Assisted living, not assisted dying

"It’s assisted suicide, not assisted dying."               Source: Christian Concern

The assisted dying bill is to be debated by MPs on Friday. If the bill becomes law it will allow some terminally ill people to have a medically assisted death but as Christian Concern explains, it will be assisted suicide, not assisted dying.

The motivation is understandable. A slow, painful death from an incurable disease is a burden most would seek to avoid but a quick easy death cannot be guaranteed. With proper palliative care that is not an option people would have to face. 

Recognised as the founder of the modern hospice movement Dame Cicely Saunders said: "You matter because you are you. You matter to the last moment of your life, and we will do all we can, not only to help you die peacefully, but also to live until you die."

A few months ago a relative who was terriried of dying was admitted to a hospice. She died peacefully under their loving care. Such care should be available to all.

If patients can be kept pain free, even if it results in death, that is a far better alternative than the slipery slope of assisted suicide with its added pressure of 'doing the right thing' to relieve others of the strain.

Postscript [28.11.2024]

Speaking ahead of the Second Reading of the assisted suicide Bill, crossbench peer Baroness Tanni Grey-Thompson has discussed the potential impact of the Bill on people with disabilities.

"The 'look and smell' of a traditional wedding"

 

"Fabiano Da Silva Duarte, left, and Father Lee Taylor were blessed by the Bishop of St Asaph"                                                                                   Source: BBC

From BBC News: "Father Lee and his partner Fabiano Da Silva Duarte have become what is thought to be the first same-sex couple to be officially blessed by the Church in Wales." 

Unofficially a former archbishop is rumoured to have performed at least one same-sex blessing for one of his diocesan clergy and same-sex partner.

Commenting on the official "landmark" blessing delivered by the bishop of St Asaph, bartender-turned-vicar Father Lee Taylor said with a choir, bell ringers and family and friends attending, the ceremony had the "look and smell" of a traditional wedding.

No surprise there, especially given that the Welsh bishops regard the new service merely as a stepping-stone to gay marriage in Church.

So why is the bench hell-bent on pursuing a policy that puts them at odds with the Church of England in particular and the wider Anglican Church in general, risking suspension from the Anglican Communion?

Having lost all credibility and most of its membership, perhaps the bishops have calculated that by becoming the queer Church in Wales they can avoid its predicted collapse and save themselves from the ranks of the unemployed.

In doing so the bench of bishops claim to be caring for the 'unloved and rejected' which is clearly a nonsense. 

They show no regard whatsoever for others who fit bishop Cameron's description of "real disciples of Jesus Christ...vulnerable, fragile human beings" whom the bishops have chosen to leave without any of the pastoral care they lavish on those who worship under the LGBTQ+ banner.

Victims

Neil Todd met the Bishop of Gloucester (pictured) in 1993 at 16 years old while acting as his trainee
and was the first victim to tell senior clergy about Ball's sex crimes. Source: MailOnline

Yet again, child sex abuse has been dominating the news headlines. Another harrowing report Commissioned by Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham found that "A paedophile grooming gang was left to roam the streets of Manchester - and police knew who they were and exactly what they were doing:

- Social workers knew that one 15-year-old girl, Victoria Agoglia, was being forcibly injected with heroin, but failed to act. She died two months later.

- Abusers were allowed to freely pick up and have sex with Victoria and other children from city care homes, ‘in plain sight’ of officials.

- Greater Manchester Police dropped an operation that identified up to 97 potential suspects and at least 57 potential victims. Eight of the men went on to later assault or rape girls.

- As recently as August 2018, the Chief Constable refused to reopen the dropped operation.

Greater Manchester Police's Operation Augusta was set up to tackle "the sexual exploitation throughout a wide area of a significant number of children in the care system by predominantly Asian men".

From The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Exploitation in Rotherham (1997 – 2013):
"By far the majority of perpetrators were described as 'Asian' by victims, yet throughout the entire
period, councillors did not engage directly with the Pakistani-heritage community to discuss how
best they could jointly address the issue. Some councillors seemed to think it was a one-off problem,
which they hoped would go away. Several staff described their nervousness about identifying the
ethnic origins of perpetrators for fear of being thought racist; others remembered clear direction
from their managers not to do so."

Not so reticent was former home secretary Jack Straw who was accused of stereotyping Pakistani men in Britain after he accused some of them as regarding white girls as "easy meat" for sexual abuse. "We need to get the Pakistani community to think much more clearly about why this is going on and to be more open about the problems that are leading to a number of Pakistani heritage men thinking it is OK to target white girls in this way."

Leading the attack against Jack Straw, Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs select committee said it was wrong to "stereotype a whole community". Vaz was suspended from the Commons for six months after he was found to have "expressed willingness" to purchase cocaine for male prostitutes. He stood down before the General Election.

Many of the gangs' victims lived in child care homes, often miles away from their families but their plight was ignored for fear of being accused of racism.

Also ignored but in more comfortable surroundings were the victims of Anglican bishop Peter Ball and his accomplices. His friendship with Prince Charles made the paedophile bishop 'impregnable' while establishment figures rallied round to support.

There was a presumption of innocence, as there was in the case of Carl Beech who accused senior politicians, army and security chiefs of sadistic sexual abuse and claimed to have witnessed boys being murdered in the 1970s and 1980s. He was jailed for 18 years for perverting the course of justice, fraud and child sexual offences. The Metropolitan Police spent £2m looking into Beech's allegations, all of which proved to be false.

Bishop Peter Ball escaped such scrutiny. When charged with improper conduct towards Neil Todd a young novice monk he was given a caution and released after pressure from establishment figures. It was made clear that many bishops of the Church of England from the top down knew of the allegations. When Ball was cautioned other victims came forward, writing to Lambeth Palace detailing similar behaviour. The letters were not handed to the police.

 The story unfolds in the BBC documentary Exposed: The Church's Darkest Secret. Had it involved one apparently holy man manipulating victims and supporters alike, the deception would have been understandable. What is not is the blatant disregard for Ball's victims by bishops who knew of the abuse, withholding evidence, and the establishment campaign to discredit victims and avoid further investigation.

Another of Ball's victims, the Rev Graham Sawyer, had been introduced to him under a scheme Ball had started in 1980 called Give a Year to God, where teenagers and young men would go to live with him to 'learn the ways of a holy man'. After Sawyer rejected his advances, Ball said he would make sure he would never be ordained. He was true to his word. Sawyer was rejected for ordination. He moved to New Zealand where he was ordained three years later.

At The Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse (IICSA), a solicitor for five survivors of abuse by Peter Ball told panel members:

"But what is now very clear is that in the Church of England, Peter Ball found the perfect cover for his offending. If a charlatan with an insatiable appetite for abuse wanted to secure a continuous supply of vulnerable young victims, there was no better way of achieving this than by founding a religious order not subject to any external supervision, and by making his victims' participation in the abuse a religious duty obligated by their oath of absolute obedience. Not for the first time, theology and religious ritual provided the ideal mask for abuse, with the evil of what Peter Ball did being compounded by his nauseating claim that the abuse was spiritually uplifting.

"Most of all, however, Peter Ball found in his fellow bishops in the Church of England the perfect accomplices, prepared to turn a blind eye to his abuse over many decades, to collude in the lie that the abuse of Neil Todd was an uncharacteristic aberration, to cast doubt on Ball's guilt, to smear his victims, and to rehabilitate him.

"It is now clear that for many years before the 1992 investigation, there were many in the Church of England who knew of or must have suspected his offending, and decided to turn a blind eye to it, and later tried to evade their own culpability by claiming that Ball had never really offended at all. Eric Kemp, the Bishop of Chichester, was aware of serious concerns about Ball well before 1992, yet in 2006 he repeated the lie that Ball's resignation had been the 'work of mischief makers'."

One would have thought that such a damning indictment would have seen many heads roll but this is the Church of England. Instead they continue as they wish. So there are more cover ups, this time in the evangelical wing, again going right to the top. Video HERE.

In no way comparable to the suffering inflicted by abusers on innocent children and young men, those who have looked for guidance to bishops now shown to be guilty of duplicity may be classed as spiritual victims of bishops who have been shown to care only for themselves and the establishment, not for those supposedly in their care.

Postscript [16.01.2020]

From Church Times:

Belated apologies from bishops and church leaders, praising survivors of the serial abuser Peter Ball for their bravery, after their testimonies appeared in a new BBC documentary on the case, broadcast this week. The church leaders also condemned the “cover-up” of abuse by the Church. Full report HERE.

I don't care says Archbishop

Archbishop Justin Welby                                    Source: The Spectator

It is a sad time for orthodox Anglicans when archbishops don't care, adopting a mix and match approach to faith, driving Western Anglicanism into the mud as it becomes bogged down by secularism. And it is not just Canterbury. The Church in Wales and the Scottish Episcopal Church are in the same rut.

The US Episcopal Church (TEC) was allowed to become terminally infected by the spirit of the age before if wafted over the pond to infect the Church of England (CofE) and beyond, welcomed by impatient liberals as if it were the Holy Spirit rather than the Zeitgeist.

Interviewed for The Spectator the Archbishop of Canterbury, Justin Welby, responded to claims that "one in ten Catholic priests is a former Anglican vicar by saying, "Who cares? I don’t mind about all that. Particularly if people go to Rome, which is such a source of inspiration."

Such an inspiration that after talking since the 1970s about possible reunion the CofE ignored pleas by the Roman Catholic and Orthodox Churches and admitted female priests, blocking the road to unity.

Archbishops may not care but orthodox Anglicans do care. While Anglican priests cross the Tiber going to Rome, Catholic priests are travelling in the opposite direction. The numbers are likely to increase after Pope Francis told gay priests to "be celibate or leave the priesthood", thus further diluting Anglican orthodoxy as the CofE embraces homosexuality and same sex marriage.

Rev Dr Tina Beardsley: "Positive development"

 Next on the Anglican agenda is the CofE's welcoming of transgender people with calls for an Affirmation of Baptism service adapted to allow transgender Christians to celebrate their new sexual identity.

A step too far? The Church of England is facing opposition from more than 2,000 of its own clergy and office holders over new guidance on celebrating transgender ‘transitions’.

It comes as no surprise that according to an analysis of CofE churchgoing in 2017 less than 50 people attend Sunday services at a typical English parish church and just one in ten babies is baptised into the Church of England.

Archbishop Welby accepts that the numbers are "challenging". From the Spectator article, "vocations are rising but weekday and Sunday services decreasing and the number of marriages and baptisms declining sharply. Perhaps the most startling statistic is that just 2 per cent of under-25s regard themselves as Anglican. ‘If you’re over 70, you’re eight times more likely to go to church than if you’re under 30,’ he says. ‘And I think that’s a huge challenge.’ I ask if he thinks rising secularism is also a challenge: that young people who go to church are seen not just as weird but as potential bigots and homophobes. It’s not a story he recognises."

No doubt the archbishop will welcome liberal minded Roman Catholic priests into his un-orthodox Anglican Church leaving orthodox Anglicans even more isolated. As conviction Anglicans they are unlikely to become Roman Catholics. Many have already left. Those who refuse to contemplate leaving 'their church' will be further compromised by sustaining an organisation that no longer shares the faith of the vast majority of Christians in the Anglican Communion

For those who are tempted to become Roman Catholics the writing is on the wall in the headline Papal advisers on female deacons hopeful for positive answer.

Rome has only to look to Canterbury for the dangers in that. As deacons in the Anglican Church justice demanded that they be allowed to become priests, then bishops, then cohabiting priests, then married priests, then married bishops. They call it progress but it is not Biblical.

The joy, the pain and the sorrow

A post-ordination scene outside Llandaff Cathedral.                                                                             Source: Church in Wales

This post-ordination scene outside Llandaff Cathedral is palpable. Blessings and hugs. I well remember such joyous scenes before women were ordained. Everything then was clear cut. Orthodoxy prevailed.

There is nothing biblical about the ordination of women but having been led astray, many women insist that they hear the call as though God has changed His mind after sending His Son to show us the Way. If He had, surely the change would be universal, not confined to local decision makers. But, sadly, it is as it is.

Today the Church in Wales is in disarray. Progressives continue to push for more change as the pews empty. More defections are expected after the second woman bishop is enthroned next month because the promised provision evaporated once the progressives achieved their goal.

So, there will be great joy for many this morning among those for whom conscience is not a problem. For others there will be pain because their church has left them. More to the point, there will be great sorrow because nobody in the Church in Wales appears to care.

Jeremy Hunt drops another clanger

People who have struggled with the cost of care in old age will continue to struggle. That is the real message of Jeremy Hunt to couples who are facing old age worrying what fate has in store for them. Many have been through the experience once or twice before with parents and relatives. Under the new plan they continue to face the same nightmare yet a cheery Mr Hunt has the cheek to announce: "as a government we want to back people who have worked hard all their lives, who have saved and done the right thing. The worst thing that can happen to those people is that by a cruel twist of fate they have to do the one thing they want to do least of all to lose their own home".

The average house price in England and Wales in December was £162,080. A cap of £75,000 per person is £150,000 for a couple with no time left to "plan, save or consider insurance" as suggested.  Mr Hunt said capping the overall costs would allow insurance firms to start offering affordable social care plans for millions of people for the first time but insurers have expressed doubt about the viability of the scheme which is to be funded by a freeze on Inheritance Tax, another broken pledge. People living in Wales face a double whammy finding that the extra taxes raised will go to fund a scheme in England for which they are not eligible without the introduction in Wales of a similar scheme or a redistribution of funds.

Elderly people belong to a generation when it was common for wives to devote themselves to motherhood, nurturing the family on a tight budget before having to devote themselves to caring for elderly parents. There was no second income or easy credit available and no second pension to cushion their old age. Home ownership was seen as their reward for thrift, a nest egg for the family but many have already seen their inheritance disappear after struggling with the enormous costs of care. Those same people remain in the trap because the new scheme, such as it is, will take time to come into effect. So what we have from Mr Hunt is more political posturing allowing ministers to claim that people will not have to sell their homes to pay for care when the opposite is true for the elderly today because the scheme is directed towards the future when the expectation is that people will have had time to fund their care. As usual, those with no inclination for thrift or planning will be paid for by the rest of us so it would be more sensible if we all paid into a care fund so that those who need it are cared for while those who don't can count themselves fortunate.

Such a scheme has been proposed by the National Pensioners Convention (NPC). Listen to their spokesperson here and complain to your MP about this continued injustice. 

Death by Care

NHS and Care Home DEATHS in 2011      

132  Thirst
      117  Bedsores
     51  Starved

Contributory factors

      650  Bedsores
                         558  Severe dehydration
               287  Malnourished

When patient care was the primary objective of nursing, 'turning' patients to avoid bedsores was commonplace. According to the latest statistics, last year 117 patients died of their bedsores with 650 being contributory factors to the cause of death.

Humorously but in a point well made, this clip shows how observation is the first rule of diagnosis yet in British Hospitals and Care Homes last year, 51 people starved to death and another 132 people died of thirst. In July, an inquest heard that a young man who died of dehydration at a leading hospital rang 999 for police because he was so thirsty. 

Years ago just one death from a cause listed above would have been considered outrageous; now there is hardly a murmur. Read here how no-one acted when they should have in response to pleas of a retired  maxillofacial surgeon. What hope is there for the rest of us?

How to live, not how to die

"You matter because you are you.

You matter to the last moment

 of your life,

and we will do all we can, 

not only to help you die peacefully, 

but also to live until you die."

Dame Cicely Saunders

Long before she consented to become my wife, Mrs Briton worked in the Royal Marsden hospital. As we have experienced the trials of life she has told me many times how she admired the life and work of the late Cicely Saunders and that it was unnecessary for people to die in pain. She says: "There was a time when dying patients were put at the end of a ward, almost 'out of the way'. A patients death was regarded as failure on the part of the medical team. Thankfully and largely due to the wonderful Dame Cicely Saunders, times have changed. What she managed to do in her life was remarkable, she had her share of tragedy too but her deep Christian faith helped her continue her great work. She saw that while the body weakens so the spirit often becomes stronger. She wanted the dying to be cared for in physical and spiritual ways, pain needed to be managed and in fact she was instrumental in administering pain relief before severe pain took hold, therefore patients were kept comfortable and even alert; dying was not the taboo it had become. The hospice movement exists thanks to her. Talk of euthanasia would be unnecessary with proper palliative care."

I share this with readers not because I have any expertise but because I have witnessed the results of Dame Cicely's work in cancer care. The Commission on Assisted Dying has had to address wider problems associated with distressing incurable diseases but however well intentioned, the emphasis should be on assisted living, not assisted dying. People don't have to be ill to want to die in Britain today. Horrific reports about care of the elderly all too frequently highlight the misery of living, sometimes without illness but simply out of frailty with no-one to care for them. Whatever the so-called safeguards, it is a small step to seeing someone's life as worthless when proper care would transform their lives. Dame Cicely had a vision, one of CARE. Assisted living is what is required, not assisted dying. 

Deficit Dave drops another one.

Deficit, deficit, deficit. No matter what the problem, the cause, the effect, the Prime Minister's response is unwavering: stick to the deficit reduction plan. When you are in a hole stop digging is generally good advice but such an analogy is unlikey to register. David Blanchflower has laid out the problem facing us in an article for the New Statesman in which he says: It is becoming increasingly apparent that Cameron is a) totally out of his depth when it comes to the economy; b) has no clue what to do to fix the problem; c) has little sympathy for those who are less fortunate than he is. He just doesn't care. But it is extremely unlikely that Deficit Dave will take any notice as illustrated in an earlier article for The Telegraph by Damian Thompson.  


Dave's latest gem to be dropped on the working classes is to advise parents to take their children to work during strikes. I can only assume he shot that one from the hip without giving any thought to child protection, health and safety or even the logistics of trying to work with an eye on the kids after possibly doubling the occupancy in the workplace - "when it is safe for them to do so" of course. A useful get out!  For people in a less privileged position struggling to make ends meet, life is not that simple especially for the elderly. 


Today's shocking report on care of the elderly at home illustrates how detached from reality politicians have become. 'Care' has been downgraded in hospitals and at home to the extent that many 'carers' just don't care any longer. Hospital nurses and District nurses have been elevated to the status of semi-medical professionals no longer soiling their hands on menial tasks yet it is precisely the intimate care that made 'nursing' what it was before accountants re-defined 'care'. Without proper care the entire system is in a state of collapse in hospitals, care homes and in people's own homes where 'home care' has become a 15 min visit. Today's carers are among the poorest paid with an undervalued status. This must change. If carers were better rewarded financially and in their status, genuine caring people may be attracted to what much of nursing care was all about. This is one deficit that cannot be ignored.

Don’t Care Hospitals

It is noticeable when driving in Britain today that our roads are unclean. I don’t throw litter out of my car window or drop it for others to pick up. I don’t know anyone who does but clearly there are many people who do. They don’t care and have little thought for others.

Even people paid to clean the roads no longer do the job properly now that they have been mechanised. Previously a man with brush and shovel cleaned the streets. Now street cleaning vehicles, probably air-conditioned, pick up litter just in passing, leaving behind what their brushes don’t reach.

The same attitude is evident in some of our hospitals where modern technology leaves patients wired to monitor everything but their general wellbeing. Wards have been left dirty causing serious, life-threatening infections while nurses and doctors have to be reminded to wash their hands.

In the worst cases patients have their food left out of reach with nobody to feed them, their prescribed drugs left on bedside lockers and their bedding in disarray resulting in undignified exposure. Having scraped congealed food from supposedly clean surfaces and excreta from under the finger nails of a “Barrier Nurse” patient – just a note on the door! - the findings of the independent inquiry into the Mid Staffordshire NHS Trust will come as no surprise to anyone who has been affected by the lack of care, especially of the elderly, in some British hospitals today.

Hospital Trusts may have become driven by targets and cost-cutting but as any ‘old-school’ nurse who was properly trained in nursing care on the wards rather than in college knows, many of the current problems are the result of changes in training and nursing practice.

“Political Stunt” v. Tory Stunt

The conference arranged by the Secretary of State for Health to help build a consensus on plans to pay for care of the elderly has been branded a “political stunt” by his Tory counterpart. Their preferred option was for a stunt involving a 'R.I.P. Off ' poster campaign to frighten people into believing that a no vote for them would result in a £20,000 “death tax”.

So we have another political football match being played out while the vulnerable have to watch from the side lines. As one old boy in a care home remarked on the BBC ‘News’ last night, we’ve worked all our lives paying taxes and insurance so the Government must provide care for us in our old age. True, but the problem of funding has to be addressed to achieve a consensus of all parties.

In that spirit reports suggest that the conference drew wide praise from charities, local authorities and experts who attended. The preferred option appears to be a progressive estate levy which takes account of people’s ability to contribute rather than the scare mongering £20,000 compulsory tax referred to in the poster campaign. But the Tory stunt had the desired effect. When asked, two-thirds of people favoured everybody contributing to the cost of those needing social care but when asked if there should be a “death tax” to pay for it two-thirds responded negatively.

That is no surprise but if they had been asked if they would rather pay a progressive estate levy than risk selling their homes to pay for nursing care no doubt there would have been a different response. But to be fair the Tories have offered an alternative, a voluntary insurance scheme! Fine for the super rich who can easily afford the insurance cover and get away without paying tax while the poorest are likely to lose out.

“Political Stunt” 1 – Tory Stunt 0. Time for a real consensus please.