Barrister specialising in tax law.
London
Joined June 2016
- Tweets1.2K
- Following95
- Followers212
- Likes2.9K
Thomas Chacko retweeted
Dr Black will euthanise you, whether you like it or not.
If my advance directive says "please give me MAiD when my dementia gets to the level that I'm a burden on my loved ones", them the answer is you give me MAiD, not respond to my delirious protests.
If you don't know how to "interrogate delirium or confusion", you shouldn't be a doctor.
There is NOTHING HARD about this scenario, except if you don't understand how brains work.
I have an icon painted by Fr Ioustinos: I met him fifteen years ago in Nablus. The shrine there, which he had filled with mosaics and icons he painted, was an extraordinary oasis of peace. He will always have known that it would only take a few months' descent into chaos and he might meet the fate of his predecessor and the shrine be destroyed. I pray that the shrine survives - it is one of the places in the Holy Land that we are certain is in the right place, because it is the only ancient well next to the Samaritans on Mount Gerazim, so that is where Christ spoke with the Samaritan woman. So we can drink from the well that Christ drank from, and I have. I also feel (and have since then) that I met a saint that day.
Thomas Chacko retweeted
If the House of Commons votes for the assisted suicide bill tomorrow it will do so knowing that the bill puts vulnerable people in danger.
Given that the Equality Impact Assessment says this, those drafting it clearly thought it could apply to people with a disability.
@EdmundGriffiths @DrFrancisYoung earth.com/news/ran-submarine… a very good "serious science article with headline by Lovecraft" example
I find it grim (but not surprising) that the authorities think the best name is "Business and Property" - very UK plc. Despite the fact that a lot of chancery disputes aren't about either (wills, trusts, charity questions). And plenty of "business" disputes will be elsewhere.
Thomas Chacko retweeted
I also just don’t buy that there’s any real confusion. In my experience, international clients think the Chancery Division has weight precisely because of its history and prestige. Domestic clients all know what it means (and often relish bringing a claim “in Chancery”!)
Thomas Chacko retweeted
This is repugnant
Assisted death campaigners, @MDMDmydecision and @Humanists_UK are mocking Baroness Finlay, a leading palliative care expert, talking about a little boy's goldfish in debate. They say this is evidence of a filibuster. What could be more ridiculous than trying to resuscitate a goldfish?
Well if they had actually bothered to listen to the debate they would have heard how this little boy, with advanced cancer, was dealing with the knowledge he was dying, supported to the end by Baroness Finlay.
That little boy told her "I'm going to die when my goldfish dies". "He went on to talk through what he wanted when he was dying and how he would play football in heaven with another boy who had died recently. Not long after, his goldfish was found floating".
Baroness Finlay, caring for that child, describes in a single sentence how she tried to hold back death - not from the goldfish but the child.
"My strenuous attempts to resuscitate his goldfish failed, and he gently died soon"
"He" is the little boy. With advanced cancer.
I cannot imagine the grief that must sit with palliative care experts as they help these young children, but to mock Baroness Finlay for it is terrible.
She shared this experience because she was trying to amend Clause 6 which had been added at Report stage by opponents. It prohibits raising assisted dying with a child.
She wanted the House of Lords to understand why the language needed to be changed. She was explaining, from experience, that children can speak with extraordinary frankness about death, and that they deserve “gentle, honest planning of their care”, and to be able to ask questions about what they may have heard on TV or on the internet about assisted dying, including an explanation of why they are not eligible for assisted suicide.
It's an amendment and a speech that supporters of assisted dying should have supported - they resisted restricting discussion with children. Instead they've mocked it and that little boy's death. Listen to her speech in this thread. Then read again the press release at the end of the thread.
And ask yourselves who has actually demonstrated bad faith.
ALT Extract from Humanists UK press release: Dave Sowry, Board Member of My Death, My Decision, said: ‘I’m equal parts outraged and distraught. Dying people were made to wait while peers talked and talked. We welcomed scrutiny of this Bill and serious debate, even when that debate was difficult, and opinions differed. That is how Parliament should work. ‘When I listened to Baroness Finlay describing her failed attempts to resuscitate a little boy’s goldfish, it became obvious beyond all possible doubt that this was a filibuster. Instead of a good-faith effort to test and improve the Bill, we saw scaremongering and endless delay, while terminally ill people were ignored.’
Part of the Pope’s role is to warn, and to warn right now about things going wrong today. He doesn’t need to recite the whole nuanced Catholic tradition on the subject whenever he does this! There now seems to be a habit of saying, “we can ignore this warning because there is such a tradition."
That doesn’t mean that they have a more sophisticated understanding of e.g. the Just War tradition than the Pope does – it often looks more like using the tradition as smoke and mirrors, as an excuse to ignore the warning.
If someone was breaking into your car, and you said “you shouldn’t steal my things” and they said “The Church has a very nuanced view of private property. You haven’t mentioned the universal destination of goods! Have you considered that I *might* be in urgent need?” that wouldn’t be because they had a better understanding of those teachings then you did.
Thomas Chacko retweeted
Evil beyond words.
There is no defence for this.
Christians cannot support this.
When my nephews were about to be born, they were surrounded by medical concern and everyone was waiting for the earliest safe time for delivery. Parliament has declared that even then, when the doctors were scanning every few days, their lives were worthless in the eyes of the law. They could be killed without consequence or even investigation. And it did this with no campaign, no explanation and no debate (45 minutes in the Commons, a few hours in the Lords).
I think this isn’t surprising – not just in the violence we endorse, but how trivially we approach it. It is exactly how our establishment reacted to the butchery in Gaza over the last two years: refusal to look clearly at what was happening, evasions, fury at the people who wouldn’t shut up about it. The wildest attacks on freedom of expression in Britain are on Palestine (mass arrests) and on abortion, where you can be arrested for saying almost anything, or even standing silently, near an abortion clinic. Given that it’s well known that some women feel forced into abortion by financial pressure, and the law prohibits asking them about this or offering any sort of support, this is not about harassment. It’s about omerta. As a society, nothing should draw attention to what happens in that clinic. Nothing should remind people what is under that rubble in Gaza.
There was mass coverage of the first strike on a hospital, intense debate as to who did it. Now it’s par for the course, we pay no attention. We have become accustomed to double-tap strikes, killing those helping the trapped and injured. We have become accustomed to dead paramedics.
This happened before, but it was unusual and wasn’t presented as fine, just the reality of war. There are other atrocities going on – in Sudan, between Pakistan and Afghanistan: but compared to Gaza those lack the sheer effort into shouting down criticism, people *much* angrier about how the war is talked about than how it is conducted. Intense commitment to “nothing to see here”. Similar to the establishment response to the “grooming” (rape) gangs, and it produces similar festering outrage. (Dismissed as “just a right wing thing” on rape, “just a Muslim thing” on Gaza. It’s not.)
This war has coarsened us: but I think this was there before and last week’s vote is just another symptom of it. We are a violent, callous (and sentimental) society, but we keep the victims offstage. Those who get crushed by it, the unwanted child, the toddler trapped in the rubble of their home, the teenage girl in care, are non-persons, because we can’t face the demands they might make on us.
This reminds me of the awful Anne G case in 2012 in Belgium: abused by her psychiatrist, she was given euthanasia. Noelia is so, so much younger. Serious trauma can take years to recover from: after my brother died I wasn't stable for a decade. Noelia's rape was three years ago.
