Other than Labour devotees of Corbyn, I think ‘we’, the people of Great Britain and the realm of glorious Queen Elizabeth II, bless her bejewelled crown, are a fairly civilised bunch. We like to think we are. Understanding. Compassionate. Humane. And we pretty much, as a nation, are. Until it comes to possibly the most statistically definite event in life. Which is death. We’re not very good at death. As a society. Almost ‘the last taboo’. Mainly because every time one’a them is broken, they find another. The last, last, last, last taboo.

So without being too morbid (as if) I want to talk about death. Not mine, I haven’t done it yet, but as regards to society and how it copes (or doesn’t) with an ageing population of increasingly dementia-ridden, incontinent, NHS-demanding, immobile, care-requiring… people. We need to have a ‘discussion’. Or in 10 years time everyone under the age of 60 will have to be a full-time carer and 94% of GDP will be funding medical and elderly care. (Actual figures may fluctuate due to… what I make up at any one time).

I’m not suggesting we have carts going round every day with the pushers shouting for us to ‘bring art yer dead!’ Not yet anyway. They’d clog up the traffic. And really its nothing to do with economic necessity. It can’t be. Otherwise we’d be in a ‘we need to kill another 20,000 in the next 2 weeks; milk’s running low’ situation. But I do think that once quality of life descends below some horrible level of dribbling, pissing-yer-pants, how-is-Mr-Churchil-today-mother?, level, considerations need to be in place.

I wouldn’t want to be there. That, and I can only speak personally, is a horror way beyond death. Which I say now as a relatively sane and rational being. Will I feel different when I’m trying to get the cat back in the fridge so he can mate with the eggs? I don’t know. Who knows what ‘quality of life’ or ‘values’ poor people in such a condition ‘think’.

I’m personally not sure I’ll make it to 70. Not because of ill health (I sincerely hope) but because I have suicide pacts with about 35 people that ‘if I ever reach that state; shoot me’, and one of them might misjudge. Everyone I know is of the same mind. Death is better than horrible, suffering, progressively diseased ga-ga-land.

Yet governments here struggle with this. Or aren’t prepared to discuss it properly, ie, not as an abstract concept, like UFOs, but with a FUCKING PLAN at the end.

They’ve just allowed a man to die who has been in a vegetative state for 8 years. On life support. Fed by tube. But this choice was made by the doctors and the family and without the normally required court order which prevents the medics from being up for murder. As it should be. Otherwise the family have to apply to the court and actually sign a statement saying that ‘they wish their son/daughter/wife/mother/whoever to die’. That’s what it says. But no-one in that situation ‘wishes’ anyone to die. They wish the accident/disease had never happened; they ‘wish’ the person could recover, all sorts of wishes, just not that one.

So this is a big step. But we need lots more, even bigger steps. Otherwise, quite frankly, we lose the right to call ourselves ‘humane’.

Ok, was a bit morbid.

Happy(?) Tuesday

A xxxx