The (unelected) House of Lords today blocked a bill to allow terminally ill patients the right to be helped to die if they wished. I suspect that most readers of this blog, when weighing up the arguments, come to the conlusion that assisted dying should be offered as a humane and dignified alternative to those patients who want it. I say this because according to Dignity in Dying, a campaign group, over 80% of people agree.
So why has the House of Lords opposed it? Well, there are serious safeguards that would have to be put in place. No one should ever feel a ‘burden’ to the system and the decision to end your own life should never be taken likely. But these are things that everyone is agreed on, supporters and opposition alike. The real challenge comes from the usual culprits – purveyors of persceptive morality.
Don’t forget that there are still 26 bishops in the House of Lords. Today’s events demonstrate why they should be stripped, post haste, from unelected office. These are the same people who opposed contraception, and then opposed abortion, and now they are opposing dignified death out of dogma and the ultimate power complex – the belief that people’s lives should be mortgaged to ‘god’, against their own wishes.
“We are not autonomous beings” said the Bishop of London. So there you have it. We have Lords so you can be serfs.
Taste-wise, this is pretty very low. I apologise, really and truly. But I made it for B3ta and was rather proud of myself, plus I noticed a bit of a spate of wordy blog posts that I need to break up. So, without further ado…
Command Line
Special Update: Good luck with SATs, Year Sixers!
One of the most interesting piece of feedback that floated back from the unfortunate Year 8s who had to read my blog for homework was a certain bemusement about the word geek – specifically the cheap and cheerful declaration right at the top that “I’m a happy 16 year old geek”, as if it was some sort of statement.
It’s true that at one point there was certainly a conscious effort to reclaim the word geek, in a similar way to the gay community reclaiming, well, ‘gay’ and ‘queer’ as positive expressions of identity. Today, however, it’s more second nature than anything – driven largely by the IT industry (Microsoft Geek blogger?) where geeks reign supreme. I like to think that the traditional passion for learning has been taken from the stereotype of the past (bullied kid in the playground, loved to look at his shoes because they were easier to talk to than people) and wrapped in a delicious layer of self-confidence, served in a bright and breezy air.
But that raises an interesting question. Do the ‘old style’ geeks – or nerds – of the past still exist? Did they ever exist, or a bit of a myth delivered through the medium of the American Teen Movie (TM) ?
Continue Reading
As Fabio would call my hay fever, which has returned with a vengeance after seemingly lying dormant for a few years. Dammit, get out of my eyes! It’s making me look rather tearful, or stoned, or both.
Went to see HIGNFY again yesterday, which was actually rather better than the week before. Julian Clary, master of the ‘single entendre’ (as Hislop points out!) was a very charming and affable host. Best bit – the editing at the end to avoid Paul Merton’s libel and slander about a certain ‘always drunk’ person. Hehe.
I also learnt something last night. If you’re tired, sneezing silly from a stupid cold, bleary eyed from hay fever and struggling to finish off some Maths work – then watching Local Elections coverage until 2am will not make you better. In fact, it may make you much worse. It’s never fun to see Tories win, even if Labour didn’t go into complete meltdown. And as for the BNP… I’m actually of the opinion that they were hyped before the election unnecessarily. They are not a parliamentary force. They can be frozen out of council meetings. Do not give them more media attention that they deserve to make them appear as a credible ‘protest’ vote when they stand on an openly racist manifesto, end of story. And even this is too much about the BNP, so let’s move on.
Election consolation? In Brent, we actually saw the Tories lose seats
As for the reshuffle? Ur, Blair, wake me up before you go go 
to quote Wham, who just delightfully appeared on my playlist.
Physics Practical. You take a little bit of Physics, stamp on it with studded boots and throw it off a cliff, whereby it is urinated on by utterly sadistic and annoyingly muddy two-horned goats before being mailed to Michael Winner in a brown paper envelope. And that’s how much I like it, although the percentage uncertainty is probably way off.
Anyway.
Other than Physics Practical, things are quite alright. Year 9 SATs started today (best of luck, my little Year Ninelings) whilst revision continues apace for AS. Today our History teacher took the unprecedented step of actually apologising for telling us off, which must be a sign that either we’ve cracked, or he’s cracked, or we’ve both cracked under the pressure.
Utterly unrelated to all of that, I just wanted to call out today’s Quote of the Day for further examination. You see, it turns out the Boy Scouts of America refuse to let in three very dangerous and subversive groups into their organisation (either as Scouts or as employees) – girls, gays and the godless. Seriously. One guy was given one week to find god or get out. Although the attitude scares me, it did conjure up an amusing image of someone deciding to leave it to the last minute. “Oh, I’ve got a week, I’ll find god tomorrow…”
Finally – shout to, ooh I don’t know, Clare for her new ‘blacker the than the deepest night’ hair (very cool) and Rishal, because coupled shout outs are lovely and sweet, and also because he stopped me actually dying after Physics Practical. Physics Practical? We go through our mock tomorrow! Oh joy…
– Dommy
(Clare being the only person in the world to call me this)
Linda Moffitt on Colombia: “Such a sweet memory of the four of you meeting up in Colombia!” Dec 2, 07:42
