Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Tamas]

Kicking up a fuss in state healtchare sounds very familiar.

But let me tell you it's not about being a rude bitch, it's about being insistent and signalling clearly that you are not going away as a problem by being set aside.

[Admiral Yi]

Nobody makes money off of persuading someone else to commit suicide.

[Tamas]

Nobody makes money off of persuading someone else to commit suicide.

I think the idea is that heirs would do that. Which to me seems like a ridiculously low chance occursnce to institute a society-wide ban around.

[HVC]

Nobody makes money off of persuading someone else to commit suicide.

inheritance?

Beaten by Tamas.  Although I guess over burdened old folks homes too. Get a new younger or healthier body. Less costs, same revenue.

[Admiral Yi]

inheritance?

Sure.

[Josquius]

Nobody makes money off of persuading someone else to commit suicide.

I think the idea is that heirs would do that. Which to me seems like a ridiculously low chance occursnce to institute a society-wide ban around.

Not low at all I'd say.
Plenty of cases out there of elder abuse.
Not to mention less criminal instances of gold digging that would be really helped by an easy legal way for someone die.

Hell. Less likely but In a situation of suicide on demand I'd imagine you'd get "serial killers" who get off on convincing people to off themselves for no gain.

[Tamas]

I have to ask: if you are so helpless and vulnerable that your abusers can convince or coerce you to kill yourself (having already satisfied all conditions to take the assisted suicide option so having a terminal illness etc) is that a life worth living for the time period it will take for your terminal illness to take you?

That is of course if you guys haven't directly jumped from the actual proposal of having a very defined set of criteriaa under which AS can be done to a scenario where you are allowed to buy suicide pills willy-nilly which nobody has actually proposed but is the version opposers seem to be fighting.

Then again, the only argument against the actual proposals for this is the cowardice of rather letting people suffer than taking responsibility for letting them die.

[Sheilbh]

Hell. Less likely but In a situation of suicide on demand I'd imagine you'd get "serial killers" who get off on convincing people to off themselves for no gain.

In a way I think that'd be a lower risk. We've already had Dr Shipman but I think at least with assisted suicide there'd be an obvious papertrail that could hopefully be followed. Although I suppose someone should have spotted the number of people dying under his care too.

And you just know it'd be very inconsistent with some healthy but mildly depressed people wanting to go whilst other decrepit walking corpses would insist on every treatment going to fight for life.

So there was a case I saw being argued (or argued about) in Canada recently. I think it was in the court because it was all initials but the person was 27, their only diagnoses (from my understanding) were autism and ADHD who wanted MAID - and there was a case about it. It's callous but my first thought was that you could commit suicide in that case? Why would you need someone else to do it - what is that serving?

As I say I'm very ambivalent about it - for the reason Parris thinks is good (plus I think every individual human life should be seen as sacred and possessed of the exact same dignities as any other). My instinct is that Switzerland gets it right from the little I've read about the different models.

Beaten by Tamas.  Although I guess over burdened old folks homes too. Get a new younger or healthier body. Less costs, same revenue.

The NHS.

The entire government's messaging around covid was "protect the NHS" in part because that's what focus groups found cut through the most. It featured in our Olympics opening ceremony. It is a bit of a national fetish. We also have a culture that celebrates not kicking up a fuss, "mustn't grumble", "don't want to be a burden" etc.

I really don't think it would take long to reach Parris' "unspoken hint". It's really bad but we already have language about "bedblockers" in the NHS (overwhelmingly elderly or otherwise in need of care, which is not sufficiently available). You sometimes need to be a squeaky wheel to get the right care or attention, I'd worry if you needed that to be able to choose to live.

It's the problem I always have with the Parris strand of liberalism. That we all operate with full mental capacity, utterly free of coercive influence or social pressure to make rational choices - and that may be true for a middle-aged, rich, white, Oxbridge educated man with a column in the Times. But many experience social pressure differently and there are general human conditions frailty, folly - and there are cruel people. I suspect it would intersect in troubling ways with existing health inequalities. And we shouldn't build policy for or on the model of those liberal rationally self-determining Atlases because that's not what our society actually is.

Edit: And as I say a big part of this is that in my view, as a society, Britain is, at best, indifferent to the elderly. I think if they were more valued socially then the unspoken hint might diminish and the ability to trust people making free decisions increase.

[Tamas]

I really don't think it would take long to reach Parris' "unspoken hint". It's really bad but we already have language about "bedblockers" in the NHS (overwhelmingly elderly or otherwise in need of care, which is not sufficiently available). You sometimes need to be a squeaky wheel to get the right care or attention, I'd worry if you needed that to be able to choose to live.

But nobody has proposed anything even remotely close to that. This is just a more humane-pretending version of hyperbole people envisioning mandatory sex changes to children because transgenders won't be banned from the "wrong" public toilets.

[Jacob]

Nobody makes money off of persuading someone else to commit suicide.

You mean other than heirs and beneficiaries... and insurance companies (or the state) on the hook for continued care.

Health system administrators who get performance bonuses based on metrics (such as cost savings) might find they have incentives to shed "dead weight" in the system where possible.

[Sheilbh]

But nobody has proposed anything even remotely close to that. This is just a more humane-pretending version of hyperbole people envisioning mandatory sex changes to children because transgenders won't be banned from the "wrong" public toilets.

It is something that disability rights campaigners and activists have been flagging as a concern. And you've got a Times columnist writing about it. To me that seems like enough to care about it as a risk and work out how we prevent it happening rather than just pretending it's not going to be a problem (although that is the MO of most NHS scandals).

But also it reflects the experience we've all had in the NHS (and as I say structurally, my understanding is that it also shows up in the stats around health inequalities) - so again I think the question is if we have assisted suicide of some form in the NHS how do we mitigate/prevent those known issues.

[Tamas]

But nobody has proposed anything even remotely close to that. This is just a more humane-pretending version of hyperbole people envisioning mandatory sex changes to children because transgenders won't be banned from the "wrong" public toilets.

It is something that disability rights campaigners and activists have been flagging as a concern. And you've got a Times columnist writing about it. To me that seems like enough to care about it as a risk and work out how we prevent it happening rather than just pretending it's not going to be a problem (although that is the MO of most NHS scandals).

But also it reflects the experience we've all had in the NHS (and as I say structurally, my understanding is that it also shows up in the stats around health inequalities) - so again I think the question is if we have assisted suicide of some form in the NHS how do we mitigate/prevent those known issues.

Except opposers as far as I have seen are not saying ok let's have a stab at working out a set of rules that will mitigate that risk. They are saying let's not do it at all because there is that risk.

[Sheilbh]

I'm not sure what you mean by "opposers". From what I've seen while I know there are pressure groups I don't really think there's organised campaigns about this.

There are some who will oppose it absolutely - some religious communities will view it as morally impermissible, I know of at least one disability rights activist who is absolutely against.

But broadly I think there's a bien pensant view that it's a good thing, there's two thirds support in opinion polls and I think Starmer has said there'll be a free vote on it (so no party whips). So my perspective is this is inevitable and possibly going to just get waved through and we need to think of the risks and how to prevent them now to avoid a scandal in 10-20 years when we discover x NHS Trust was knocking off anyone over the age of 70.

Although - just to go back to that sanctity and dignity of each individual life thing - I am worried about the direction of our discourse around the elderly or as an ageing society, plus some of the language around the welfare cost of the long-term disabled, plus Parris writing about humans as units with output and input.

[Sheilbh]

From the Telegraph:


I always thought Brexit might ultimately be Lexit with the left being the one able to use it. Basically because Singapore on Thames (public spending cuts and massive deregulation) is politically very difficult because the only people who support are already Tory MPs/Telegraph columnists, while everyone else will be very happy to NGAF about state aid rules. And you slightly see that there.

I mentioned it as a possibility before, but I still think it's pretty possible that the ultimate calls to re-join the EU come from the right. Just like the original calls to enter the EEC as a way of introducing more competition and discipline into British industry (particularly on inflation). I also think if the EU makes a civilisational turn (either Macroniste or Meloni-style) that may appeal to cultural conservatives, while I think the left will still be in the discourse orbit of the US left.

[Valmy]

while I think the left will still be in the discourse orbit of the US left.

Really? Huh. I just always found the British Left to be more radical than our left. We are unlikely to make somebody like Corbyn the leader of the Democratic Party for example.