Holy shit! My brother listens to Queen...
Graduation in about a week, life's moving on...
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
Thursday, May 25, 2006
assisted dying redux
Continuing with my rant about assisted dying.
The fools in Parliament have rejected it again.
The news says 'Oh forget it, it'll never pass.'
Pro-life boobs say 'It's a victory for the sanctity of life!'
I say 'Fuck all of you.'
Just as a democracy does not mean that anyone is allowed to say/do anything they want, sanctity of life is not about keeping someone alive without regard for anything else.
A lot of tits in America think that their 'great democracy' is a freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Want a supersized Big Mac? Deserve a supersized Big Mac. If you get fat, don't worry you can always sue McDonalds for making you a fat bastard. Want a gun? Deserve a gun. If you kill someone don't worry, bearing arms is constitutional right. After all, 'It's what my great-great-great-great granpa fought the British and Injuns for! The freedom to bear arms and do whatever the hell I please. Every inch of America was won for true Americans with our ancestors blood it was. So all you foreigners stop whining about poverty cause you're all IMMIGRANTS and don't deserve land of your own. Compensate INJUNS you gotta be joking, they lost their land to our great-great-great-great granpa and it ain't none of mah business.' See the irony? Want a war? Deserve a war. Unilateral war is the only currency terrorists understand... says Bush while losing ground on domestic policy polls.
Okay, if rights are so important, how about basic human rights like the right to be free from torture? FUCK that says Uncle Sam. The rules of war on terror are different! No Geneva Convention, no UN Declaration of Human Rights. We'll hold whoever we damn well please without trial and without accountability. Oh and if we attach live wires to their balls while we're at it it is NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS. Oh but wait, that doesn't apply to you China. We'll cockblock you every step we can because you violate human rights all the time and that's just baaaaad.
Democracy in international law is a joke with America throwing its weight around like an overweight, unfit wrestler. Sooner or later someone big enough *cough*China*cough* is gonna come along and shove right back. Oh... is THAT why they're being blocked all the time. Right. So democracy, what's that?
Democracy was never about being able to chuck your weight around and do whatever you want as long as you have the muscle to back it up. Whether that's on the national or international level that remains true. Pushing others around and achieving the best for number one has a name... it's ANARCHY. Democracy is about the regulation of freedoms, regulation of what rights people have in order to achieve a balance.
After that big arc, back to assisted dying. Just as democracy isn't about the complete freedom to do whatever you want, protection of huamn life should not be about forcing the terminally ill to struggle through their last few months. It should NOT be about religious pressure groups blocking forcing their views on the dying. It should not be about who has the loudest voice or deepest pockets to hire the best publicist. It should not, basically, be about forcing people to suffer through a life they DO NOT WANT TO LIVE.
The sanctity that needs to be protected is the sanctity of choice. Just because someone doesn't want to do it doesn't mean that his/her view should be forced on all the other people suffering from terminal cancer or final stage motor neurone disease. That person still has the choice to live on... his/her actions prevent the others from being able to release themselves from suffering.
The assisted dying bill is about allowing someone in the last stages of terminal illness to say 'Please, I've had enough.' Being forced to live on ventilators and artificial life support is the closest I can imagine to undeath in our present world and I view it with as much horror as I would walking corpse.
It is not Lord Joffe, Ludwig Dinelli or Dignitas who are committing crimes against humanity. And neither was Kavorkian, although he operated in the grey areas of the law. They gave or would give sufferers a choice, a light at the end of the tunnel if you wish. It is those who deny the truly suffering that very choice who are the true criminals against humanity, it is they who violate the sanctity of life.
The fools in Parliament have rejected it again.
The news says 'Oh forget it, it'll never pass.'
Pro-life boobs say 'It's a victory for the sanctity of life!'
I say 'Fuck all of you.'
Just as a democracy does not mean that anyone is allowed to say/do anything they want, sanctity of life is not about keeping someone alive without regard for anything else.
A lot of tits in America think that their 'great democracy' is a freedom to do whatever they want, whenever they want. Want a supersized Big Mac? Deserve a supersized Big Mac. If you get fat, don't worry you can always sue McDonalds for making you a fat bastard. Want a gun? Deserve a gun. If you kill someone don't worry, bearing arms is constitutional right. After all, 'It's what my great-great-great-great granpa fought the British and Injuns for! The freedom to bear arms and do whatever the hell I please. Every inch of America was won for true Americans with our ancestors blood it was. So all you foreigners stop whining about poverty cause you're all IMMIGRANTS and don't deserve land of your own. Compensate INJUNS you gotta be joking, they lost their land to our great-great-great-great granpa and it ain't none of mah business.' See the irony? Want a war? Deserve a war. Unilateral war is the only currency terrorists understand... says Bush while losing ground on domestic policy polls.
Okay, if rights are so important, how about basic human rights like the right to be free from torture? FUCK that says Uncle Sam. The rules of war on terror are different! No Geneva Convention, no UN Declaration of Human Rights. We'll hold whoever we damn well please without trial and without accountability. Oh and if we attach live wires to their balls while we're at it it is NONE OF YOUR GODDAMN BUSINESS. Oh but wait, that doesn't apply to you China. We'll cockblock you every step we can because you violate human rights all the time and that's just baaaaad.
Democracy in international law is a joke with America throwing its weight around like an overweight, unfit wrestler. Sooner or later someone big enough *cough*China*cough* is gonna come along and shove right back. Oh... is THAT why they're being blocked all the time. Right. So democracy, what's that?
Democracy was never about being able to chuck your weight around and do whatever you want as long as you have the muscle to back it up. Whether that's on the national or international level that remains true. Pushing others around and achieving the best for number one has a name... it's ANARCHY. Democracy is about the regulation of freedoms, regulation of what rights people have in order to achieve a balance.
After that big arc, back to assisted dying. Just as democracy isn't about the complete freedom to do whatever you want, protection of huamn life should not be about forcing the terminally ill to struggle through their last few months. It should NOT be about religious pressure groups blocking forcing their views on the dying. It should not be about who has the loudest voice or deepest pockets to hire the best publicist. It should not, basically, be about forcing people to suffer through a life they DO NOT WANT TO LIVE.
The sanctity that needs to be protected is the sanctity of choice. Just because someone doesn't want to do it doesn't mean that his/her view should be forced on all the other people suffering from terminal cancer or final stage motor neurone disease. That person still has the choice to live on... his/her actions prevent the others from being able to release themselves from suffering.
The assisted dying bill is about allowing someone in the last stages of terminal illness to say 'Please, I've had enough.' Being forced to live on ventilators and artificial life support is the closest I can imagine to undeath in our present world and I view it with as much horror as I would walking corpse.
It is not Lord Joffe, Ludwig Dinelli or Dignitas who are committing crimes against humanity. And neither was Kavorkian, although he operated in the grey areas of the law. They gave or would give sufferers a choice, a light at the end of the tunnel if you wish. It is those who deny the truly suffering that very choice who are the true criminals against humanity, it is they who violate the sanctity of life.
Steam
Running out of steam seems to be the predominant problem with me. Start off all gung ho and just losing the goal after the first couple of weeks.
Sometimes when you're on a roll the little bastards on the sidelines throw roses to trip you up... all the while claiming it was all for the best. 'But they is ROSES mate!'
...
yeah...
Sometimes when you're on a roll the little bastards on the sidelines throw roses to trip you up... all the while claiming it was all for the best. 'But they is ROSES mate!'
...
yeah...
Sunday, April 09, 2006
the noise
my housemates have the noisiest girlfriends in the world. white noise machines pitched at the upper edge of your hearing. right at that range where your vision blurs and blood starts seeping out of every orifice. when something gets both of them going i want to rip my ears off.
and my room is sitting pretty in between. no escape
and my room is sitting pretty in between. no escape
Friday, March 10, 2006
The lawyer's toast!
"Fee simple or a simple fee
And all the fees entail
Are nothing when compared to thee
Thou best of fees, - female!"
- Gilbert Ray Hawkes, Esq., of the New York Bar in 'Literature and the Law' 11 Green Bag 234 (1899)
*snort* Hilarious!
And all the fees entail
Are nothing when compared to thee
Thou best of fees, - female!"
- Gilbert Ray Hawkes, Esq., of the New York Bar in 'Literature and the Law' 11 Green Bag 234 (1899)
*snort* Hilarious!
Wednesday, January 25, 2006
Brand spanking new
It's a brand spanking new blog.
No baggage, no deep thoughts, no emotional insights. just plain whinge the way everyone likes it. And the best part? I bitch and everybody else HAS to listen. Isn't that a change from being just another voice in the multitudes.
Time to voice my displeasure. Assisted dying's been around for bloody ages and the morons who run the country just refuse to acknowledge it. People just leave the country all the time to off themselves because British law makes it impossible to pass in peace even if you're in the very latest stages of a terminal illness, in tremendous pain and suffering and crippled to the point where you can't even lift a finger. The BBC's making a big issue out of Dr Anne Turner because she left a video diary of her last moments... Well, that and she had the showmanship to invite the BBC along to her suicide. How morbid is that? Then again, what difference is it going to make?! The assisted dying bill which the reporters are speaking of so highly was already dumped out of parliament last session and this despite the major alterations made to it by every single parliamentarian who wanted to appear sympathetic to sufferers yet would recoil to the very fibre of their being at the thought of allowing someone to die... not out of the goodness of their hearts mind you, rather at the thought that voting for the passage of the bill unchanged would kill his base of voters.
Some reverend was on the telly saying that we should convince these people that there was still some good in their lives, that they were still useful to society. In order to protect the sanctity of human life... hey sounds good doesn't it? But how sacrosanct is human life exactly? The European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms seems to say a right to life is non-derogable and sacrosanct in every way shape and form possible... but scratch at the surface and the holes start appearing. It's apparently illegal to assist people in committing suicide... even helping someone onto a plane could be considered assisting a suicide. Oh just so you know, suicide IS NOT A CRIME but assisting in one is. Logic please? Police rarely ever use their power to prosecute people assisting their loved ones to commit suicide. It's the stupid ones who try to get immunity for their loved ones before the fact. The smart ones just off themselves and let the police turn a blind eye. If it works, why fix it eh? Well, let's see... Dr Turner's son travelled with her to Switzerland right? If he had any part in buying her air ticket, helping her on the plane or even carrying her bags on the way to the Dignitas clinic... guess what? He's assisted a suicide. I'd like to see him placed in custody the moment he gets back to the UK for a criminal act. Come to think of it... anybody who helped her on the trip to Switzerland knowing her intention would have assisted a suicide. BUT WAIT... nothing will happen to them! Why? Because the law ISN'T BLOODY WORKING. There is too much discretion given to the police in assisted dying cases and, although I believe it's generally been applied widely, that's just not the way it's meant to work. Think about this, Anne Turner was not the first... she was just the loudest about it. So much for protecting the sanctity of life. Fix the law, fix the uncertainty. After all, law is meant to be certain.
Back to the good, pro-life reverend... does he know exactly what patients going through cerebral palsy feel? Ask Diane Pretty whether she thought that there was any way she would feel useful (okay, fine she suffered from motor neurone disease but hey, same effect yes?). Loved, most definitely. Useful? She couldn't do anything for herself. She couldn't walk, clothe or feed hereself... she couldn't even get on to a plane to fly out of the country where she could pass in peace rather than suffer through years of court battles only to fail and be forced to die ignominously. Here I take a quote from BBC:
"There has been a real deepening of a relationship, or things that have gone wrong in the past have been put right," he said.
"Who knows what good things can come out of the last phase of a person's life?"
WHAT deepening of relationship? In final stage Alzheimer's that person's not going to remember you. What good can come from a drooling, dribbling body? Oh wait... I forget that Christian philosphy sees doing good as doing stuff that make you feel like you've done good. I'd sooner take a bullet through the brain than take care from someone who's doing it to make themselves feel better.
If I started losing my memory and regressing into childhood I think it would be a mercy to relieve me of suffering. I want to be in full possession of my faculties or under the ground. If I start drooling like an idiot and have to have my son/daughter/relatives wiping my arse for me, nothing in the world would convince me that I could be of any possible use or had any reason to live on. Family would miss me but leave me dignity. I wouldn't call leaving me drooling in a bed waiting to die a mercy in any way shape or form. Shut the fuck up and pass the assisted dying bill please... give people an option to pass with a shred of self-respect and dignity.
No baggage, no deep thoughts, no emotional insights. just plain whinge the way everyone likes it. And the best part? I bitch and everybody else HAS to listen. Isn't that a change from being just another voice in the multitudes.
Time to voice my displeasure. Assisted dying's been around for bloody ages and the morons who run the country just refuse to acknowledge it. People just leave the country all the time to off themselves because British law makes it impossible to pass in peace even if you're in the very latest stages of a terminal illness, in tremendous pain and suffering and crippled to the point where you can't even lift a finger. The BBC's making a big issue out of Dr Anne Turner because she left a video diary of her last moments... Well, that and she had the showmanship to invite the BBC along to her suicide. How morbid is that? Then again, what difference is it going to make?! The assisted dying bill which the reporters are speaking of so highly was already dumped out of parliament last session and this despite the major alterations made to it by every single parliamentarian who wanted to appear sympathetic to sufferers yet would recoil to the very fibre of their being at the thought of allowing someone to die... not out of the goodness of their hearts mind you, rather at the thought that voting for the passage of the bill unchanged would kill his base of voters.
Some reverend was on the telly saying that we should convince these people that there was still some good in their lives, that they were still useful to society. In order to protect the sanctity of human life... hey sounds good doesn't it? But how sacrosanct is human life exactly? The European Convention on Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms seems to say a right to life is non-derogable and sacrosanct in every way shape and form possible... but scratch at the surface and the holes start appearing. It's apparently illegal to assist people in committing suicide... even helping someone onto a plane could be considered assisting a suicide. Oh just so you know, suicide IS NOT A CRIME but assisting in one is. Logic please? Police rarely ever use their power to prosecute people assisting their loved ones to commit suicide. It's the stupid ones who try to get immunity for their loved ones before the fact. The smart ones just off themselves and let the police turn a blind eye. If it works, why fix it eh? Well, let's see... Dr Turner's son travelled with her to Switzerland right? If he had any part in buying her air ticket, helping her on the plane or even carrying her bags on the way to the Dignitas clinic... guess what? He's assisted a suicide. I'd like to see him placed in custody the moment he gets back to the UK for a criminal act. Come to think of it... anybody who helped her on the trip to Switzerland knowing her intention would have assisted a suicide. BUT WAIT... nothing will happen to them! Why? Because the law ISN'T BLOODY WORKING. There is too much discretion given to the police in assisted dying cases and, although I believe it's generally been applied widely, that's just not the way it's meant to work. Think about this, Anne Turner was not the first... she was just the loudest about it. So much for protecting the sanctity of life. Fix the law, fix the uncertainty. After all, law is meant to be certain.
Back to the good, pro-life reverend... does he know exactly what patients going through cerebral palsy feel? Ask Diane Pretty whether she thought that there was any way she would feel useful (okay, fine she suffered from motor neurone disease but hey, same effect yes?). Loved, most definitely. Useful? She couldn't do anything for herself. She couldn't walk, clothe or feed hereself... she couldn't even get on to a plane to fly out of the country where she could pass in peace rather than suffer through years of court battles only to fail and be forced to die ignominously. Here I take a quote from BBC:
"There has been a real deepening of a relationship, or things that have gone wrong in the past have been put right," he said.
"Who knows what good things can come out of the last phase of a person's life?"
WHAT deepening of relationship? In final stage Alzheimer's that person's not going to remember you. What good can come from a drooling, dribbling body? Oh wait... I forget that Christian philosphy sees doing good as doing stuff that make you feel like you've done good. I'd sooner take a bullet through the brain than take care from someone who's doing it to make themselves feel better.
If I started losing my memory and regressing into childhood I think it would be a mercy to relieve me of suffering. I want to be in full possession of my faculties or under the ground. If I start drooling like an idiot and have to have my son/daughter/relatives wiping my arse for me, nothing in the world would convince me that I could be of any possible use or had any reason to live on. Family would miss me but leave me dignity. I wouldn't call leaving me drooling in a bed waiting to die a mercy in any way shape or form. Shut the fuck up and pass the assisted dying bill please... give people an option to pass with a shred of self-respect and dignity.
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