Assisted dying

Off Guardian yesterday:

Let me tell you how #AssistedDying will work in the UK once they push it through… For the first year or so it will just be an option, you won’t hear much about it except in articles with headlines like “Assisted dying saved my parent/partner/child from years of pain”. After a year or two a report will come out claiming success via some tortured invented statistical measure like “assisted dying boosts patient well being scores in surveyed NHS hospitals”. Another will follow claiming waiting lists have improved due to decreased overcrowding in palliative care wards. They might even claim it’s decreased the NHS’s carbon footprint. Opinion pieces will appear with titles like “Assisted dying success story shuts down conspiracy theorists”. The minimum age to be considered for assisted dying will gradually be lowered. And the list of diseases and conditions for which assisted dying is a “recommended treatment alternative” will expand. Eventually non-lethal diseases will be included, then psychological illnesses too. Then will come an “emergency” - a fake one, obviously - and the NHS will come out of it shining thanks to resources “freed up” by euthanasia programs. Next will come the editorials. “Assisted dying is good for patients and saved the NHS during [fake pandemic], it’s time to make it mandatory”. A backbench MP will introduce a bill forcing anyone diagnosed with a fatal illness to be put on an assisted dying list. The bill will fail, and most of the press will oppose it, but the government will issue “common sense” compromise regulations where assisted dying is the default, but patients can opt out of if they want. It will never actually BE mandatory. But it WILL be harder and harder to get out of. Patients who don’t want to sign DNRs or opt for end of life care will be branded “selfish” and “irresponsible”. Studies will claim they are a strain on the NHS resources. Down the line, opting out will incur penalties to your pension payments and mean you are charged for healthcare, making it impossible for many older people to afford to stay alive. Then they’ll start panels where patients who are “mentally incompetent” have assisted dying recommended by “mercy tribunals”. …and the whole time the establishment will claim there is freedom of choice, and no slippery slope at all.

Removing Personal Responsibility

...and replacing it with woke rhetoric:

Civil servants were told to rewrite a proposed social media campaign to combat drink-spiking after the original appeared to blame victims, a minister has told Labour conference delegates. Alex Davies-Jones, the minister for violence against women and girls, suggested that Whitehall encouraged a “culture of victim blaming” and should instead focus on stopping perpetrators.

What exactly did it say? 

At a fringe event on Sunday at Labour’s conference in Liverpool, Davies-Jones said she refused to accept the script her civil servants had drawn up ahead of an awareness campaign that was due to coincide with freshers’ week at universities. “The civil service brought me my script for talking about this on social media, on TikTok, trying to bring in the youth,” she said. “One of the things they wanted me to talk about was how we keep ourselves safe from spiking – ‘cover your drink, make sure you look out for your friends, don’t accept a drink from a stranger’.

All perfectly reasonable, no? Exactly the sort of 'be cautious!' warning you get everywhere these days. Pretty unremarkable:

So why exactly is the Minister so agin' this?

“I refused to do it. I said we need to start reframing this, stop this culture of victim-blaming. If you want to go out and enjoy yourself, you should just be able to go out and enjoy yourself and not have to worry about keeping yourself safe. ”

So, on that basis, are we getting rid of all the warning signs to beware of phone thieves? Those ones that tell you to keep your mobile out of sight? 

She said that instead she ordered civil servants to go back to the drawing board and draft a campaign script that warned perpetrators not to spike or face prosecution and get treatment for their behaviour.

Because the sort of people who do this won't do it if they see a poster warning them not to... Is she drunk? Or just another Labour idiot promoted well beyond her capabilities?

Her approach mirrors a new strategy to tackle rape, known as Operation Soteria, under which police officers focus on the rape suspects’ behaviour and previous sexual activity rather than investigating the credibility of the victim.

Well, that's not a policy that's going to backfire, I'm sure!  

Let's play Superinjunction

In this game, girls and boys, the n1 rule is not to name, in comments, any of the parties we suspect are mentioned in a superinjunction anywhere in Britain. 

You'd understand that ggl comments are such that admins cannot edit them => therefore we must be vigilant, Julia and I, and simply not "unmoderate" any naming of names which could lead to recognition of the alleged miscreants.

The wildest aspect of this thing is that we may not even mention whose private life is being protected from scrutiny, what form of sexual inclination involved which people, even adult-minor, and we can't drop hints which leave no doubt ... no one said this was going to be a fun game this Thursday morn.

And what if we were not even sent a "desist" order?  Desist orders are generally for major MSM, esp. the now and then scurrilous ... wonder what happened to Rebekah Brooks anyway ... but if we breach a Superinjunction, in which no one knows that there even is one in place or for how long, nor are we MPs in parliament ...

... then to link the word Superinjunction to any public figure(s) whatever is a potential breach involving your nest egg or even years in the slammer.

Therefore, our admins here must be vigilant not to allow through any comment referring to any meathead whatever who might be up to hanky-panky ... sorry 'bout that.

Creeping Wokism

It's really creeping in everywhere, now. Reading a review of 'The Rings Of Power' in an online blogsite from the US publisher Tor books, I came across these examples:

Bear in mind I'd come here to have a read of what someone else thought of a fantasy tv show, in a fantasy literature-focussed online magazine. 

I'd expected critique of the writing, direction and faithfulness to the source material. But instead, I got the same old tired woke nonsense I get from everywhere else. 

Which is probably why, scanning down any list of new sci-fi or fantasy literature coming out, especially ones for the 'young adult' audience, the words 'queer' or 'trans' leap out at you. A lot. 

A culture that can't breed new members must, after all, find a way to recruit them.

The necessity of making lives unworkable

In the legendary tale, not only did the Israelites have to make bricks for the Pharoah … now they had to go out and collect the straw as well. When a people are hated and the govt has complete power over their lives, then with complete impunity they start imposing yokes … say pensioner payments, hiking tuition fees etc., pricing homes well out of the range of first home buyers … and so on.

The prime directive is to make life a misery for those you hate.

And in North Carolina, this is exactly what the Demonrat governor, DC itself, plus local councils have done in response to the carnage. I’ve been following the thing at our place across the way and the responses have been chalk and cheese.

That photo above is not about NC but over here and in fact, outside our place here, diversions are up for roadworks … except there are none, there rarely are … yet every few days, up go the diversions.  Back to Hurricane Helene.

DeSantis sprang into action, crews were out as early as possible, the recovery and repair proceeded, still proceed now. In NC though, local councils are refusing to let people back, long after water receded, but not only that, crews cannot get through by road or boat.

Too dangerous, say the coordinated left … not for a month. In Florida, they already have power restored to most areas. DeSantis offered to send crews, to fly in supplies. Thanks but no thanks, says NC … does not fit the agenda.  A clear red/blue divide … bodies reported everywhere, some in trees.  Too dangerous, say the Demonrats.  Volunteers from neighbouring states are being stopped by Demonrat councils.

They tried it in Florida but DeSantis ordered councils to let crews, and soon after people, through.

And NC Demrat Lt Governor?  He’s out campaigning for Harris, Biden was on the beach, Harris is MIA.  Trump is in Georgia, at the devastated places.  One mindset says get in, get the thing fixed … the other says we have to wait a month to do anything.  

Where is most prevention of repairs happening?  Rural areas … red voting.  There was footage last evening of Biden asked how the Fed govt is helping. “They’ve had all they’re getting,” he replied.

And back over our side of the pond again … let’s say, hypothetically, we had a communist PM, a greedy sod, meatheaded, belligerent … and let’s say he was near- universally condemned … what would his typical reaction be?

Quite right … bring down a super-injunction to prevent anyone exposing it.

More Green Spaces, Or Different, Safer Green Spaces?

Children in the UK urgently need more easy-to-access green space, according to the head of a sports charity calling on private schools to open up their grounds.

It seems Kieran Connolly hasn't seen a map of London, which is absolutely loaded with green spaces.

Connolly grew up in south-east London and played on the Catford Pitz pitches there before they were bought in 2011 by St Dunstan’s college. He said: “Pitz was a bit of a lifesaver for me, and I think many other young people. The gate was just open, you could go in and play. There was space for everybody. You’d go there, meet people, play matches, meet with your friends, spend hours there. They weren’t even locked, you just go there and play for free.” However, the £22,599-a-year independent school initially reserved the fields for sole use by its students. Connolly contacted councillors who were able to help him persuade the school to allow the charity to use its floodlit pitches once a week to provide football sessions for young people in Catford.

Was it the pitch that was wanted, or the safety and security of being somewhere other than any of those green spaces open to the public, I wonder? 

Since August last year, St Dunstan’s has given free access to Sports Fun 4 All for an hour every Monday after the school day ends. The school has also become more involved with local community groups, schools in and around Catford, and its latest partnership is with Chelsea FC, which will include hosting regular tournaments on the site for local state schools. And most recently, through a partnership with St Dunstan’s college, Lewisham council and the Westside Young Leaders Academy, the Lewisham Young Leaders Academy (LYLA) was established to help disadvantaged African, Caribbean and dual-heritage children aged eight to 18. The space is also opened up free of charge to local primary schools to use for their sports days.

I am getting a definite feel from between the lines that the main threat to African, Caribbean and dual-heritage children's enjoyment of sports in public spaces is other African, Caribbean and dual-heritage children in those public spaces, who haven't brought along footballs, but zombie knives and machetes...

While Connolly is grateful to now be able to run the sessions, he would love all children to have easy access to green space in the way private school students have. “It would be better if we had way more floodlit facilities and green spaces for these young people to play sport and football. We’re not here to make the next professional footballer. What we have done is given hundreds of young people access to a free space every single week that they otherwise wouldn’t be able to access.”

But then where would we build all the extra housing we apparantly need to accommodate this ever-growing 'community'? 

DEATH; WHERE IS THY STING?

 

James very recently wrote a polemic about how the elderly and old are treated in this wonderful ‘caring’ world which is Great Britain & Northern Ireland.

As I qualify on all counts as regards treatment, I’ll give a couple of instances which proves that, whilst the message states that we are looked after from cradle to grave; in reality? Not So Much!

I point to two items, one in my own deeply personal life, the other in the quagmire which ruled during the first, second and subsequent lockdowns, and was directly aimed at mainly old and elderly people.

As many may recall, I lost my wife Jacqueline to an NHS Hospital Regime which a) sets in written and approved terms, its rules as to the disposition regarding the aftercare of (mainly) elderly or frail patients: and then blithely disregards just about every category, every so-called ‘Red Line’ written: BECAUSE THEY CAN. They said that there was a Document which ruled how they treated patients if that patient suffered a heart attack.

That document, which is birthed in the manner which a group of Consultants study the file and medical records and physical health of every patient. This is called the DNACPR, OR DO NOT ATTEMPT CARDIO PULMONARY RESUSCITATION file. If the Recovery STATISTICS point towards a patients inability to successfully withstand any type of resuscitation; those same Consultants sign that Document: and if there is a heart attack; then NOTHING  further is authorised: THE PATIENT IS LEFT TO DIE! They did this in my wife’s case, they did approximately the same in many hundreds, perhaps thousands of other patients; and they got away with this mass slaughter because no one was allowed to visit any hospital patient before, during and definitely after treatment was over. 

They wrote the medical records, no-one could challenge them because they write the history, and if anyone made any errors, it was covered up, no-one was disciplined. I only found out about the DNACPR on my wife’s file because I saw it on the records sent to the Coroner. 

I went to the Inquest, and made such a stir that I was granted an adjournment for a second Inquest. I did my very best for the memory of my Jacqueline: but all I achieved was to give my side of events as part of a hospital teaching video. I even contacted the Ombudsman. All that achieved was a letter saying the Hospital Trust understood my loss!

The ONLY concrete fact who emerged right at the very end of my investigations was the truth that this LEGALLY ALL-POWERFUL DNACPR DOCUMENT which covered my wife’s singular LACK of Treatment; had somehow disappeared, and failed to be located, despite a search lasting days. 

The other item was the manner in which literally THOUSANDS of Patients were decanted from their hospital beds and sent to ill-prepared care homes WITHOUT BEING TESTED, and thousands died because the ‘experts’ reckoned there was no risk.

Rosie Duffield and the wider issue

There have always been groups which have allied themselves with those having genuine issues, they've infiltrated those groups and have risen to being spokespeople and "thought leaders" of those groups ... but they're actually inimical to the true interests of that demographic.

What is the purpose?  It's to split, confound, to have them at each other's throats ... here's one example:

There's a girl I've been running clips of for over a decade, now married, with children, she now rarely vlogs ... take your pick of her output ... this is on her experiences in civil air patrol ... and this is her on the lie of feminism:

Same thing happened in the 60s when women like Phyllis Schlafly became active for women but the Marxists saw this in power terms and sent in communists such as Betty Friedan who both trivialised and twisted the issues away from those issues and into championing women's grievances against men ... instead of getting men onside ... another was Helen Reddy, another Gloria Steinem ... loudly identifying themselves as champions of women when they were anything but ... they were all about cultural war along gender lines.

And now we have a lady who's seen how these cultural enemies of women ... biologically women themselves ... are taking outrageous positions and are attacking those resigning, the latter saying enough ... this is not what I signed up for, supported by good women:

There were similar good women like SH and RH in NI decades back who said enough of the killings ... not the Bernadette Devlins but many unsung women saying the whole thing was insanity.  This Whittome ... whom is she in thrall to? 

Those pushing demi-men into women's sport, women's bathrooms etc. ... that's whom.

Who are some of the strongest supporters on X just now for Rosie D?  Non-Marxist men plus women ... together.

Peter Pienaar and Richard Hannay

Different characters appear on the public stage and try to convince us that things are the way they paint it ... one of the more recent is this Robert Jenrick, 

It reminds me of The Thirty-Nine Steps (the Buchan book from 1915) and the character Hannay mentions, a South African Peter Pienaar, appearing in a few Hannay stories of the time and illustrating the whole thing about plausibility.

The overwhelming evidence, together with a series of hunches, have the unlikely hero Hannay, accompanied by the British muscle, descending on a coastal gentlemen's retreat, where the dastardly, stop-at-nothing, wartime German agents were holed up BUT the supposed miscreants  were playing the English gentlemen to a tee and Hannay had great self-doubt ... maybe they had got it wrong after all ...

http://www.cleavebooks.co.uk/grol/buchan/39step10.htm

I watched Harris get up before a microphone, incensed that Trump was about to bring economic ruin to America ... she was pretty good at it, almost as convincing as Robert Jenrick or Andrea Jenkyns ... the full on Reform type conservatives the latter were ... except that the form guide said differently. Where had they been during their years in govt? Where had their principles been then?

And across the pond, there was Harris, angrily defending the people ... while she was party to 20,000 Haitians going into a red rosette town, Springfield, ruining that town.  Plus all the rest of it. One of the few times she was on cue and steaming ... it was disconcerting.

And Trump? In his speech, outlining her crimes ... yes he went on and on and on, bitterly ... such that he began to pale ... and yet we've all been piecing together evidence for a few years now ... the real story is quite different to how Harris's scriptwriters were portraying it.

And Starmer?  Good mate of the people? Of the pensioners?

'Look On My Works, Ye Mighty, And Despair’

The far right across Europe used to dream of seeing their countries leave the European Union. In France, they called for a Frexit; in Germany, it was Dexit. But recently these calls have quietened. The reason is not that far-right parties have become enamoured of the EU, but rather they now understand that instead of quitting, they can reshape the EU into a collection of “strong” nation states that will each enact their own rightwing anti-migration agenda.

As Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally (RN) in France, recently remarked in explaining why his party no longer called for France to quit the EU: “You don’t leave the table when you are winning the game.”

If you can't beat them, join them (and subvert them), eh? How delicious! 

The German government is on a dangerous path. The country holds a central position in the EU and is its largest economy, meaning that this plan, which goes against one of the central tenets of the EU, threatens to undermine the European project.

Oh noes! Disaster! Who could do such a thing? 

A cornerstone of that project was the ambition to make national borders disappear by creating the passport-free Schengen area, which now includes 25 of the 27 EU member states. It was one of the reasons why the EU received the Nobel peace prize in 2012 – although even then, thousands of migrants were dying at the EU’s external borders every year. At the time, a representative of the union declared: “Over the past 60 years, the European project has shown that it is possible for peoples and nations to come together across borders. That it is possible to overcome the differences between ‘them’ and ‘us’.”

Actually, enough Europeans have realised that it doesn't show that at all, that in fact it shows the opposite. And they've had enough of a union that's no longer working for them, but for itself.  

Besides stoking up racist resentment in society and undermining the rights of vulnerable groups, the German government risks putting the EU itself in jeopardy. The very idea of a political community that enshrines the right to free movement across borders is crumbling before our eyes. And it is not migrants who are to blame.

Ah, well, it had a good run while it lasted.