Awful to hear this news about Dawn. All love & strength to her, Roy, and the rest of her family.

But in the context of a comedian's poster it feels a push to see the picture as "seriously offensive" (it's very easily Googleable, though I won't post it here).

Blasphemy laws returning through the back door would be very bad & thoroughly illiberal.

This is a bad decision.

I assume it's this bit of Advertising Standards.

www.asa.org.uk/type/broadca...

I would understand if a publisher decided they didn't want to print this (that would be their right).

I would understand if people wanted to boycott Fern Brady's show (though I'd love to see it).

I don't think it's something that incites religious hatred.

I would like the #AssistedDying Bill to pass to grant us all a fundamental right. But I would then like to do everything possible to make palliative care as good as it can be and to make sure assisted dying is the very last resort.

But it's a right we all ought to have.

I accept the argument that palliative care isn't good enough, but don't agree that this is a reason to stall on this Bill. The fear that people will be driven to assisted dying by poor palliative care is better fixed by improving palliative care than by blocking assisted dying.

The safeguards in the Bill are strong. I do not accept the 'slippery slope' argument anymore than I would elsewhere in medical ethics (e.g., legal options for abortion in certain cases does not lead to a complete right to abortion in all cases before birth)

Others may want to impose their own morality on all of us and say that it is always wrong in all circumstances for someone to take their own life and that the state should not aid this.

I respect their right to hold that view, but respectfully reject their right to impose it.

If our parliamentarians say no to this Bill they might think they are protecting some from the risk of coercion (though coercion would be illegal), but they would certainly expose all of us to the risk of greater suffering and indignity towards our ends.

Death is an uncomfortable topic but we cannot deny it. As we try to live well, it matters that we make sure we can die well too.

I appreciate the fears about coercion & the pressure people might feel under to not be a burden to others. But these fears are offset by safeguards & must be balanced by recognition of the suffering we require by not giving people to right to end their own lives.

A High Court Judge has to make a ruling, & can question the dying person (& others).

A doctor would prepare the substance to end the patient's life, but the person would have to take it themselves.

It would be illegal to pressure or coerce someone into declaring they want to die.

This Bill has safeguards in it:

To end your life you need to be terminally ill & expected to die within 6 months.

You have to formally express your desire to die twice, with witnesses & signatures.

You need 2 doctors to sign off on it with a week between each doctor's assessment.

This is my life and I would like the right to choose how to deal with its end.

As things stand, some of us will have prolonged, miserable, and painful ends. And while the wealthier might be able to travel overseas to end things, the majority who find themselves in that position will simply have to bear that suffering.

As ever, I think it shows how important it is to study history. How important it is to be able to understand the way people frame narratives about the past, and identify the agendas they might be pushing. And it shows how political history is (even medieval history).

What's then really interesting is to think through *why* people have wanted to tell these different narratives & use these different terms, and what it might mean that some people today are so viscerally against dropping the term Anglo-Saxon.

It's not a surprise that historians in the 19thC who popularised the term Anglo-Saxon had a different agenda to the one had by those in the 21stC who want to retire the term.