Demonstrating

Parliament Square, London, November 2024

Lola II and I planned a couple of days together to muck about in London, and then the date was announced for the Parliamentary Second Reading and vote on the "Terminally Ill Adults (End of Life)" Bill. So I extended my stay so I could attend the demo organised by 'Dignity in Dying' outside Parliament, and Lola II came with me. Just to be clear, I am very much in favour of Assisted Dying and was there to support the Bill, along with a whole lot of other people dressed in pink and carrying banners.

I've been to these gatherings before, and the weather plays a big part in the experience. It was gloriously sunny, and while this didn't help much with feet on the cold pavement it did at least mean that my torso was warm, aided by the six layers of thermals and jumpers and coats and hat and gloves. The crowd was occasionally addressed by speakers from Dignity in Dying and Humanists UK, one of Esther Rantzen's daughters, Rabbi Jonathan Romain, and some people sharing personal experience of death and dying. We were also encouraged to lend our voices to a number of chants, mostly for the benefit of the assembled Press and their cameras. I suspect this vocal activity was as alien to most of the crowd as it was to me, so we were a bit reticent to begin with: 

"WHAT DO WE WANT?" 

"Erm, do we really have to shout?" 

"COME ON EVERYONE, WHAT DO WE WANT?" 

"Assisted dying?" 

"COME ON, LOUDER, WHAT DO WE WANT?" 

"Oh really, must we?"

"WHEN DO WE WANT IT?"

"Now?"

But we all got into the swing of it eventually, and I realised that shouting is quite fun, it uses a fair bit of energy, and I hadn't really had a good shout for many a long year. Not something one does as a respectable middle aged woman who doesn't go to football matches. I thought I might have another shout just for the fun of it when I'm on my own in the house (but I probably won't).

The opponents' demonstration was across the road, much nearer to Parliament so I didn't see much of it, but it looked as though their crowd was significantly smaller than ours. We didn't get to see or hear any of the debate that was taking place inside but I watched a little bit afterwards and then read the transcript, and it seemed to be one of the most sincere and serious discussions that has taken place in many years, with almost no point-scoring, shouting or waving of order papers. 

The main (non-religious) objections were 

a) that vulnerable people may experience coercion, 

b) that it is more important to improve and extend palliative care, and

c) that the scope might be extended (the 'slippery slope') to people who are disabled, elderly or suffering without a terminal illness. 

The rebuttal of these points is 

a) that vulnerable people experience coercion at the moment but there is no legal framework to investigate this until after they have died, whereas this proposal allows for investigation of possible coercion while they are still alive

b) that it's not one or the other - palliative care can be improved and extended (as it has been in other jurisdictions where assisted dying has been made available), and in fact if this Bill were not before the House then all this talk of improving palliative care would probably not be happening, and

c) that the title of the Bill does not allow for anyone but terminally ill adults to take advantage of the opportunity of an assisted death, and it cannot be changed; also in other jurisdictions with similar legislation (e.g. Oregon [USA], Victoria [Australia] but not Canada or Netherlands which have very different scope) there has been no change or extension in 25 years.

There are many heart-rending examples of the suffering that has been endured by those for whom palliative care has not worked, and I can see no reason to deny them the option of an assisted death on any of the grounds given above. I have written to my MP a number of times about the issue in the past, and he has responded a couple of times in a non-committal way, but on the day he voted in favour and also published a statement on his website. When the result came through that the Bill had been passed by a significant majority, the respectful murmur that followed was very different from the usual cheering and jeering in the Chamber. 

There's a long way to go before this Bill becomes law - the Committee stage, the Report stage, a third reading, then off to the House of Lords, so I may be standing out in the cold with my placard a few more times in the next year or two. But it is clear that a majority of the public are in favour of assisted dying with the safeguards outlined in the Bill, and while it is not perfect I believe that the current legal situation is much worse.

Second and third weeks in the office

Adhisthana, March 2024

There's a completely different atmosphere in the Adhisthana office compared with the office work I used to do long ago. For a start, I have colleagues who care about my welfare and happiness more than they care about getting the job done. I'm also aware that I'm a stand-in doing a job that I'm not altogether suited to, so it won't always be done well. But that's OK, whatever I do will probably be better than nothing being done at all. Unless I completely destroy their website. When I half-jokingly mentioned this to one of the IT guys, he said they'd seriously considered the possibility, but don't worry because there's a backup.

One of my first tasks was to start contacting people using an email distribution package that was new to me. Most (but not all) of the fairly complicated emails that need sending are ready and waiting, with only slight tweaks and checking to do - inserting links to a video, for example. With hindsight I think I was more nervous about this than I needed to be, but clicking the button to send emails automatically to 145 people felt quite significant. The next one I sent this way had over a thousand recipients...

Another similar job is to use mail merge to contact people who might be interested in attending particular retreats. I haven't used mail merge for decades, so I was deliberately slow and careful while I was working out how to do it with a version of Microsoft Office that is probably four or five upgrades on from when I last tried. Identifying people, extracting their details, constructing the mail merge, excluding various categories (e.g. those who had not ticket the box saying they were happy to be contacted in this way) and clicking 'Send' took about two days.

Back at home I was asked to look after a trainee guide dog, and for the first time in nearly a year I was able to say yes - I'd kept the weekend deliberately clear and even cancelled a trip because of trying to keep my commitments within an achievable range. This particular dog needed supervising whenever she did a poo, and my instructions were not to take her out until she had performed, so I spent most of Saturday periodically letting her out into the garden (it was freezing) and watching her resolutely fail to oblige. When it started to get dark I decided to take a chance because I needed to post my vote, and got away with it. Next day I had the offer of a walk with a friend, so took a chance again and got away with it once more - it was either that or stay indoors all day. At least it was a little warmer. Apart from the poo thing she was good company.

After I took her back to the Guide Dog Centre on Monday I headed down to London to take part in another demonstration outside Parliament along with Lola II. Assisted Dying made it into the news again thanks to Esther Rantzen going on TV to tell her story of having terminal lung cancer and joining Dignitas, which prompted another online petition calling for a parliamentary debate (but no vote). The petition had gathered enough signatures to make that happen, and significantly more signatures than the last time two years ago. Speakers who addressed the small crowd included Jonathan Dimbleby, some MPs including Caroline Lucas (who's about to stand down from her role as head of the Green Party), human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell and Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain. There was a counter-demonstration which was considerably smaller than ours, and a separate crowd from Humanists UK.

The next day was a celebration of Dad's 91st birthday, when Lola II and Sister D and I all descended on the family seat and had lunch and cake, and in my case, a haircut from the Random Cuts salon. And then I had the journey from hell back home because the M40 had a blockage and I unwisely decided to follow Google's directions around it along with all the other cars following similar directions through tiny villages and I definitely should have just stayed on the motorway because it couldn't possibly have held me up the extra hour and half that it took on my misguided route.

Email, a dog and a demo

June 2021

Despite not having a full time permanent job, I feel that I have been stretching myself too thinly by agreeing to anything that I'm offered to do. It's been a long time since the last blog post and much has been going on. I have been on a demo (more on this later), had an interesting discussion with the dentist, played badminton, attended a lovely day with my Buddhist group, started running again with the help of new shoes (no knee problems so far), did an 11 hour vaccinating shift, and entertained another guest at the weekend who came to a gig with me. 

I also achieved a significant step forward with the website work for Mr MXF, and simultaneously deactivated my family email. I have been working out how to move a number of domains that Mr MXF hosts for friends and family from a flaky unreliable server to a lovely new home. We were getting very close, the new server was all set up and all the test domains were working, so it was time to do it for real. What I hadn't understood, and maybe you won't either, was the the old host included a mail server and the new one didn't. Which is why the email broke when we moved.

I had to spend quite a lot of time moving that one domain back to the old server to make the family email work again before considering how to fix the problem. The first attempt to fix it didn't work because the mail client used by mum and dad is very, very old (1997 vintage) and I don't want them to have to learn a new interface. The second attempt was successful, and what's more the new way of working means much less spam reaching the client end. I once heard a transplant surgeon describe how happy he feels to see urine passing out of a new kidney after a transplant, and my delight at seeing emails being sent and received was probably similar.

Before all this happened, I was honoured by a visit from mum, who was conveyed back and forth by Lola II. She reviewed all the changes wrought by the LTRP and pronounced them very fine, we ate, drank and were merry and had brunch in Leamington on Sunday which was very tasty but very badly served. The very next day Sister D came for a visit, and helped me a great deal by listing on Freegle all the superfluous items that I retrieved from storage in the loft. In return I treated her to a much better lunch at a different establishment in Leamington (which had been full when we tried going there with mum). Nearly all the things we listed have now been collected, and I have also collected a second hand dog bed and dog bowls, so I'm ready for my first canine boarder.

Yes, I went to the Guide Dogs centre for a training session - training for me, not the dog, which was five weeks in to its programme and doing pretty well except for not wanting to sit when asked. I learned how to get it in and out of the car and quite a few other commands, as well as how to stop it pulling on the leash. I was very happy with how it went, and so was the trainer, and my first dog will be coming to stay very soon.

The demo was outside the House of Lords to support the second reading of the Assisted Dying Bill, organised by the Dignity in Dying organisation, and there were probably more than 100 people there. We were offered a T-shirt or a hoodie with the Dignity in Dying logo, and a placard, and I chatted with lots of different people who were there for all sorts of reasons. I met someone who also lives in Leamington Spa, and I'm told by other friends that a woman was there who went to the same senior school as me. Many had personal experience of helping a family member to travel to Dignitas in Switzerland, and there were doctors and palliative care workers and a few speakers including Baroness Meacher (who had put forward the Bill). George Carey (former Archbishop of Canterbury) came out towards the end of the debate to say how confident he was that it would pass because the vast majority of those who spoke had been in favour. Getting it through the House of Commons will be a whole lot harder, though.

Now I'm going to have a couple of days off to do all the things that have been waiting for my attention, but I'll do them slowly and have lots of breaks!