is living too long let’s all kill ourselves off! Vote for me!
My grandmother was facing a lung condition that would essentially result in an agonisingly long and slow prolonged drowning. And it’s not a condition that can be improved by pain killers. The only good news is that other complications caused her passing before it got to this stage. We were all grateful she didn’t have to suffer like that. Even the knowledge that was what awaited her caused her suffering.
Not everyone has the fortune to pass peacefully and pain free in their beds at an old age. Some have the misfortune to suffer agonising slow deaths. And other people feel able to tell them “you have to suffer through this, you shouldn’t have the option to die quickly and painlessly when you decide because *I* think you shouldn’t”. Or in other words, “my beliefs about your right to a painless death are more important than yours, despite you being the person suffering and it being *your* death”.
One suspects these same people who feel they can dictate another’s choice in the matter would be the first to rage against it if someone else made a decision for them.
That will lead to some interesting doorstep discussions come election time.
Everyone probably already knows this, but since politics began, an elected Prime Minister has never fulfilled or followed through with their promises, not one.
Hear Hear !!!
As long as safeguards are introduced to ensure that people are doing it of their own free will and have not been pressured in to it… then I’d be all for it.
Any change to liberalise the current legislation is welcome; but the proposed laws are still far too conservative. None of us consented to being born, and life can be seriously hard going for many of us, not just those in the final stages of terminal cancer.
If the government can prevent you from accessing effective suicide methods (and the new Suicide Prevention Strategy for England and Wales promises that the tendrils of the nanny state will extend even further into people’s ability to make this personal decision for themselves) and won’t provide access to those methods; then that is entrapment and enforced suffering.
I don’t think that anyone should come into existence as the indentured servant of society (or mankind); and the legally recognised right to die by suicide should apply to everyone. That would mean that the government, at minimum, would not be able to actively try to impede you from finding a highly effective and reasonably painless method to end your own life. The government shouldn’t have the power to compel people to live, by making the option of suicide too risky, and investing authorities with the power to intervene to stop a suicide (unless that particular suicide is endangering the rights of others).
It’s strange how, as a country, we mostly claim to be all about “my body, my choice”, and wouldn’t accept an abortion law that only permitted abortion in cases where the foetus wasn’t viable, or the mother’s life was in danger. But yet, when it comes to the most fundamental liberty of all – ownership of our own bodies – we haven’t even reached the point where terminally ill people get to opt out of the last few months of excruciating agony; let alone allowing people who have done nothing to deserve entrapment to opt out just because they don’t feel like being a cog in the great capitalist machinery.
This is a very welcome development, but I can’t take someone who is pro the choice to end your life, but wants to tell you what you’re allowed to put in your own body.
But what do the Mail and the Telegraph think? That will tell us whether Starmer will actually stick by this view.
I believe that it should be available, but only in the circumstance of permanent paralysis, extreme pain or when near death.
But I doubt that even the conservatives are considering this as a possibility for people that want to commit suicide and have the chance for a longer and reasonably healthy life. So I’m probably preaching to the choir in a sense. It still has to be said I think.
Outside of “it’s my religious view that you shouldn’t be allowed to die when you want” what valid arguments are there? I don’t know anyone who isn’t in favour of something like this.
I sincerely hope he means this and it results it action but given his current love of u turning, I won’t be holding my breath.
I hope this is not a vision of how he hopes to clear NHS backlogs….
Based
The status quo is a violation of the most basic Pareto efficiency ideas. Taxpayers paying taxes they don’t want to pay to give painful life-extending treatments to people who don’t want them, and delaying treatments via triage to those that do want treatments. And when those that seek to go abroad with their loved ones to end it in Switzerland, we use police, court and potentially prison time on them too.
When the Christians and the House of Lords kick off at this reform, tell them to eat Parliamentary boot and force it through. Labour will have the votes between a 3 line whip, the Lib Dem’s, SNP, and the Lib-Con Tories.
The only people who win from the current system are care home and hospice owners.
Having watched 4 elderly grandparents decay into cancer riddled, incontinent, skeletons – who really just wanted to die – being kept ‘alive’ by drugs, assisted dying is something we should all embrace.
Course you do Starmer, whatever you can say to make you popular in the moment.
I’m all for it. If I get diagnosed with something like cancer, you best believe I’ll take matters into my own hands when I decide its right. No law against buying 200 paracetamol and a bottle of jack Daniels. I’ll keep it in my back pocket.
He’ll do a one eighty in this before New Year’s Eve
It took this long for assisted dying law change to come out of a politician’s mouth?
A celebrity talks about something and suddenly politicians gain a conscience. Where was this support when plebs wanted to end their life?
But hey progress is progress.
Course you do Starmer, whatever you say to make you popular in the moment to get people to back you long enough for election day, eh?
He’ll probably change his mind in five months like he does everything else.
Seems to be an point almost everyone in the UK agrees with.
I understand there are edgecases, but you can offer your edgecases all you like, the concept of spending 40+ years locked in my own head with untold agony, only because our society deems it virtuous is a kind of manmade hell we really, really ought to do away with.
My god, Starmer supporting a policy that isn’t ‘do nothing, fix nothing’ for once? That’s a turnup for the books.
Any decent person would, if you want to keep someone alive in horrific debilitating pain against their wishes you arent the good person youre pretending to be.
24 comments
Probably cuz he thinks it’s a vote winner. Everyone is living too long let’s all kill ourselves off! Vote for me!
My grandmother was facing a lung condition that would essentially result in an agonisingly long and slow prolonged drowning. And it’s not a condition that can be improved by pain killers. The only good news is that other complications caused her passing before it got to this stage. We were all grateful she didn’t have to suffer like that. Even the knowledge that was what awaited her caused her suffering.
Not everyone has the fortune to pass peacefully and pain free in their beds at an old age. Some have the misfortune to suffer agonising slow deaths. And other people feel able to tell them “you have to suffer through this, you shouldn’t have the option to die quickly and painlessly when you decide because *I* think you shouldn’t”. Or in other words, “my beliefs about your right to a painless death are more important than yours, despite you being the person suffering and it being *your* death”.
One suspects these same people who feel they can dictate another’s choice in the matter would be the first to rage against it if someone else made a decision for them.
That will lead to some interesting doorstep discussions come election time.
Everyone probably already knows this, but since politics began, an elected Prime Minister has never fulfilled or followed through with their promises, not one.
Hear Hear !!!
As long as safeguards are introduced to ensure that people are doing it of their own free will and have not been pressured in to it… then I’d be all for it.
Any change to liberalise the current legislation is welcome; but the proposed laws are still far too conservative. None of us consented to being born, and life can be seriously hard going for many of us, not just those in the final stages of terminal cancer.
If the government can prevent you from accessing effective suicide methods (and the new Suicide Prevention Strategy for England and Wales promises that the tendrils of the nanny state will extend even further into people’s ability to make this personal decision for themselves) and won’t provide access to those methods; then that is entrapment and enforced suffering.
I don’t think that anyone should come into existence as the indentured servant of society (or mankind); and the legally recognised right to die by suicide should apply to everyone. That would mean that the government, at minimum, would not be able to actively try to impede you from finding a highly effective and reasonably painless method to end your own life. The government shouldn’t have the power to compel people to live, by making the option of suicide too risky, and investing authorities with the power to intervene to stop a suicide (unless that particular suicide is endangering the rights of others).
It’s strange how, as a country, we mostly claim to be all about “my body, my choice”, and wouldn’t accept an abortion law that only permitted abortion in cases where the foetus wasn’t viable, or the mother’s life was in danger. But yet, when it comes to the most fundamental liberty of all – ownership of our own bodies – we haven’t even reached the point where terminally ill people get to opt out of the last few months of excruciating agony; let alone allowing people who have done nothing to deserve entrapment to opt out just because they don’t feel like being a cog in the great capitalist machinery.
This is a very welcome development, but I can’t take someone who is pro the choice to end your life, but wants to tell you what you’re allowed to put in your own body.
But what do the Mail and the Telegraph think? That will tell us whether Starmer will actually stick by this view.
I believe that it should be available, but only in the circumstance of permanent paralysis, extreme pain or when near death.
It should not be available for those that are otherwise healthy, but wish to commit suicide. Because the majority of people that fail a suicide attempt, [do not attempt one again.](https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/means-matter/survival/) Suicide is often impulsive, and founded on beliefs that are warped by a person’s mental health. [Allowing people to kill themselves easily is not a good idea.](https://www.rethink.org/news-and-stories/blogs/2019/oct/i-was-lucky-many-are-not-simon-gray-on-surviving-suicide/)
But I doubt that even the conservatives are considering this as a possibility for people that want to commit suicide and have the chance for a longer and reasonably healthy life. So I’m probably preaching to the choir in a sense. It still has to be said I think.
Outside of “it’s my religious view that you shouldn’t be allowed to die when you want” what valid arguments are there? I don’t know anyone who isn’t in favour of something like this.
I sincerely hope he means this and it results it action but given his current love of u turning, I won’t be holding my breath.
I hope this is not a vision of how he hopes to clear NHS backlogs….
Based
The status quo is a violation of the most basic Pareto efficiency ideas. Taxpayers paying taxes they don’t want to pay to give painful life-extending treatments to people who don’t want them, and delaying treatments via triage to those that do want treatments. And when those that seek to go abroad with their loved ones to end it in Switzerland, we use police, court and potentially prison time on them too.
When the Christians and the House of Lords kick off at this reform, tell them to eat Parliamentary boot and force it through. Labour will have the votes between a 3 line whip, the Lib Dem’s, SNP, and the Lib-Con Tories.
The only people who win from the current system are care home and hospice owners.
Having watched 4 elderly grandparents decay into cancer riddled, incontinent, skeletons – who really just wanted to die – being kept ‘alive’ by drugs, assisted dying is something we should all embrace.
Course you do Starmer, whatever you can say to make you popular in the moment.
I’m all for it. If I get diagnosed with something like cancer, you best believe I’ll take matters into my own hands when I decide its right. No law against buying 200 paracetamol and a bottle of jack Daniels. I’ll keep it in my back pocket.
He’ll do a one eighty in this before New Year’s Eve
It took this long for assisted dying law change to come out of a politician’s mouth?
A celebrity talks about something and suddenly politicians gain a conscience. Where was this support when plebs wanted to end their life?
But hey progress is progress.
Course you do Starmer, whatever you say to make you popular in the moment to get people to back you long enough for election day, eh?
He’ll probably change his mind in five months like he does everything else.
Seems to be an point almost everyone in the UK agrees with.
I understand there are edgecases, but you can offer your edgecases all you like, the concept of spending 40+ years locked in my own head with untold agony, only because our society deems it virtuous is a kind of manmade hell we really, really ought to do away with.
My god, Starmer supporting a policy that isn’t ‘do nothing, fix nothing’ for once? That’s a turnup for the books.
Any decent person would, if you want to keep someone alive in horrific debilitating pain against their wishes you arent the good person youre pretending to be.