Health secretary @wesstreeting on assisted dying and crucially how that interacts with Britain's appalling palliative care service:

Very interesting. Am in the middle of a deep end of life care course atm, and it has struck me a *lot* how much of it is a battle between a person's feeling of guilt, shame and loss of dignity, versus the avowed professional wish to give each version of being alive gentle respect and honour.

Write to your MP with your views. My in favor of it for me at least with MP

A very difficult one for him.

He is at least admitting that good palliative care is the answer.

He's right. Nevertheless, I think it's right to have it.

So in the meantime Wes you'd consign them to to lingering, suffering death. Let's get practical about this and alleviate current suffering. There is a limit to palliative care (always will be too) and we are supposedly autonomous beings, we should choose.

Did you catch Any Answers today? The whole programme was given over to listeners who wanted to comment on the assisted dying issue. Anita Anand handled it extremely well, and the contributions were surprisingly varied and good. I'd like to see a listening process rolled out across the country.

So... Living is so horrible, we can't allow people to choose death?

If, in the next decade, there are millions of people suffering from disabilities caused by repeat Covid infections, many people will change their minds. My point is, if you’re still of strong mind, it’s your decision to make. The safety measure has to be people being forced or tricked into it

In a way, legislation for assisted dying (suicide), should be paralleled with legislation to ensure a right to world class palliative care.