Gordon Brown-Assisted Suicide

No, I'm not about to suggest legalising assisted suicide so we can see Gordon Brown off, tempting though that may be. I am actually referring to an article I was pleased to read in today's Telegraph by Gordon Brown opposing the legalisation of assisted suicide.

Over a million people marched against the Iraq war carrying placards proclaiming 'Not In My Name', where are they now? Would you be happy to lie in a hospital bed and have some pillock like Ray Gosling, or anybody else for that matter, creep in and smother you with a pillow then, years later go on TV sobbing like a fourth rate Hollywood actor telling the world how he committed murder, your murder? If indeed Gosling did commit murder and isn't just on some mad PR stunt to sell his book.

Why do so many people oppose the death penalty for child murderers, but want the state to introduce it for the sick or terminally ill? At the moment I am pretty healthy, and share the view of many terminally ill people I have met through my work, that a terminal illness is cutting short a life so why cut it even shorter?

Having said that I am not terminally ill. Faced with a long painful death I might think differently. If that day came I would discuss it with my wife, and vice versa as we have already discussed in very general terms, and we would then agree on a course of action. We would then take responsibility and, if it came to it, hope that whichever one of us was left behind would be treated mercifully by the authorities. That would be our decision, it would be up to us to deal with it and we would not hide behind the state, or want our action to be approved by the state.

The last thing we need is the nationalisation of death.