Once again, the High Court is being asked to quantify ‘enjoyment of life’. This time the vanishing point has been moved forward from the ‘futility’ of the Bland case.

I am at a loss, as ever, to imagine how even those nearest and dearest to the ‘patient’ can make such a judgement. How an objective judgment can be made  by the Court of Protection, based on written evidence,  is beyond me.

I have had the advantage – and privilege – of having met hundreds of close relatives of those who dwell on the outer reaches of life as we know it. I have only ever met two individuals who had even countenanced deciding whether life for their loved one was futile or not; for obvious reasons I cannot discuss an individual case.

However ‘close’ you are to someone, you only have your own subjective opinion as to their enjoyment of life. I cannot climb Everest – does that make my life less enjoyable than Edmund Hillary’s? I can not do what he could do, yet I am completely content with my life as it is – if for no other reason than that I cannot imagine what it would be like to climb Everest and yet not be able to.

The Bland case was ground breaking in that the High Court were satisfied that Tony Bland had reached the vanishing point of absolute zero in terms of enjoyment of life. He was not asking to be relieved of his life – his parents were, on his behalf.

I will not pass judgement on how much of that request was objective and how much subjective – I have expended too many boxes of Kleenex listening to the tortuous arguments that those given the task of caring for someone who society says they should love and cherish for life, but who no longer resemble the person they were once moulded into, conduct within themselves.

If you are a young girl of 24, married for six months to someone you promised to cherish ‘till death us do part’, but who now lies immobile and insensate in a rest home, how do you come to terms with his parents who turn against you when you contemplate divorce? Should you really spend the rest of your life caring for someone who bears no relation to your husband, give up hope of having children, a normal life, in order to avoid the judgement of society (and his parents) that you have ‘run out’ on your marriage vows, that you are a disgrace,  a heartless bitch? These are unfair pressures.

Yet what are we saying when the court agrees to such a ‘divorce’ on behalf of the patient? We are saying surely, that it is unreasonable to expect their partner to diminish their potential enjoyment of life because of what has happened to the patient.

That society is that judgemental was brutally illustrated to me once. A young woman, I shall call her Alice, suffered from Down’s Syndrome. She was around 30, a happy laughing soul, content with her life within a small unit containing maybe three or four companions similarly abled. I enquired about family, visitors. No, there were none. She had no brothers or sisters. ‘

‘They never risked the same thing happening again’ sniffed the woman in charge. ‘Doctors, both of them, he drove down here with Alice the day after she was born and we’ve never seen them since, just a card at Christmas’.

Her disapproval was palpable, even after 30 years.  I got the impression she would cheerfully have seen them tarred and feathered for their abdication of parental duties – and yet, and yet.

Somewhere, several hundred miles North of Alice’s home, a pair of childless Doctors continue to go about their business, saving lives, benefiting the community they live in – and scorned for not giving Alice, what? What exactly would they have given her? How, precisely, has their wish to remake their lives, been to her detriment?

The decision that the Court of Protection has to make in the current case of ‘M’ is far more serious than divorce or the permanent fostering of a child – and yet part of the principle is the same – it is the wish of the parents or carers to ‘move on’, in that ghastly American phrase.

Now we are potentially talking of the death of the patient being required in order that the rest of the family can ‘move on’  – and I recoil. It is a price too high, to me at least.

I know not why. I came, albeit reluctantly, to terms with the Bland decision along the same lines as I came to terms with the decision of the parents of Alice, or the many young men and woman who wished for a divorce in similar circumstances.

The partners and family had their rights too, social constructs of what a marriage should be, or how a Mother should behave, were not relevant when you could discern no tangible benefit to the patient.

The case of ‘M’ is different though – for the goal posts have once more moved beyond my understanding.

‘M’ is not in a permanent vegetative state, unable to discern any quality of life, ‘M’ is ‘minimally conscious’, she has likes and dislikes, responds to her immediate carers – or at least, they believe that she does.

The High Court is no longer considering whether an absolute zero quality of life is to be preserved, but whether a lesser quality than you or I enjoy is worth preserving – I do not know any way in which you can make that decision, beyond saying ‘that this is not our decision to make’.

I await the final judgment with trepidation. Truly Judgment Day.

Judgment Day is a post from: Anna Raccoon

I freely admit I didn’t watch the Terry Pratchett documentary on the Right to Die. At the last minute I voted in favour of a quiet glass of wine with Mr G in the setting sun. It seemed an altogether healthier way to spend my time.

I have nothing against suicide; it is your life, if you want to waste it, for whatever reason – and my own Father did – then go ahead. I have no problem with capital punishment as it happens, even if it’s not a strictly Libertarian view.

I do have a major problem with assisted suicide. The name for a start, disingenuous, like joy-riding, it strives to make a potentially murderous situation sound somehow vaguely normal, the sort of things normal families might do. How could ‘assisting’ someone possibly be wrong?

I’ll tell you how. I have a close friend, a very dear friend, who has been down this road, not of her own choice. I have watched the emotional devastation, the very real tearing apart of normal, loving feelings. It is, quite simply, a totally, utterly, completely, wrong thing to ask of someone who loves you – and who might reasonably expect you to love them in return.

How can they refuse? There you are, patently in pain, facing death, wringing their emotions inside out with every minute of the day – and YOU decide, you, not them – “I’ve had enough of this, I demand my right to die, and because I’m now infirm, that becomes your responsibility”.

So the very person who has cared for you enough, loved you to pieces, wiped your backside, given up their life and ignored their family for months on end as you slid into this terribly sad terminal illness, now has to shoulder an additional burden.

They have to make you a cup of tea, gently lift a digestive biscuit to your lips – ‘you must try to eat something Dad’ – and then diplomatically slip out of the room, sit down in front of the computer, and start Googling Dignitas.

Right there, there’s another euphemism. Dignitas my left foot. A cold grey concrete building in Zurich. See picture above.

When they’ve found Dignitas, they have to arrange the bank transfers – Dignitas don’t do credit, believe me. The air line tickets – two tickets to Zurich, just one return please. Just me and a little tin of ashes. The child care arrangements, it’s hardly a fun day out for all the family. The lies to the neighbours – you can’t turn round and say you’re taking Dad to Dignitas for the day can you? The Doctor to come in and sign the certificate to say you are of sound mind, and have a terminal illness. Whilst they wonder if perhaps he should be certifying them for agreeing to do this.

Cold, hard, formal arrangements; because it’s your right to impose this on them isn’t it?  Just when they are breaking their heart because you will soon be dead anyway – just not soon enough for you. Not the way you want to die. So you make it their problem, and sit back, munch on your digestive and contemplate your ‘rights’.

I’m not going to get into the slippery slope arguments, I’ve rehashed them too many times on this blog, the Mental Capacity Act that gives government apparatchiks the right to decide that it is time for you to go, and ‘order’ your Doctors to starve and dehydrate you to death.

There is another slippery slope that no one ever seems to mention.

‘Rights-creep’. If it is your right to die, at a time of your choosing, if it is your right to die in the manner of your choosing – for how long do you think it will remain as ‘dignified’ as Dignitas? (There’s an oxymoron.)

It’s your right innit? It’s the way you want to go – half time in the front stalls of the Arsenal-Liverpool cup final, sod the people sitting next to you. Surrounded by woad painted new age travellers in the mud of Glastonbury? –‘he always had a sense of humour’. Perhaps you’d prefer the main banking hall of Lloyd’s – after all they lost you your entire pension. Life-time mariner? Fancy being target practice for the Navy Seals?

You can’t arrange it, not you, you can’t even lift a cup of hemlock to your lips – no, your nearest and dearest will have to make the arrangements.

Brr,brrr – ‘Hello, can you tell me, is it possible to arrange a private box at the Royal Ballet? My Dad wants me to bump him off there’……..They’ll have to bring back ‘Jim’ll fix it’ to help arrange it all.

Once you’ve got the ‘right’ under sub-section 164 (b) of the new Legally Sanctioned Murder Act 2012 – that sounds better than assisted suicide! – to force the person who has loved you so deeply all these years that you now ‘appoint’ them the lucky person who gets to legally murder you when it pleases you, society can hardly deny you the little old right to go out in style.

Have you been to a good funeral lately? The massed brass band playing Danny Boy, or Knees Up Mother Brown if you want. The Teddy Bears, and flowers lining the footpath, good grief, don’t imagine there will be anything dignified about some people’s request as to where and when they want to go.

It’s all very well breaking TV rules and showing one loving, dignified, exit ala Dignitas after the watershed. It’s all very well imagining that this will go no further than the nice Doctor giving you a Mickey Finn nightcap. It’s all very well Debbie Purdy and her sad situation being wheeled out yet again to comment – I got in trouble before for saying it was handy she was on wheels.

Hard cases don’t make good law.

If you think you are going to find yourself in a situation where you may not be able to drive up Snowdonia with a length of hosepipe one day; if you really can’t face the pain, or whatever it is that ails you – then you have the perfect right to take your own life, quietly, in the manner of your choosing, when you can, how you can.

Don’t force your family to behave as though killing you is a perfectly normal thing to do. It isn’t. You owe them better than that – especially if they are your children, or partner.

The bureaucratic nightmare that is a ‘dignified’ journey to Dignitas or its equivalent shouldn’t have to be trod by anyone you love. They have rights too, and emotional blackmail shouldn’t be allowed to strip them of those rights.

No, I don’t particularly care about the one or two people who can be shown to possibly be facing a painful and undignified death. There is an end to it – it’s called death.In the meantime there is palliative care.

I care immensely about the pressure that will be put on thousands of perfectly innocent and decent people whose entire lives will be irrevocably changed and overshadowed by the turmoil inherent in having to kill you simply because they loved you.

The Right to put your family through Hell? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

In the beginning there was Adam and Eve and a big rock.

Adam was much stronger than Eve. He could lift the big rock and drop it on her head. He didn’t need to threaten to do so, but Eve knew, and accepted the implied threat to her life. Adam held the power. A lot of Feminist mythology is built around this point.

Adam and Eve had many children. The children couldn’t lift the rock either. They too accepted that Adam held the power. A lot of Child Abuse mythology is built around this point.

The Children grew up, the daughters married men who were fit and strong – it has never been explained to my satisfaction who these men were or how they came to ‘be’. The sons too, grew tall and strong, and married women who grumbled and moaned that Adam held all the power. There were now several men who could lift the big rock. It was declared that the strongest of them all who could lift the big rock with the greatest ease should take possession of the big rock. A lot of Tribal Leadership mythology is built around this point.

They called him ‘King’. He rarely had to drop the big rock on anyone’s head, the knowledge that he could do so was sufficient to keep them all in line. A lot of Nuclear Deterrence mythology is built around this point.

However, some of the failed contestants in the rock lifting contest were quite intelligent. They figured out a way to share the power.

First up was the Witch-Doctor. He knew that from time to time, the King, being mortal, was struck with ailments. His arms became weak, and truth to tell, if he had had to lift the rock, he couldn’t have done so. The Witch-Doctor struck a deal with him; he would restore the strength to the King’s arms and sign an oath of confidentiality – no one would ever know – but in return he demanded that no one ever question his own secret rock-dropping powers. The King agreed.

Then stepped forward the Voodoo man. He told the King that one day the Witch-Doctors powers wouldn’t work and he would go to another land where there was an even bigger King with an even bigger rock. The Voodoo man struck a deal with the King; he would negotiate with the much, much bigger King not to drop the rock on his head if the King would agree to only drop the rock on anyone’s head in this world when the Voodoo man thought it was right to do so.

In truth, the King’s ownership of the big rock didn’t amount to much by now – between the Witch-Doctor and the Voodoo man, he was as much a slave as the people he ruled – who still believed that he had the right to rule because he alone held the magical powers of life and death inherent in the big rock.

Not a lot has changed over the centuries. We call the King the ‘Government’ today. The Witch-Doctor has dropped his Witch prefix and still goes about his business in secret. The Voodoo man fell in with some footballers wives and acquired a fancy new designer wardrobe, but he is still believed to be able to negotiate with the much, much, bigger King in the next world.

A new power emerged recently, we slaves. First we demanded the right to drop the rock on our own heads, now we are demanding that if we so desire, the Witch-Doctor should do so, on our command.

Lesser bit players have been admitted to the game. The army officer, forced to leave behind a wounded soldier, ‘knows’ of the painful fate awaiting him, and is allowed, nay exhorted, as an office and a gentleman, to drop a rock on his head. The Mother in difficult financial circumstances, ‘knowing’ of the impoverished life awaiting her child, is given the right to command the Doctor to drop said infant on its head. However, the Doctor is not allowed to ‘know’ of the painful death ahead for his patient.

These four continue to fight for power, but now they do so by proxy, in the media.

Which is why Dr Howard Martin is of such interest. Dr Martin recently stood trial for murder in respect of three patients that he was suspected of having indulged in a little rock dropping himself. He was cleared. Then the GMC had a dig around to see whether he had their permission to drop the rocks – they having long since awarded themselves such power. You see if they had said it was OK – that two or three other Witch-Doctors would have done the same thing – then it would have been. He was cleared.

At which point Dr Martin said – in effect – sod the lot of you – I hold the real power in this game. I decide when to drop a rock or not. Nowt to do with you lot.

The King – the Government – was appalled. ‘Oh No you don’t!’ he cried. I do. You only drop a rock when I order you to do so. The Voodoo man was otherwise occupied, it being Sunday now, and best frock day, but he will be chattering away to the media tomorrow.

In the meantime, the media have rolled Debbie Purdy into play – conveniently on wheels. ‘The Witch-Doctor should have the power, but only if I say so’ she says, tugging at our heart strings.

Subrosa has written an impassioned and eloquent defence of this particular Doctor – we should, we could, trust him. Nothing could prove the power and justification of blogging more than this personal account of what a good man he is. Unfortunately, there are many Doctors, some as mad as a box of frogs, and if the good Doctor Martin is held to hold the power, then so will they.

Matt Wardman has written an impassioned and eloquent account of the death of his own Father, and pleads that the King, and only the King, holds the power of rock smiting. It is more than worth reading.

These three accounts are all subjective accounts, pleading their own personal circumstances, they will add to the desire of the media to play the game as they are supposed to – by proxy, by subjective opinion, by emotive outpouring masquerading as intelligent debate.

Let no one miss the point, however, that what is really at stake here is our Subjection – that one of the original players gains control of the rock and thus the right to decide whether we live or die.

They will pull the rope this way and that, one side or another will make temporary advantages, but they will never accept that actually none of them should be in charge of the rock. It should lie where it falls.

That point has been lost in the mists of time.

Live and Let Die. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

There is nothing so likely to induce a murderous rage in the most mild mannered of people as sibling rage over a last will and testament. Many a family can cite feuds going back over generations, centuries even, which commenced with the reading of the will.

As children we prise precious pennies out of our parents in the form of pocket money; it is never enough to encompass all our dreams of ownership. It might stretch to the Action Man Kit – but not to the full range of available extras. We dream of the day when the family piggy bank will be under our control, and somehow, we never grow up.

We reach 50, 60, and still we imagine that the money and property our parents accumulated should really be ‘ours’. We deeply resent anyone else having a say in how it should be spent. Especially siblings.

We can just about cope with the notion of our parents having the right to go on spending their money on food and a roof over their head – but just let social services step in and demand that the money be handed over to a care home and the high pitched wailing starts. ‘That’s my inheritance, mine I tell you. The state should be feeding Mum and Dad, not my inheritance.’ The nursery tantrum surfaces.

If Mum and Dad have departed this mortal coil then their final words in the form of their last will and testament bite deep. Proof positive bubbles up that they really did love little Johnny more than me – look he’s loaded and they’ve left him the money to buy the Action Man accessories – it’s not fair….Waaaaaah! Christmas Cards cease to exchange, cousins cease to kiss, and yet another family is rent apart.

There is another scenario, relatively unusual, which can cause even more hurt and upset. It was the first one which came to mind as the meagre details of the Cumbria shootings first emerged.

He shot his brother and then the family solicitor? His brother and the solicitor were ‘drawing up a will for his Mother’? His Mother had suffered a number of strokes and was ‘unwell’. The hackles rose on the back of my neck – was a ‘Statutory Will’ in the offing?

I don’t know, I am merely speculating, I have no inside information that leads me to believe that it was thus. It does however, give me the opportunity to beat you over the head yet again, and discuss the ramifications of a Statutory Will for those who have not yet given in to my nagging and protected themselves from the effects of the Mental Capacity Act 2005.

The idea of a Statutory Will was well intentioned. Let us take a ‘for example’. Young Tristan is gay. He fell out with his parents long ago and left home to live with the nice young man who manages Curry’s. He is convinced the Curry’s manager is his partner for life and makes a will leaving him his Dolly Parton wig and all his worldly possessions.   So far so good.

Unfortunately, Tristan is hit by a bus. He doesn’t die, but survives as a severely brain damaged individual who requires support and supervision for the rest of his life. Young Master Curry doesn’t fancy the job and departs for pastures new. I make no condemnation of this action – it happens all the time, regardless of who the partner is. It is a very difficult thing to do – to nurse someone who bears no resemblance to the person you fell in love with. Eventually Tristan is declared physically fit to leave hospital, and who comes to the rescue? His parents usually. Past enmities forgotten, they collect Tristan, reorganise their home, neglect the rest of the family, and devote themselves to Tristan’s complex needs. For the next 20 years or so.

Is it right that Tristan’s original Will should stand when he does die? Had he been able to make another Will, he hopefully would have recognised that his allegiances had changed, that the family quarrel was over and done with, that young Master Curry hadn’t been seen for 20 years, and perhaps leaving his worldly goods to his family might be more appropriate now.

That is one side of the Statutory Will – but peek underneath and you will find a darker side.

It is the responsibility of the ‘Deputy’ to word the new will. The court merely approves or disapproves the contents. They don’t put forward suggestions as to who the beneficiaries might be. It will approve it unless drastic evidence comes forward to persuade it not to.

We must look at who is the ‘Deputy’, and how and where could ‘evidence’ come from.

The Deputy could be a member of the family. A brother, a twin brother, a son, daughter or parent. One of the most difficult situations arises when the ‘Deputy’ is in fact the Mother or Father of a child who has reached the age of maturity. Imagine having to write a will for your child – which you must then post off to an anonymous ‘court official’ telling them that with your ‘Deputy’ hat on, you wish your child to leave all their money to ‘you’ – with your parent hat on. People agonise that they will be thought greedy or grasping, when in truth the ‘court official’ is a monumentally bored civil servant who has processed several such applications that week and has no ‘opinion’.

The ‘Deputy’ could equally be an older brother or sister who has strong views regarding the behaviour of other siblings. Have they perhaps not pulled their weight in caring for the person concerned? Are there old ‘scores’ to be settled? Do they have a lifestyle which is disapproved of – heavy drinking, gambling – is writing this will a chance to gain control over their life?

Since the court doesn’t normally meet any of the people concerned except in very rare circumstances, they rely on the reports which may have been written by the Lord Chancellor’s Visitors to evaluate the fairness of the proposed new will.

Only some 20% of the ‘patients’ of the court will ever have been visited by the Lord Chancellor’s Visitor, and the report will have been written many months if not years beforehand – certainly not with the knowledge that a Will may be based on the information contained in it, excepting very, very rare circumstances.

If we return to the example of Tristan, it could be that young Mr Curry did stay by his side and has nursed him devotedly. It could be that he was never mentioned in the original will, or that there was no original will. If the parent’s are the Deputies, the system relies on their honestly and integrity to tell the court that – much as they disapprove of their son’s relationship – they believe if their son was able to make his own will today, that he would want to reward young Mr Curry’s devotion. Is there any system in place to ensure that they do act with integrity and honesty and say that?

No.

Which is why, when I heard that Derek Bird had shot first his brother, then his Solicitor, in a dispute over a will, despite his Mother still being alive following a devastating stroke, I wondered. We have been told that Derek lived at home and his Mother had given him substantial sums of money. We have heard that he drank heavily and dealt with his money unwisely. We have heard that his twin brother was the ‘sensible’ twin and close friends with the unfortunate solicitor……

And I wonder.

Testementary Testosterone. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Magna Carta, Ch 39: ‘No free man shall be seized or imprisoned, or stripped of his rights or possessions, or outlawed or exiled, or deprived of his standing in any other way, nor will we proceed with force against him, or send others to do so, except by the lawful judgement of his equals or by the law of the land’.

We clutch the Magna Carta to our bosom in the manner of small children with a Teddy Bear. We imbue it with magic powers to protect us. We ignore the reality of the last six words – by the law of the land.

The tawdry fabric of our comforter is destroyed by those last six words. All it takes for the State to ‘proceed against us with force’ is for 324 bored, inefficient, untrustworthy, deceitful, and self obsessed souls to rouse themselves from their subsidised bar stools, half full of subsidised claret, and stumble through the ‘Aye’ lobby, as instructed by their whips, when the government of the day passes a complicated piece of legislation that they have barely glanced at – which allows them to ‘proceed with force’ against us. They will have created ‘the law of the land’.

Then the magic Teddy Bear becomes no more than a concoction of fur fabric and horsehair, with glass beads where we thought it had omnipotent eyes.

I apologise for banging on again about the insidious Mental Capacity Act – those of you who have taken careful note of my posts in the past must be heartily sick of me returning to the subject. Unfortunately there are still many millions of citizens who have not yet woken up to its power. Amongst them are the top flight journalists and civil rights defenders who should be shouting from the roof tops, but have been daunted by the difficulties of finding information or seduced by the set pieces of theatre that have been presented to them.

I restrained myself last week, when the main stream media chortled with delight at their success at being admitted to the latest farcical show ‘trial’.

A consortium of newspapers had got wind of the fact that the Duchess of Cornwall’s nephew, the concert pianist Derek Paravicini, had become embroiled in Court of Protection proceedings. They decided to test Jack Straw’s assertion that the hitherto ‘secret court’ would in future admit the press. After a legal wrangle with the Official Solicitor, the press were so admitted. It had a galvanising effect of the COP.

A situation that would normally be dealt with by a rubber stamping civil servant – an application from the family to be allowed to control Derek’s affairs as opposed to the courts ‘preferred option’ of a ‘professional deputy’ – code speak for one of the firms of personal injury lawyers who have been appointed as ‘professional deputies’ across the country, enabled to make myriad decisions of behalf of the court. The court does love ‘professional deputies’. They don’t clog up the works in the way that untidy members of the family do. They type their letters requesting funds, not handwrite them on difficult to read lined Basildon Bond. When they make an application for funds a month before Christmas, they don’t get hysterical when the money doesn’t arrive until late in February – in short they understand the COPs funny little ways.

Faced with unprecedented prying press eyes overlooking this cosy procedure, and a ‘celebrity family’ no less, normal procedure was dispensed with. The civil servants were elbowed out of the way. Even the Master of the court, Master Lush, who does see some 5 or 6 of the most contentious amongst the several hundred cases each week, overseas lecture trips permitting, was elbowed out of the way, and the full majesty of Mr Justice Hedley hauled his backside from the salubrious environs of the Strand out to lowly Archway where the court is now situated.

Anybody reading the reports would imagine that this much care and attention is always devoted to deciding whether the ‘parents’ are fit and proper people to make decisions for their offspring; those of us who know the court better than that, laughed hysterically at the pantomime, and wondered how many of the civil servants were able to gain access to the anti room and scoff the prawn sandwiches which would surely have been on the menu again after such an august event.

A few days later, the window into this arcane world was slammed shut again.

Still, I digress, as usual.

Having shown us how ‘caring’ and ‘thoughtful’ they are over the simplest of decisions, yesterday they allowed us another minute public peek into their world.

They decided that they would order a young woman with learning disabilities to be handed a glass of that sugary juice beloved of children – Ribena.

Sound so innocent doesn’t it?

They won’t tell her that concealed in that glass of Ribena is a sedative that will render her unconscious. They want her to be unconscious so that the ambulance that will have parked outside can load her up with the minimum of fuss and cart her off to the local hospital. They want her in the local hospital because the Doctors that have been treating her for cancer want to operate on her to remove her uterus.

She is not completely unaware of what is going on. She has decided that she doesn’t want surgery. A decision that many of us have made, myself included, just a few months ago. I was allowed to make that decision for myself. I am believed to have the mental capacity to do so, even if it should have led to my death. After months of treatment, it has turned out that I made the right decision and I am in fighting fit form once again.

My body, my right. In the event that I had lost my marbles completely and it was believed that I was not able to make that decision, I have legally given my husband, who knows me better than anyone, the right to make that decision for me.

However, this young woman has never had the capacity to hand her autonomous right to make that decision to anyone else by proxy. She has never been deemed to have the mental capacity to do so.

Meanwhile, back at the hospital, the Doctors have a problem. They have a duty of care to their patient, one that could see them sued for negligence if they do not operate on her, having decided that this is their choice of treatment for their patient. On the other hand, if they forcible hold her down and operate against her wishes, they could find themselves charged with assault and battery.

So they want ‘someone’s’ signature on the consent form to protect them from legal challenge. Do they really care whether this young woman lives or dies? I would argue not. She will die eventually anyway, we all do – but not whilst under their care. It is the ramifications of her doing so under their care rather than some belief in the sanctity of life that is driving them to the High Court. Either those same Doctors, or their colleagues, will at this very moment be engaged in forcibly snuffing out the life of another foetus ‘believed to be’ carrying the genes which denote Down’s Syndrome or some other malfunction from the ‘norm’ that Mother’s are conditioned to think themselves to be entitled to. Doctors can be incredibly pragmatic when it suits them.

When the Doctors arrive at the High Court, they have the upper hand, so to speak; it has long been ruled that the judiciary are not qualified to second guess a medical opinion. If the Doctor says that is the treatment he thinks best, then that is the starting point. The judiciary will only look at their legal powers to enforce that decision. Thanks to the Mental Capacity Act, they have the legal power to transform that young woman’s autonomous belief that she doesn’t want an intrusive operation into a legal instrument that will encompass not only the subterfuge required to get her into the ambulance, but also provide for the eventuality that she might awake from the operation and decide she wants to go home before the Doctors have finished covering their backsides. Should that occur:

After the operation, feeding tubes would be bandaged so she couldn’t pull them out and she would be given painkillers with a sedative effect “rendering it unlikely that she would be able to abscond”. However “it might be necessary to use force as a last resort to ensure that she returned to her hospital bed”.

The last time I heard of similar tactics being ordered was in the case of Terri Schiavo. Of course in that case the Doctors were following orders not to give her food or water, and damn, but she would keep getting out of bed to steal food from other patients in an effort to stay alive.

Your autonomy is precious. Give the proxy right to exercise it to someone you truly trust. Download the form here. You don’t have to pay to download the form or fill it in, you only need to pay if it is required to ‘use’ it.

If you don’t, the State reserves the right to exercise it on your behalf.

Apologies for banging on to those who have already taken note and protected themselves.

The Ribena Option. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

With what aplomb did Jack Straw throw back the cloak of secrecy over proceedings in the family court last year? How we did cheer. None louder than myself.

Straw, the ‘modernising’ man of Justice who eschewed the trappings and symbols of the historic Lord Chancellor’s role, said:

“Family courts play a crucial role in our society. It is vital that these courts command the confidence of the public. If justice in these courts is seen to be done, they will be trusted by the public.”

As part of my determination to ensure that the justice system is as open and transparent as possible – and therefore accountable to the people it serves – media organisations will for the first time be able to attend proceedings of all the family courts as of Monday (27 April 2009)

Sir Mark Potter, president of the Family Division of the High Court, said considered reporting could “do nothing but good for the system” and help dispel “myths and inaccuracies” over judgements.

It is the ‘Family courts’, with their anonymised case reports of Baby ‘P’ and child ‘A’ that are always quoted  in the media as being the ultimate in secret justice, but there are layers below those cases involving child protection that are burrowed far deeper into the State’s all encompassing secrecy. The Court of Protection with its powers of life and death over citizens of the UK does not even issue anonymised case reports. Those cases are the impenetrable benthic of the judicial ocean.

There were some little provisos buried in the small print. True, media organisations were allowed to attend the hearing – but crucially reporting restrictions were not to be lifted until after further consultations. Straw had grandiosely given the media representatives a new car each – but with no access to petrol.

It was not until this April, a year later, that Straw found time to make the amendments to the primary legislation that would allow those reporters to actually do something with their new found access. Curiously, it swept past our noses in the ‘wash-up period’ when all eyes were on the forthcoming election. It was buried in the Children, Schools and Families Act 2010.

Take a close look. Not only does the media’s fancy new car have no petrol, it is chained to the back of the garage door, and the tyres have been slashed. Moreover, the Lord Chancellor stands over the immobilised vehicle swinging a wrecking ball.

I will try to explain in plain English.

There is a sharp distinction in the Family courts between reporting restrictions on cases mainly concerning children and those which do not.

So, we have ‘child proceedings’ which are covered by the common law of criminal contempt enshrined as per s.12 (1)(a) Administration of Justice Act 1960.

Without burying you in a welter of case law, this meant that  the press could not report ‘substantive details’ of cases held in private but could give names of parties, witnesses, the fact that ‘a’ child was the subject of such proceedings, the nature of the dispute in such proceedings, and the orders of the Court. All this information was subject to s.97 (2)-(6) Children Act 1989 which made it a criminal offence to publish any material to the public which risked identifying the child.

‘Other’ family court proceedings were heard in private, but the press can gain admittance, and there is no general legal restriction on publishing details of the case once it is concluded.

Why was the Court of Protection so carefully shrouded? Historical and logistical reasons. For many years it amounted to one book lined room buried deep in the secure premises of the Public Trustee, to which you could only gain access by prior appointment and escorted by security staff.  It took care to only invite ‘paper applications’ for hearings – few members of the legal profession had ever ventured there, expert witnesses had never been cross examined under oath; the press were ignorant of its existence. Since it mainly dealt in the financial affairs of those few members of the aristocracy who had been born without the mental ability to understand or control those parts of the family estate which had been bequeathed to them, it was a matter of supreme indifference to even those who were aware of its existence.

‘Care in the Community’ with its accompanying entitlement to benefits, and the rise of the personal injury legal profession brought many more ‘ordinary’ members of the public under its financial umbrella. People started to look askance at the secrecy as stories began to surface of ‘Grannies’ stripped of their savings by the court’s powers.

It was the Mental Capacity Act of 2005 which really shone a light into this obscure corner of the judiciary. Henceforth, the Court of Protection was to be given the power to look after the welfare of vulnerable people as well as their money. They could decide on their medical treatment.

Alarm bells sounded when it was realised that ‘medical treatment’ included food and water under certain circumstances. The infamous ‘Liverpool pathway’. Was it really possible that these anonymous ‘nominated officers’ – the name given to civil servants elevated to assist the one and only legal practitioner present in the Court of Protection, would be given the right to decide on paper whether your received food and water if you were unable to speak up for yourself?

‘Nay, nay, scaremonger’, they said. ‘We are transferring a senior judge from the Family courts to decide these things; it will all be open and transparent. Look! Here is one of our first cases, lovingly dissected by a caring judge’.

‘It won’t last’ I muttered to myself. ‘They will find a way to push it back underground’.

‘Silly Anna’, said they, ‘look, Jack Straw is going to open all the family courts to the media’.

Has he Hell!

The CHSFA repeals s.12(1)(a) Administration of Justice Act 1960 and s.97(2)-(6) Children Act 1989, and ss.11-21 and creates a general restriction on publication of information relating to Family court proceedings, whether child related or not – the new Act removes the general freedom to publish which exists under the current law.

Once in force, the Act will prohibit publication of information relating to various types of family proceedings heard in private, except for “authorised publication” of judgments or certain orders as authorised by the court, “authorised news publication” as defined in the Act, and other publications specifically permitted by the court.

A report will be an “authorised news publication” only if the following five conditions are met.

First, the information was obtained by an ‘accredited news representative in person’ by observing or listening to the proceedings – given that the hearings are not openly advertised, this greatly limits the likelihood of anyone being present in court who has the right to report on a case.

Second, the publisher of the information is the accredited news representative or a person who publishes the information with the consent of, or pursuant to, a contract with that accredited representative, or who has obtained the information from a publication of information which is itself an “authorised news publication” – hence the State will now decide via a Rules Committee what news organisations will have the privilege of being able to send which class of representatives to observe and report on Family proceedings heard in private.

Third, the information is not “identification information” relating to an individual involved in the proceedings, or “sensitive personal information relating to the proceedings”, or restricted adoption or parental order information.

Fourth, the publication is permitted by the court where it consists of the text or summary of an order in adoption or parental order proceedings or of a judgment in other family proceedings.

The fifth condition is that the publication is not ‘otherwise prohibited’ by any restriction imposed by the court.

It is said that the press are the eyes and ears of the public, but if they are privileged to be the only eyes and ears and no one else is allowed to observe and publish for themselves if they can find an audience, then the press become the arbiters of what the public shall be entitled to know, which is simply a form of censorship

The Court of Protection, the Court which will ultimately hold the right to decide whether you or your family live or die, are economically repairable or surplus to society’s requirements, just disappeared behind an impenetrable order of secrecy. Don’t blame Nu-Labour – the Con-Doms allowed it through without comment.

Don’t say I didn’t tell you it would be so.

Court of Protection: That Straw Man’s Confidence Trick Dissected. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

The past week has seen one mother, Frances Inglis, jailed for life for murdering a son who was in a persistent vegetative state, and another mother, Kay Gilderdale, acquitted of the attempted murder of her daughter, whose suicide she assisted.

The BBC has seen fit to mark these sad events by a ‘poll‘ – ‘vote now or the grand-mother gets it…’. That the BBC should think that a Simon Cowell type opportunity for the public to vote on such a sensitive matter is only to be expected when the media in general have failed to adequately distinguish between the different acts of assisted dying, assisted suicide, mercy killings and murder. I have spoken to several people this week who are under (myriad variations of) the impression that the two cases had different results merely because of the ‘vagaries of the jury system’.

The media likes to portray these cases as an example of the inflexibility of stony hearted judges who should not be allowed to judge the actions of the warm hearted parent or lover – who is invariably shown on the steps of the Royal Courts of Justice supported by other loving members of the same family in a manner designed to sway our emotions. Does the media ever portray the human side of our judges?

Let us first make the distinction between assisted suicide and any other type of assisted death. Suicide is legal. You are welcome to take your own life for any rational or irrational reason. You do not have to have a terminal disease, you can be barking mad if you wish, your life is yours to terminate. If you wish to jump off Beachy Head, and your nearest and dearest book you a train ticket, (so far) they have not found themselves up before a judge charged with assisted suicide, not even if they have shouted out after you – ‘go on then, get a move on with it’. Woe betide you if you book them a ticket to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, worse, if you accompany them on their journey, perhaps hoping to change their mind en route, perhaps as an act of charity that they shouldn’t be alone on this final journey, then prepare to see your every action played out in the media – the mere mention of Dignitas is enough to get the CPS juices flowing.

However, accompanying someone to a country where euthanasia is legal, when they have made the decision that suicide is their choice, is a different matter from someone who has made that choice, but wishes you to ‘help them’ in a country where euthanasia is not legal. Because euthanasia is not legal in this country, there is no equivalent clinic where your death is supervised by objective medical staff, now we are in the realm of the back bedroom, and the lone statement of the surviving person that having a plastic bag put over your head, and sleeping pills ground up in your porridge was indeed your fervent wish.

It is hard enough to asertain the truth as to what goes on in the bed room when both parties are alive and well, as in a rape case, it is near to impossible when one party is uanble to speak for themselves. That is why I am concerned by the emotive route this debate is taking. Instead of an objective decision taken by a range of people in an objective setting, we are being asked to judge by media portrayal.

Mrs Gilderdale seems like a very nice and charming woman, her son was well spoken and supported her. The great and the good are loudly calling for a change in this ‘cold, inflexible law’ – we are quietly being groomed for the day when all Mothers can call for ‘closure’ when they find the ‘pain and suffering’, whether mental or physical, of a child ‘unbearable’.

There walk amongst us Mothers who would cheerfully put a pillow over our head if they thought they could plead putting an end to ‘our mental torture’ – ‘oh, he hated being gay, he cried himself to sleep every night…’, ‘she begged me to help her end the torture of her anorexia’ says the Mother who has an anorexic daughter and the possibility of a new marriage to hand – is that really what we want? The very words ‘mercy killings’ with their connotations of ‘merciful Mary’ are part of the MSM attempt to soften us up, on a par with ‘joy riding’.

Assisted Dying and Murder are two completely different categories, as Francis Inglis is contemplating this week. Again we are asked to contemplate the ‘terrible agony’ of a Mother who could not bear to see her son lying immobile and brain damaged. We were offered no evidence by the media as to his chances of recovery, nor of why the High Court were not asked to rule that his life was ‘futile’ as they did in the case of Tony Bland.

Had such a ruling been made, and Mrs Inglis had merely pre-empted his certain death as a result of dehydration and starvation – the Gold Standard for an obscene death, as documented here many times – I would have had sympathy for her revulsion of the state approved manner of obtaining ‘closure’ as it is so carefully called. But Mrs Inglis hadn’t applied to the High Court for a ruling that her son should not suffer any longer – she had decided that she/he shouldn’t suffer any longer, and with that we return to the back bedroom scenario. Indeed, had Mrs Inglis obtained that ruling first, and since she had already tried to dispatch her son once, she had nothing to lose by making public her wish that he should die, I suspect that she, like Mrs Gilderdale, would have been making emotive statements on the need to change the law from the front steps of the High Court, rather than leaving by the back door in a prison van.

Changes in the ability of medicine to maintain people in a state of ‘life’ that would have been unthinkable 20 years ago, and changes in our own ability to withstand any kind of distress or emotional discomfort – witness the ever rising divorce laws – have combined to bring us where we are today. That the great and the good are campaigning for us to see so called ‘Mercy Killing’, not as Murder, but as a brave and selfless act of love.

Listen to A. N. Wilson:

If Tom Inglis had been starved to death and agonisingly deprived of water until he died of thirst and dehydration, that act of cruelty would have been within the law. Because his mother loved him, and was prepared to risk her life for his, she is being punished. I hate living in a society where the law is as much of an ass as this. For God’s sake, let us change the law.

We are asked to compare the ‘cruel death’ that the state may or may not have sanctioned, with the ‘brave and selfless’ death which his Mother meted out to him – without any mention of why one death was within the law, and one was not. His Mother was not saving him from the ‘cruel death’ – she had decided that death was his fate.

This is Tiger country. Make no mistake, there are powerful forces in our utilitarian society who wish us to accept the death of those who are not productive, the elderly, the disabled, the less than perfect; they contribute nothing and are a drain on our resources at a time when we have no resources.

The Government have already armed themselves with legislation that allows them to make a decision on our death when we are no longer mentally competent to absolve a doctor from blame for complying – there is nothing they would like better than for the main stream media, that organ of government propaganda, to reposition this in our minds as a merciful act on their part.

I am not against euthanasia per se, I am against absolving ourselves of the responsibility to decide that this is what we want for ourselves, you and me, for it is not just that brain damaged boy you have never met, ‘ it’, in the fabled words of the Lottery adverts, ‘could be you-hoo’ and allowing it to be introduced by the back door on the basis of clever marketing by the masters of spin.

Honesty and Objectivity, that is all I ask – and don’t give my Mother the right to plead ‘mercy killing’ – I’d never have seen the light of day!

Mercy Killing? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

In the era of what we are told is the revolution in journalism -  blogging – this becomes what we call, “a story“.

Nick Robinson 6th January 2009.

Nick Robinson’s disparaging gibe at the blogging world yesterday exposed the chasm which lies between ‘us’ and ‘them’.

We define a story as something we are passionately interested in; it could be a rumour, held up to public examination; a lacuna in the logic of some Government press release; a snippet of information that we reel out to our fellow bloggers to see if anyone knows more; a growing ground swell of informed comment picked up in the few remaining Pubs; a collaborative fisking of leaked information; it is really no different from the conversation you could hear morning, noon and night in the ‘Pen and Ink’ when Fleet Street was a hive of activity.

They define a story as something which has been sieved by the lawyers, shredded by the sub-editors, word count artificially forced to fit round the advertisements, or into the sound bite, bled white by the ‘diversity editors’ and run past the ever helpful Downing Street press office. It emerges as a bland, safe, non-controversial non-event, and that is assuming that the original germ of an idea wasn’t too complicated for the non-specialist journalist to contemplate in the first place – and ditched in favour of a press release on the precise length of Amy Winehouse’s new hair extensions.

Bloggers wear their stories straight from the washing line; the BBC starch, primp and press theirs and emerge looking as ridiculous as any middle aged man with razor sharp creases ironed into his jeans.

Some 40 years ago I was given advice by an insurance actuary, a dear friend of mine. He had looked at the post war baby boom, looked at the declining birth rate post-birth pill, and predicted the 1990s as the age of the ‘terrified Granny’.

He gave me some sound advice as to how to conduct my life, and it didn’t include paying some young scoundrel to drive around the City of London in a Ferrari paid for by my ‘pension plan’. He was completely accurate, the age of the terrified Granny is with us. It is a story ignored by the main stream media, with a couple of half hearted, half witted,  exceptions. I make no apology for returning to it time and time again, there are still some dolts out there who didn’t listen first time round.

Sit quietly children, we will go through this very carefully.

In the beginning, it was a capital offence for anyone to take your life – apart from the State. They called it Justice. For anybody else it was called Murder.

Doctors, who are the most likely people statistically to be hanging around in the vicinity looking shifty if you prematurely pop your clogs, were immune to investigation as to whether your demise was justice or murder. They simply filled in a form saying ‘natural causes’ and the law didn’t intervene. During this period, the general view was that the doctor knows best and even judges should not question the doctor’s opinions. Judges were not at liberty to question the validity or appropriateness of the treatment followed. In other words, the negligence of a medical practice should be determined by fellow medical practitioners, not judges.

The Bolitho case caused a sharp intake of breath in the corridors of the GMC. The effect of the ruling was that a judge could, under specific circumstances, pierce through the medical opinions and determine the reasoning of such opinions. The Doctors were no longer a complete law unto themselves. They might have to answer for their actions, particularly if you had unaccountably died in their care.

The principle of double effect helps doctors to distinguish between aiming to end life, which is never justified, and merely aiming to give or withhold treatment, while foreseeing that this may hasten death. Now that their actions were under increasing scrutiny, they started applying to the courts to gain ‘legal permission’ for acts of giving or witholding treatment which might result in death as an ‘unfortunate’ side effect.

As a result of a legal test case (that of Tony Bland, victim of the Hillsborough disaster), UK law does allow passive euthanasia in some cases. This means that certain people can be purposefully killed even without their consent, as was Tony Bland, whose death was brought about by dehydration and starvation following withdrawal of tube-feeding. Since the tube by which he was fed was inserted by a Doctor, this was said to constitute ‘medical treatment’ and as such permission to carry out such treatment could be withdrawn by a court on Tony’s behalf.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 set up a facility for a government department to make the decision on your behalf as to whether you wanted medical treatment – which now included the right to food and water if artificially given to you  – if you had neglected to ask someone you trusted to make that decision for you.

I said at the time that this would end up being a cost effective way of dealing with the tsunami of elderly economically unviable baby boomers heading towards the doors of the cash strapped NHS. All that was required was for them to be fed artificially, and for lack of information as to the simple procedure for appointing someone to decide on your medical treatment for you, et voila!, your friendly local civil servant could issue instructions to the Doctor not to feed you any longer….

The media, and our very own ‘public broadcasting service’ have maintained a stony silence on this subject ever since. This potential cull of the aged and infirm is a non-story as far as they are concerned. When they do mention the act, it is in glowing terms extolling the virtue of ‘your autonomy being extended’ – most people don’t have a clue that this translates as the government deciding whether to starve you to death or not.

All credit to the Guardian for even covering the story that elderly people who wish to enter a care home are being forced to undergo surgery to have an artificial feeding tube (a PEG tube) fitted if they want to go into care – but true to form, they stopped short of pointing out to their readers the legal ramification of this – that you would then be all ready and waiting for when the home grow tired of persuading you to eat luke warm tinned tomatoes on soggy toast; and perfectly lined up to come within the aegis of ‘artificial feeding’ which will allow the secretive Court of Protection to decide on your behalf that you don’t want any more ‘medical treatment’.

Dying of malnutrition – starvation – or lack of hydration – extreme thirst – is a painful and obscene manner in which to die.

Wakey-wakey folks! It costs nothing to download the papers necessary to avoid this undignified death. I can understand the inertia between voting Labour or Conservative – but why do you all persist in giving this government the right to decide when you live and when you die?

Surely you’re not waiting for the BBC to tell you any of this?

Life and Death. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Back in Victorian times, death was never far from people’s thoughts thanks to the diseases and poor medicine of those times. You can see evidence of this in old sepia photos of sombre matronly women (including Queen Victoria herself) posing in their widow’s weeds.

Back in those days the grim reaper was rushed off his feet, stalking homes up and down the land to carry off people of all ages thanks to afflictions such as typhoid, tuberculosis, smallpox, diphtheria and cholera.

Indeed, so afraid were some Victorians that they might be pronounced dead and interred without having properly expired, that some of them had bell pulls fitted in their coffins. They did this so that should they wake up having been buried with indecent haste, they could pull on a cord and summon help to dig them out of the ground before they suffocated.

Happily those days are long gone and today’s talk is of euthanasia to help ease the plight of the terminally ill. This is the medical profession’s unofficial way of making sure you’re fully expired and no longer living before being committed to the ground. Because of this, today’s coffins are no longer fitted with bell pulls or whatever the modern equivalent might be: such as a mobile phone or a BlackBerry for Twittering one’s resurrection to all and sundry.

So what brings me to this rather macabre subject? Well it’s the news that the NHS now has its own version of euthanasia to make sure you’re completely expired. This procedure is innocuously called  the Liverpool Care Pathway Plan. If you ever find yourself in a hospital and the doctors and nurses start whispering and asking the student nurse to fetch the care pathway manual, you can safely assume you’re about to be decommissioned. Usually you’ll be unconscious and in no state to argue the toss.

If you are ‘Liverpooled’ you can expect to have your food supply withdrawn and your antibiotics stopped as you’re allowed to gently slip away. However, the alarming fact about this unofficial form of euthanasia is that some 3% of patients who experience the Merseyside Murder are ungrateful and thoughtless enough to survive and go on to make a full recovery, in some cases going on to enjoy years of extra life.

This all sounds a bit chilling to me. I think we may have to start kitting out coffins with some sort of hi-tech bell pull as the Liverpool Care Pathway Plan gains in popularity at a time when the cash-strapped NHS is sorely in need of more beds.

So whatever you do, may I suggest you contact your solicitor and have your will amended to include a clause insisting you’re buried with a fully charged mobile phone on a decent network and loaded with plenty of credit?

Unfortunately, if you’ve opted for cremation all I can suggest is that you get a quote for a sprinkler system or carry a pocket fire extinguisher with you.

Reprinted by kind permission from ‘Traction Man’

For Whom the Bell Tolls. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

In June this year The Sunday Times reported the death of Cari Loder who, rendered housebound by the progression of her Multiple Sclerosis and fearing that she would be sent to a care home, took her own life using a method she had researched via the internet.  She put a hood over her head and inhaled pure helium until she fell unconscious before suffocating in what is known as asphyxial suicide.

A former lecturer at London University’s Institute of Education, Ms Loder lived alone and had previously purchased both the hood and helium online; she also had in her possession a book entitled Final Exit in which information is offered which may help a person end their life more peacefully than if they attempted to jump in front of an unsuspecting train-driver or hurl themselves from the top floor of a multi-storey car-park onto bag-laden shoppers below.

No one can possibly know when Cari Loder first contemplated the idea of suicide: perhaps at the onset of her disease when first confronted with the chilling facts of her a debilitating illness; perhaps not.

In the years before her suicide she was known for her chance discovery in 1994 that a combination of an antidepressant, an amino acid and vitamin B-12 reduced her own symptoms and the treatment became known as the “Cari Loder Regime”. She is quoted as saying at the time “One day I had been hardly able to walk without crutches; the next I was able to dance to Top of the Pops.”  Fifteen years later her disease had limited her physical capability to the extent that she chose suicide rather than put herself into full-time nursing care.

The article revealed that before her death Ms Loder had also been in telephone contact with Friends At The End (FATE), an organisation the paper described as ‘a pressure group in favour of assisted suicide’ and subsequently asserted that her death would ‘reignite the debate over euthanasia’, the tacit suggestion being that these conversations may have influenced Ms Loder’s decision to take her life.

Dr Libby Wilson, a retired GP and spokesperson for FATE said of Ms Loder: “Cari was determined to take her life, and she did, without any help from anyone.  She didn’t want to confide in anyone because she was afraid she might make them complicit in her decision, and that they would come under criminal investigation. She thought it was monstrous that she had to do all this herself when she should have much preferred to have been able to just swallow something that would put her into a sleep from which she would never wake up.”

Just to be on the safe side, police arrested an elderly neighbour who is thought to have walked Ms Loder’s dog while she died.

Debbie Purdy’s persistent attempts to obtain a bottom-line ruling on assisted suicide have resulted in the Law Lords instructing the Director of Public Prosecutions to issue a policy clarifying the circumstances under which it would be in the public interest to prosecute the relatives of people travelling abroad to obtain a medically assisted suicide.  The DPP, Kier Starmer, QC, is expected to announce the policy later this month.

In the meantime we hear from finger-wagging organisations warning that a change in the existing law would allow money-grabbing and heartless relatives to put thousands of old, disabled, demented or otherwise vulnerable people on the next flight to Switzerland and get their hands on the cash/house/family jewels etc.

It is absolutely right that the law should protect the vulnerable, young or old, from fear or hurt at the hands of those on whose care they rely: statistics published by the NSPCC show that in 2008  35,828 children were subject to Child Protection Plans in England (29,200), Scotland (2,437), Wales (2,320) and Northern Ireland (2,071).  Yet for every baby who dies from violence and abuse, thousands more are cared for with tender love; for every shaken baby, thousands more are held in safe arms.  And though it is vital to consider the vulnerable who may be put under pressure to die from unscrupulous relatives it is also vital to accept that there are other terminally-ill people who are under no such pressure whatsoever and for whom the decision to take their own life is a courageous and entirely independent choice.

Anna’s piece entitled The Gold Standard for an Obscene Death was triggered by a letter published in the Telegraph regarding the Liverpool Care Pathway which informed us that “…in 2007-2008 16.5% of deaths came about after terminal sedation…”   Given that all of us can expect to require some medical treatment towards the end of our natural lives, with the current population of the UK at over 60million 16.5% of deaths suggests that 9,900,000 UK citizens might find themselves with enough boxes ticked by medical staff to expect to die under terminal sedation.

Within the forum discussion a junior doctor, Ben M, was good enough to share his knowledge of the Liverpool Care Pathway and was keen to point out: “A patient must fulfil stringent criteria to be placed on the LCP. The idea is that we do everything we can to give a patient a peaceful and dignified death. It is only used when the clinical prognosis is very poor ie less than a couple of days usually, and that they are unable to eat/drink safely or are unconscious (there are other inclusion criteria these are examples).”

Since 2002, in the region of 115 Britons are known to have travelled abroad to secure a peaceful and dignified medically-assisted death at the time of their choice, having also had to meet stringent criteria before being granted the go-ahead and agreeing a date on which they would like to end their lives.  Many more are known to have joined the Dignitas organisation but, having obtained the equivalent of a ‘green light’, chose not to travel abroad but to die less controversially within the standard care provided by hospitals and hospices.  Some of those who chose to stay at home may even have met the stringent criteria allowing them to be placed on the LCP;  we will never know.

Anna is right when she says that none of us wants to think of death or to discuss it.  The inescapable and shocking truth of terminal illness is ugly, as is the obliteration of one’s physical independence by a creeping and incurable disease.  Assisted suicide is also an uneasy and unpleasant topic for discussion.  Yet with the DPP’s policy announcement expected shortly, discussions-aplenty we are sure to have.

What our society should now properly debate is that, for some, the prospect of humiliating physical helplessness is an emotional ordeal more terrifying than the fearful option of planning and competently achieving one’s own death; any debate should not insult the intelligence of those people who make the huge and difficult effort to secure for themselves an assisted suicide abroad in the face of such a prospect; any debate should credit those people with having made a considered and preferred choice; any debate should not assume that the relatives of those determined to take control of the circumstances of their death are gleefully rubbing their greedy hands together; any debate should concede that they may just as easily be devastated by the fact and grieving doubly at the prospect that, unless they are prepared to risk 14 years’ imprisonment, they will not be with their loved one when they die.

For those terminally-ill people determined to die on their own terms, many may be unable to secure a medically-supervised suicide at an overseas clinic, prevented either by physical disability or by financial constraints, and those are the people who will attempt suicide by other means, facing sickening fear and risking failure.

Any debate should at least consider whether a documented discussion between a doctor and a terminally-ill patient at the patient’s request could be the first step in an official application to the Coroner to obtain a medically-assisted suicide, providing that ‘stringent criteria’ are met openly at every stage of the process.

The harsh facts of debilitating disease and terminal illness are stark and frightening, but so too are the practical options of suicide. Ms Loder researched her subject and contacted an organisation which was prepared to talk with her on the taboo subject of suicide as a response to the acceleration of her disease.  In this regard the internet has made such advice as exists on the subject at least readily available to anyone with a computer, yet there is a sense of disapproval that any such practical advice should be shared with those who have made the excruciatingly difficult decision that suicide is the last independent but hugely symbolic statement of choice they will make.

Goria Smudd

Discuss.

Suicide – the uneasy option. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

There is a sense in which publication of this letter in the Daily Telegraph was as inevitable as death itself.

I have been waiting for it, or something like it,  to appear since last October when the full function of The Mental Capacity Act 2005 came into operation.

None of us want to think of death, none of us want to discuss it, least of all, apparently, journalists, ancient superstition perhaps; and that is probably why one little known clause in the Act has received virtually nil publicity.

The Act, which was fan fared, to the small amount it was, was described as ‘empowering’ – now you could choose what medical treatment that you had – note, and note well, not wished to have, but had, at the end of your life.  You cannot actually force the medical profession to give you any particular treatment, but you can refuse to have treatment. Hence, all the Act actually ‘empowered’ you to do, was to refuse treatment. If you had not taken advantage of the ability to ‘empower’ yourself by signing a Lasting Power of Attorney, enabling a chosen person to refuse treatment on your behalf, then the Act had cunningly hidden about its person, the ability to use the Court of Protection to appoint an ‘officer of the court’ – a civil servant or even a solicitor whom you had never met – to, if it decided that you did not have the Mental Capacity to do so yourself, for reasons varying from a congenital inability to understand, to perhaps being unconscious, to refuse that treatment on your behalf.

What the Act never did spell out, was that in England and Wales, food and water administered by a Doctor counts as ‘medical treatment’.

Dying of malnutrition – starvation – or lack of hydration – extreme thirst – is a painful and obscene manner in which to die. It has now become the ‘gold standard’ in end of life care. It has come about because as a nation we refuse to discuss euthanasia or assisted suicide in a reasonable or responsible manner. We become both emotional and obscurist, hiding our true views behind a cloak of carefully crafted language.

The original Lasting Power of Attorney Act came about because accountants and solicitors were alarmed that when their elderly clients became confused they might not be acting legally on their behalf. It didn’t come about because anybody wanted to ‘empower’ elderly and confused old ladies.

The Mental Capacity Act 2005 has been enlarged and updated to include medical care for similar reasons – to provide legal cover for Doctors and Nurses to take the actions they have always taken; but because we wouldn’t allow an honest debate regarding euthanasia or assisted suicide, it took the only route open to it – that of empowering Doctors to follow the ‘Bland‘ formula, and starve you to death when you were no longer economically sustainable.

Read this letter, study the statistics – 16.5 per cent of deaths, and resolve not to shut your mind to the subject this time. It will be you next, it will be someone close to you next, and we only have ourselves to blame for ignoring the subject. It won’t go away, that is inevitable.

Dying patients

SIR – The Patients Association has done well to expose the poor treatment of elderly patients in some parts of the NHS (report, August 27). We would like to draw attention to the new “gold standard” treatment of those categorised as “dying”. Forecasting death is an inexact science.

Just as, in the financial world, so-called algorithmic banking has caused problems by blindly following a computer model, so a similar tick-box approach to the management of death is causing a national crisis in care.

The Government is rolling out a new treatment pattern of palliative care into hospitals, nursing and residential homes. It is based on experience in a Liverpool hospice. If you tick all the right boxes in the Liverpool Care Pathway, the inevitable outcome of the consequent treatment is death.

As a result, a nationwide wave of discontent is building up, as family and friends witness the denial of fluids and food to patients. Syringe drivers are being used to give continuous terminal sedation, without regard to the fact that the diagnosis could be wrong.

It is disturbing that in the year 2007-2008, 16.5 per cent of deaths came about after terminal sedation. Experienced doctors know that sometimes, when all but essential drugs are stopped, “dying” patients get better.

P. H. Millard
Emeritus Professor of Geriatrics University of London
Dr Anthony Cole
Chairman, Medical Ethics Alliance
Dr Peter Hargreaves
Consultant in Palliative Medicine
Dr David Hill
Fellow of the Faculty of Anaesthetists of the Royal College of Surgeons
Dr Elizabeth Negus
Lecturer, Barking University
Dowager Lady Salisbury
Chairman, Choose Life

The Gold Standard for an Obscene Death. is a post from: Anna Raccoon

Nick Palmer, Labour MP for Broxtowe, and long time supporter of animal rights, yesterday took time out from worrying about the economic chaos facing the UK to fret about my poor little pussy.

Being elderly myself, this is an issue that affects me, but I assure you that my pussy is the least of my problems as I reach the gates of Labour’s ‘care for the elderly’. Indeed, the whole issue of Labour’s ‘care for the elderly’ so concerned me that I left the country of my birth and took up residence in France where they believe in the sanctity of life, amongst the many advantages of living here.

It should concern all of you, young and old, and would – if journalists had any mettle, but unfortunately the complexities of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, are such that even after four years, they have still not managed to grasp the full appalling horror of this insidious piece of Labour legislative garbage. Too damn difficult for them.

Social Services have figured it out though, and are starting to use the Act with devastating accuracy.

Let me spell it out for you in as plain and simple English language as I can manage.

If, for a variety of reasons, ranging from you being a child, through your being unsure of who the current Prime Minister is, via perhaps getting up early one morning and deciding to give your old car away to the mechanic who has serviced it for 30 years, to the disgust of someone else who had hoped it would be theirs one day……..you can find that the right to make important decisions for yourself has been handed to an anonymous civil servant.

Let me tell you a story of a lady I met, I shall call her Vera.

Vera was waiting for me in her nursing home, incandescent with rage. She thrust out a bruised hand for me to shake. Her ‘ring’ finger was quite purple.

She told me that she had had a fall in her home and had to go to hospital. What had occurred since then shocked me to the core.

Vera had been quite a ‘gal’ in her time. Now in her late seventies, you could still see the beauty she had once had. She had been engaged three times, to prosperous men each time. They had each presented her with a magnificent engagement ring. The first one had died in the war, the second died in an unfortunate accident. Courageous the III had actually survived the engagement long enough to marry her. He had been ultra prosperous and gave her a fine gold Rolls Royce to drive. Unfortunately he had been married before.

When Vera went into hospital, her step daughter had taken the opportunity to call round to her home for the first time in 10 years. She was looking for the Rolls Royce. It wasn’t there. Step-daughter went to the hospital, and demanded to know where it was. Vera explained that she had stopped driving some five years before, unable to handle such a heavy car, and had made the decision to give the car to the Rolls Royce fanatic who had lovingly serviced it for many years, and still arrived every week since her husband died to start it up and make sure it didn’t just rot away. It is the sort of thing I hope to be able to do myself one day, albeit it will be a humble Morris-Minor, not a Rolls Royce!

Take careful note of the next paragraph.

Step-daughter went to the hospital authorities and demanded to be given Vera’s handbag and pension book. She was told that she couldn’t have them without the authority of the Court of Protection and asked why she needed them. She replied that ‘Vera was giving away her possessions that she ought to be inheriting’. She was given a form to take to the Doctor. The form asked the Doctor why he thought the Court should ‘investigate’ Vera’s affairs. ‘Giving away her possessions’ he wrote. A reasonable answer, and he was only asking that the court should ‘investigate’.

What that Doctor wouldn’t have known unless he had a very sharp memory for the four point five minutes of his training that might have reminded him of the fact, is that in the UK it has been ruled that it is not for for a judge to ‘second guess’ a medical person. Signing that form asking the court to investigate had the legal effect of signing Vera straight into the Court of Protection…….neither the civil servant on the receiving end of it, nor the judge, who would never have seen it anyway, had the authority to overrule the Doctor’s ‘opinion’. The Doctor, for his part, only thought he was setting in train a process that would examine the situation, there was nothing on the form to tell him that he was the final authority.

From that moment onwards, Vera’s life was out of control. Social Services were asked whether Vera could manage to go home alone. They didn’t need to go and see her, they telephoned the hospital who told them that Vera had a broken leg. They boarded her house up. At her expense, naturally. They sent the bill to the Court of Protection, who accessed her bank account and paid it without even asking Vera. Why would they?  Vera was now a person ‘without mental capacity’.

Vera was moved to a nursing home. Her handbag and pension book were taken away from her. Security rules of the home.

She asked for money to buy cigarettes. No chance. The home had a no-smoking policy.

She asked for money to buy a bottle of sherry, all her life she had had a slug of sherry at the end of the day. Need I tell you the answer?

Then two nurses appeared and asked for Vera’s magnificent engagement rings. She refused. They returned with a length of string and a bottle of washing up liquid. An hour’s struggle later and the rings had been removed ‘for safekeeping’ into the home’s safe. Another resident ‘might steal them and the home would be responsible’ – given the struggle two nurses had had to remove those rings after 40 years, the risk was marginal.

Vera told me all this with quiet dignity, but then she lifted her skirt and showed me the utilitarian knickers she had been given to wear, and she really lost her cool. Apparently the nursing home laundry might have damaged the silk knickers she had worn all her life, and now she had been presented with the original pair of ‘Bridget Jones’ passion killers to wear, and she was bloody furious……she was, she told me, quite happy to do her own washing, but it was against health and safety rules for residents to risk splashing water on the floor…..

So there she sat, marooned by her broken leg, no cigarette, no sherry, no rings, not even her own knickers, her home boarded up at her own expense, and all because the step-daughter wanted her car. ‘What’, she wanted to know, ‘was I going to do about it?’

I set in motion an application to have Vera released from the Court’s ‘protection’; contrary to the ease with which you can enter that protection, getting released requires a consultant psychiatrist, to certify that there is absolutely no risk involved in giving you back control over your affairs – and they have long waiting lists. Three and a half months in Vera’s case, and by that time her blood pressure, which was at boiling point when I saw her, had soared to the point where she had had a severe stroke. She never saw her home again, nor had another cigarette, nor glass of sherry, nor was she re-united with her silk knickers.

You may imagine that if you had been Vera, your husband, your wife, your children, your parents, would have been able to do something to prevent this happening to you.

They can’t.

The Mental Capacity Act has enshrined the culture of the individual. ‘Family’ means nothing.

Last week it was used to prevent Dorothy Townend from taking her 86 husband home from his nursing home. Two months ago it was used to snuff out the life of the young son of loving parents.

What has all this to do with Nick Palmer MP? Yesterday he decided that there were certain aspects of the Care of the Elderly that he was concerned with. Laudable.

He isn’t concerned that ‘Vera’ (or I) can’t have a cigarette, nor a sherry, nor her own knickers, nor that Dorothy can’t take her husband home, nor that some anonymous civil servant will be deciding on whether they receive further medical attention including food and water, nope, he’s worried about the fact that when elderly people go into care:

“in the most recent year for which statistics are available, 38,000 healthy pets had to be put down and a further 100,000 had to be given up by their owners. Many of those pets will have been put down after an attempt to re-home them.”

He is introducing the ‘Care Home (Pets) Bill’ in October. Apparently The Society for Companion Animal Studies, supported by the Pet Food Manufacturers’ Association, who ‘have been extremely helpful in preparing the Bill’, has published research to assess the scale of the problem in the UK. Well, you would expect the Pet Food Manufacturer’s Association to back a Bill that will keep another 38,000 pussies happily chomping away on Kitikat.

If this Bill has the happy side effect of allowing more elderly people to take their pets into care homes with them all well and good, but what a strange world we live in where parliament can concern itself with our pussies, and yet decimate our purses and condemn old people to a miserably regimented life at the end of their days without a care in the world?

Parliament and My Little Pussy……… is a post from: Anna Raccoon

This building may look remarkably like a great cathedral, but there is no God inside, just a High Court Judge.

Today, a couple known only as Mr and Mrs T, are planning to spend their final hours enjoying the company of their baby son. Last night they lost a final legal bid to overturn the ruling of the High Court giving Doctors the power to cease the medical intervention which is keeping him alive.

The parents who are, not surprisingly, ‘deeply distressed’ by this ruling, will have the sympathy of everyone today.

“We are and always will be convinced that despite his desperate problems his life is worthwhile and is worth preserving as long as it is possible to do so without causing him undue pain,” their statement said.

“That was the real argument between us and the doctors — they think his life is intolerable and that his disability is such that his life has little purpose.

John Harris, a member of the government’s Human Genetics Commission and professor of bioethics at Manchester University has argued “We can terminate for serious foetal abnormality up to term but cannot kill a newborn. What do people think has happened in the passage down the birth canal to make it okay to kill the foetus at one end of the birth canal but not at the other?”  Often people don’t realise how late abortion is carried out in the UK. Over the last four years, there have been repeated calls to restrict the abortion limit, on the grounds that aborting babies at six months (24 weeks) is appalling as babies can survive if born at that stage. But how many people are aware that the 1967 Abortion Act also permits babies to be aborted right up to the moment of birth if the baby has a ’serious’ disability?

The saying ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’ springs to mind.

The ‘Right to life’ argument is intrinsically bound up with the ‘right to death’ argument, a subject which will receive another, long overdue, airing on Monday as a result of Patricia Hewitt’s amendment to the Coroners and Justice Bill.

There will be many who will argue that we have a ‘duty to live’ – and that neither assisted suicide nor euthanasia should be available for those who are not capable either by reduced mental capacity or physical impairment to chose when they die, as permissible under the Suicide Act.

There will be others who will assert that the ‘right to death’ will lead inexorably to a ‘duty to die’ – as exercised by the notorious laws passed in Germany, and expanded upon by the Nazi government,  which saw many hundreds of thousands of mentally incapacitated people exterminated.

So it is a timely point to reflect on the fact that The Mental Capacity Act 2005 contains provisions which allow the Court of Protection to decide on the ‘right to life’ for any of us, not just the ‘hard’ cases which we see emotively reported in the mainstream media, whether we should continue to receive the medical treatment which is keeping us alive.

This is not just an issue of free choice in the matter of your own suicide,  but a reminder that it is now the law which can exercise your supposed ‘autonomy’ in these matters.

You do not have the right to demand medical treatment – which includes food and water if supplied under medical supervision – you only have the right to refuse it. If you are not considered to have the mental capacity, either because you are a child, or because you have impaired or non existent capacity, then the court can, and will, exercise that choice on your behalf.  It is for that same court to decide whether you are able to make a competent choice. Not you.

It is equally a reminder that you, as parents, can only make those choices on your child’s behalf that a court considers to be in the child’s ‘best interests’.  You are but guardians, under the control of the judiciary.

We have truly sleepwalked towards allowing the legislature to contain and curtail our lives in ways which we scarcely understand.

Life or Death? is a post from: Anna Raccoon

(Una )Musings has an excellent piece on the Contact Point database, Labour’s Orwellian plan to regulate every aspect of the way in which a child  is raised, including chilling statements such as ‘refusal to take appropriate medicine’ – who is to decided what is appropriate, and for what ailment are they being medicated?; surely not the ‘appropriateness of social and communications skills, for example, ‘body language, excessive use of expletives or inappropriate language, for example brusque manner’. Nobody mention the Gollywog……..!

I was particularly struck by her comment that this initiative had come into being via Statutory Instrument, rather than being exposed to the, albeit somewhat toothless these days, scrutiny of Parliament. NuLabour are remarkably reluctant to engage in debate with their ‘stakeholders’ whilst socially engineering their lives, and even when they do, it is by way of obscure phrases that appear to hold out promise of ‘something better’ whilst concealing a cyanide pill.

Another piece of legislation which has been passed, the true meaning of which has apparently escaped the main stream media, is The Mental Capacity Act 2005.  This was billed at the time as ‘extending autonomy by proxy’ – surely the ultimate oxymoron – your ‘self-government’ is yours alone, once in someone else’s hands it is no longer yours. No matter, it passed through parliament with some minor squeaks on the question of whether this was ushering in euthanasia via the backdoor – absolutely not we were assured; it was, were were told, a way of ensuring that at the end of your days, you and you alone could decide on your medical treatment, you could even ensure that if you were unable to speak up for yourself, a trusted friend or relative ‘could’ express your wishes on your behalf.

Note that little word ‘could’. It was never spelt out that if you didn’t formally – at a cost of some £500 – set up this arrangement in advance, then an anonymous government department could, and would, take control of your ‘proxy autonomy’ for you. A civil servant will be appointed as your case officer and oversee your medical treatment. So, granting your proxy autonomy has already become an ‘opt-in’ arrangement, fail to have the foresight today, now, to do so, or fail to find the £500, and you too will have a civil servant who never has nor ever will meet you, decide on your medical treatment.

Now you might imagine that deciding on your medical treatment meant ensuring that you get a necessary kidney transplant or something of that order. Hold fast! Under UK law you do not have the right to insist on any medical treatment; why then do you need to ensure that you have a proxy? Simple, you have the right to insist on no further medical treatment. That civil servant can recommend on your behalf that you do not wish to have any further treatment…….

Nor is this simply a matter of not wanting any further intrusive operations when you have a terminal illness. UK law says that food and water when administered by a Doctor is medical treatment…….so just in case you might have wanted to ensure that in your final days you wouldn’t want any food or water, the Act helpfully ensures that it is a criminal offence to fail to obey the decision that the government made on your behalf.

We do not have the right to euthanasia in this country, those who fear that the end of their life may be too intolerable for them or their families to bear must travel abroad amid a welter of bureaucracy and the fear of prosecution in order to find eternal peace. What we do have is the right of the less-than-transparent Court of Protection to decided that since you didn’t nominate a family member to do so, they can order a Doctor to  supervise your inhuman death by starvation and dehydration.

NuLabour’s Orwellian control is complete, the CAF will supervise every moment of your birth and childhood, every aspect of your life will be scrutinised, logged, and controlled, and when you fail to be economically productive, then the Court of Protection can order your early dispatch from this mortal coil.

Chilling is it not?

Hatching and Dispatching for the NuLabour stakeholder……. is a post from: Anna Raccoon