thelogicalview.co.uk

Tag: common sense

  • The Assisted Dying Bill: House of Lords kills the Commons

    …. in attempt to block the humane Bill to allow a peaceful passing of those with a terminal illness facing a bad end.

    It’s a complicated matter this process of the Assisted Dying Bill currently passed by the Commons on 20th June 2025 by the 314 in favour, 291 against. Sure, this is a pretty close vote but still a clear vote for the Bill, but Parliament is not the population of the ‘UK’, England and Wales, Britain, however that is said. This Bill is for citizens in England and Wales, and the same Bill content for Scotland is currently at Stage 3 in Holyrood, where again MSPs are not the population, only the representatives of the function of governance. Within the citizen opinion, including Christians, medical staff, vets of course because with animals that is considered the kindest and most obvious course of action and how barbaric it would be otherwise, some hospice staff, some like Markus Campbell-Savours MP who started as opposing the change in law and then looked at the evidence and the facts and changed his vote, and the so many people who don’t quite know how it would work because it is a change but who have witnessed awful and prolonged scenes of someone they know very well and simple biological normality says that is wrong to prevent someone passing out of hell on earth and into a peaceful passing on to avoid the hideous suffering and forced medical applications and leaving their loved ones traumatised for their own remaining lifespan.

    Those against the Bill use a lot of air time and press space and Parliamentary time and now the House of Lords time to give their own personal opinion. Amongst the general public, the overwhelming percentage is for this facility to be available, and it is through the Commons, just required to be scrutinised in the Lords (and Ladies), but under the umbrella of the Parliament Acts 1911 and 1949, the role of the Lords is only to scrutinise what is moving through, not to take hijack.

    If anything has shown up the strange state of affairs in the ‘UK’, the devolved ‘countries’, the power that ‘medicine and science’ now has, the departure from realities of a biological human being, the new power of the individual opinion over the power of an individual to say they’ve had enough suffering, and the question of governance in where does that yes or no exist in practice, then this Bill has it all.

    You’d think that any MP, MSP or HoL member on the left of centre (that’s how ‘UK’ politics is defined) would be very against this Bill because the State now has full control over an individual and is kind and prevents all suffering etc., and it would be the ‘right’ who still understand functional processes who would be on block behind it, but this Bill has had every cross reference and juxtaposition possible. Lord Charlie Falconer, with the solid government legal career and the long time brains and philosophy behind the Parliamentary processes of this issue and Kim Leadbeater MP who has succeeded to at last reach this common sense of the Commons and a vote For, both are in the Labour camp. The Conservative Leader of the House of Lords has said, ‘Peers are entitled to scupper the defective Assisted Dying Bill,’ and the usual vocal range of individuals who are dead set against it for religious zealot or ‘disabled protectors’ are not looking at the function of scrutinising a Bill to make implementation as well worked as possible, but the opposite, no matter what the Parliament Acts say, now matter what the majority of citizens want, no matter the vote in the Commons June 2025, the House of Lords are declaring they are not part of the parliamentary process but their own empire. How bizarre a juxtaposition is that. Because in trying to find every blocking move possible, from time to objections to fake questions on more clarity, to make this Bill die a quiet and low key death (just what the Bill wants to give genuinely suffering terminally ill people), the Lords are killing the parliamentary process itself, and even if this Bill does make it through the hijacking of the Lords, still the parliamentary process will be shown now to be made up of individuals out for their own agenda.

    This perilous situation could show a constitutional crisis if really scrutinised, which is probably not a good idea to do, the evidence and reality is too awful to contemplate. The Island of Man in March 2025 completed its process, with citizens, both Houses of the Tynwald Parliament all pretty much on the same page. After years of debate yes, but the process was smooth, the upper house agreed some amendments, the Bill had been brought by a GP himself, and good clarity is written in and all ready to go. Ready to go that is for the folks of the Isle of Man, but go that is for final assent because the Isle of Man is a Crown Dependency therefore the Crown of the ‘UK’ is going to be granting the final permission for what has already smoothly moved through the Tynwald.

    Furthermore, the approval of Assisted Dying law in Jersey’s State Assembly in May 2024 and a draft law published last September 2025 and which is now undergoing the usual scrutiny and discussion which is the job of those in governance, and hardly likely to have the same scenes of the House of Lords, Jersey also will be waiting patiently with their large parchment, waiting for that Royal Seal of Approval.

    How curious is this under constitutional law. The Crown has power over Crown Dependencies in matters of military and international relations, and Assisted Dying for somebody pretty much there already is you would think hardly a military matter and definitely nothing to do with international relations. Quite the opposite really, it is the most domestic, most basic, most biological and natural thing possible, way below politics or the bigger picture of society. So what a curious situation that the smooth passage of the Isle of Man Assisted Dying Bill is just waiting for King Charles to give his assent, while the famous Palace of Westminster and the House of Lords are in this difficult political balance, and the Scottish Holyrood Parliament have also the individuals who cannot think outside of their own heads and lives and would very much like the Stage 3 to be killed and not become law. What a strange situation.

    If King Charles signed the document and gave it a great big wax seal, pressed his ring into it and said, ‘Well done guys, you’ve done a great process there, lucky citizens in the Isle of Man,’ what would happen in the House of Lords and in Holyrood opponents? It would highlight the really really tenuous historical basis within the ‘UK’ and in these times of the collapsing ‘world stage (only a Shakesperian fiction and yet another fiction the ‘UK’ built its modern framework on) the governance of the physical land area of Britain in the general sense and those 3 Crown Dependencies of Isle of Man, Guernsey and Jersey.

    King Charles, and his late mother, are people who understand the natural world, despite the royal birth both understand biology and the practicalities of running rural life and the inevitability of birth leading to passing on because that is what existence is within this atmosphere on the spinning mass of Earth, so what would happen if in this bizarre stand off, King Charles was to seal his great Seal on that straightforward legislation in the Isle of Man, and have the wax warmed ready for Jersey to present their parchment? For the sake of the present confusion in the ‘UK’ this would be a very simple solution to end the impasse and to show the facts.

  • A Blog

    Assisted Dying, who is the relevant person here?

    Assisted Dying, that current heightened subject in the ‘UK’, has been passed by the Scottish Parliament today, to move on to Committee stage. The media channels, and especially BBC Radio 4, gives the matter central air time and not from the decision of a Parliamentary vote in favour. The subject is dying, and we are all going to die, because all humans are part of the life zone on planet Earth, just one of the bodies held in gravity around Helios. Because we live, we die, it is just a fact of life, no pun intended. The fact of life is also the fact of death, which in this question means physical matter death. The realm of spirit is different again, and one which evidence proves is as natural as life and death of physical matter, but spirit dimensions and ‘life after death’ are not the subject of the Assisted Dying debates going on in the present day.

    Each time this question meets the public sphere, as it certainly does when a Parliament votes to move it forward, as Westminster and Holyrood have now both done, and the Isle of Mann, and Jersey, but let’s stick with Westminster and Edinburgh, while strangely the go-ahead Welsh on language and respect for landscape features such as Yr Wyddfa (and you’d have to be a native Welsh speaker to pronounce that one, wouldn’t you!) have less room for discussion on the matter of assisted dying, because it is really Westminster and Edinburgh which BBC Radio 4 follow. Again today, again, because the subject of assisted dying is public news, the reflex is to give air time to someone in a wheelchair. In England that person is a well-known sportswoman, and in Scotland today, that person is an MSP. If it was said, what’s it got to to do with them, then accusations of discrimination against disabled people would fly, both are women so accusations of misogyny would soon follow, and everything heads to the usual shut down of any real discussion or relevance.

    What is missing in this debate on assisted dying, it could be said,(as one must say in this age of near paranoia of offending someone), is that it is nothing to do with anybody except the person errr……dying. In a logical blog it is the height of illogicality to interview anybody on the subject of assisted dying – with the stated framework of a likely 6 month expectation of life, before a certain death (which we all will have), in England at least but still the same principles are in the motion in Scotland – who does not have a terminal illness that is very likely to lead to a bad end, a painful end, a traumatic end for them and all around them, and a period where life is not the lovely exchanges around a bedside as someone gently slips away. Some people have that, the one who is dying and then those around them, and what a lovely way to go. For others who will not be having a peaceful ending with perhaps a bit of pain relief at the end but nothing too grotesque, how incredibly disrespectful is it to have BBC Radio 4 interviewing people who use wheelchairs. To use a wheelchair must be unbelievably frustrating, but it is not a terminal illness. Nor is mental disability, nor is old age, nor is depression and nor is anything else except a terminal illness which is only going one way.

    Why is it in this age of individualism, the ‘person centred’ obsession, the empathising and all the sugary psychological talk, that a person in bad pain, bad failing of bodily functions, possibly weeks or a few months, bad psychological state of having all the caring people staring at them 24/7, a person asking, begging, to be helped to move on, and which has no other interpretation than what they are saying, often someone who has lived a life to the full and not sat around, someone who is in a network of loving caring people who also do not want to see this unfolding horror of their last few weeks or months, why is it that they have to hear media channels holding a theatrical debate on everything but the obvious?

    Since the unfortunate case of Harold Shipman despatching many people under the job title of doctor in the NHS a certain paranoia has risen, that anyone talking about death means they want to kill people. The Christians have always had their own rationale, based on beliefs which are not logical – as measured to Earth and Helios – and no doubt other religions also have their reasons. The NHS believes citizens live in it, from cradle to grave, and to reject the NHS is not far off the Christians in their belief of salvation and hell. Isn’t it strange that there is an obsession of crime writing, crime films, crime research in the ‘UK’, where literary festivals not put on a crime event because that is the one which will sell out on opening sales, while history, geography, natural history, the makers and observers are lucky to fill part seats. Put against the obsession with crime, murder, problems in life, why does something as natural as assisted dying, for someone who is only going one way and which any physician with any basic understanding can see, why is this subject such a public spectacle in the ‘UK’?