Terry Pratchett (4)

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MPs accuse BBC of promoting euthanasia in 'biased' coverage of topic

A group of MPs have accused the BBC of promoting euthanasia after it aired a speech by Sir Terry Pratchett calling for assisted suicide to be legalised.

The cross-party group of MP called on the Government to threaten to cut off public funding to the broadcaster.

A Commons motion said the corporation 'misused public funds' in its coverage of euthanasia, highlighting the high profile given to Sir Terry's speech in favour of assisted suicide.

The motion claimed the BBC 'ignored the rights of the disabled' and had used drama as well as news to promote its pro-euthanasia stance.

Tory Ann Winterton has the support of one Tory and four Labour MPs for her early day motion.
The BBC aired an interview with Kay Gilderdale, who was acquitted of attempted murder after helping her daughter Lynn, who was paralysed by ME, to end her life

They claim there had been 'numerous complaints' over the 'persistent bias of the BBC on matters relating to euthanasia and other life issues and on the manner in which the BBC have misused public funds to promote changes in the law'.

The MPs complain of 'thinly-disguised plays and soap operas being used to promote the use of euthanasia and misrepresentation of pro-life activists in the UK as people of violence'.

They claim the 'multi-million pound campaign' culminated with a Panorama programme on Kay Gilderdale, who was cleared of attempting to murder her 31-year-old daughter Lynn after pleading guilty to assisting her suicide, and Sir Terry's comments.

The fantasy novelist, who has Alzheimer's disease, gave the annual Richard Dimbleby lecture this week and called for a tribunal to give seriously ill people permission to get help to die.

He offered himself to be a test case for one of the tribunals.

The BBC said on Monday it was 'pure coincidence' that the two programmes aired on the same night.

The MPs said that 'as usual the BBC have ignored the rights of the disabled, despite the fact that every disability group in the UK is opposed to the legalisation of assisted suicide and euthanasia'.

They urge the Government to make it clear to the BBC public funds will be withdrawn unless it complies with its charter and ensures 'all programmes on issues of public interest are treated impartially'.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.u(...)c.html#ixzz0eap4huPV

quote:

Op vrijdag 5 februari 2010 12:30 schreef Lod het volgende:
Ik vond de films, en zeker Colour of Magic, nog best aardig. Uiteraard niet te vergelijken met de boeken maar desalniettemin. De tekenfilms die gemaakt zijn van discworld, die zijn bagger

Sir Terry was erg te spreken over de tekenfilms, anders. Op de DVD staat een interview met hem en hij is vol lof.

Ik vond beide Real Life films overigens wel goed. Maar dat komt omdat ik met name in Hogfather Susan zo'n lekker ding vond LOL

Update van PTerry himself:

Folks,

So many people have contacted me since the Richard Dimbleby
lecture that there is no possibility at all that I can reply to
everyone individually.

Generally speaking people are asking what they can do to help,
support and, indeed, take some control over their own death. The
people to contact for all this are at Dignity in Dying -
http://www.dignityindying.org.uk - they can campaign better than
two blokes in an office.

I'm getting some interesting letters though, some of them are from
couples who have refrained from having children for the good of
the planet, and now fear facing their final illness with no one to
fight their corner. The same thinking seems to be affecting people
who are happily single. Suddenly the ties of family seem more
attractive than once they did. As one lady said 'saying that
friends are the new family is all very well, but it starts to ring
hollow as we get older.'

I want to make it clear what it is that I have been saying
recently since retelling can change things.

I think that assisted death should be available to people who
clearly have a serious and incurable disease and are demonstrably
capable of making their wishes felt and clearly do understand
their situation.

And that is that. Causing or assisting the death of somebody who
has not made their wishes publicly clear should be treated, at
least initially, as murder. If there are exonerating
circumstances, then the legal system is capable of recognising
these. We are not, by and large an uncaring and punitive society.

The tribunal idea which the charity Dignity in Dying is
investigating is a suggestion, and at the moment only that.

I believe it could help those unclear about the law and the
guidelines, and also act as a gentle filter, identifying the
hypothetical pressured grannies that opponents of assisted dying
continue to summon up as an argument, but also perhaps to suggest
that a future that currently looks dark may yet be improved. I
suspect that the majority of people seeking assisted death will be
individuals in every sense of the word, looking for an organised
death after a productive and organised life. I'm probably one of
them. But I must say, it is a pleasure to meet other people with
PCA, even if only to share anecdotes with those who truly know
where you're coming from. A trouble shared is not halved, whatever
the proverb says, but at least it is understood.

The generation currently sliding into old age must surely be the
first one ever to grow up unfamiliar with the realities of death.
It has been hidden away, not spoken of, not acknowledged. It would
be better for our mental health to do so.

I can just remember, when I was a child, that sometimes you would
see somebody wearing a black band around their arm, as a sign of
mourning. I've seldom seen them as an adult. But now the task of
dying is left to us, we might as well get good at it.

On a more cheerful note, I'm working my way through the second
draft of I Shall Wear Midnight, but as ever fighting for writing
time among all the other calls. I shall be back on the sofa of the
One Show on Thursday 11th February at 7pm on BBC One and I hope to
get my Seamstresses Guild Crest before bumping into Christine
Bleakley again

Late News: We've been told that my sword is ready for viewing; I
couldn't have any hand in the making of the horn hilt or the
silverwork. Sadly, I won't get to see it until next week.

All the best.

Terry Pratchett

Terry Pratchett welcomes assisted suicide policy

Author and euthanasia campaigner says new rules are best possible outcome in absence of law change

The author and euthanasia campaigner Sir Terry Pratchett has welcomed new guidelines on assisted suicide set out by the director of public prosecutions (DPP) today.

Pratchett used his Dimbleby lecture this month to call for euthanasia tribunals to give people with incurable diseases the right to medical help to end their lives. He said the new rules were the best possible outcome in the absence of a change in the law.

"I am really pleased, I think we're going as far as we can go without legislation," he said. "It's rather more looking into the mind of the person [who is] helping assist the person to commit suicide. I rather like that it's getting away from the 'tick-box' approach the preliminary guidelines seemed to be suggesting."

The DPP, Keir Starmer QC, said the final advice was not intended to be a tick-box exercise and the policy was now more focused on the motivation of the suspect.

Pratchett, who was diagnosed two years ago with a rare form of early onset Alzheimer's disease, said that while he welcomed the guidelines he would continue to campaign for a change in the law and for the introduction of euthanasia tribunals.

The author of the bestselling Discworld fantasy novels, and patron of Dignity in Dying, said what he had heard from the DPP strengthened the case for tribunals, which would provide a "safety net" for people who might be coerced into ending their own lives.

Sarah Wootton, Dignity in Dying's chief executive, called the guidelines a victory for common sense and compassion and a milestone on the way to legalising assisted deaths. But she said the situation remained flawed as assisted suicide was still illegal and, even with the help of the guidelines, people faced stressful investigations.

"The law still needs to change and we'll continue to campaign," she said.

Lord Carlile QC, chairman of Care Not Killing, said the guidelines greatly reduced the risk of undermining existing law.

"Our main concern was that the interim guidelines singled out as a group those who were disabled or ill, thereby affording them less protection than other people under the law," he said. "We are very glad this has been removed."

http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)isted-suicide-policy


Een video uit december, waarin Pratchett praat over religie:
http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)y-pratchett-religion

"Sir Terry Pratchett wants to win control of how his own story ends"
is the headline in The Times on February 6th. The interview takes
place in a Wiltshire pub. You've got to love a man that writes
about being discovered lying head on his computer keyboard by either
his PA Rob or his wife. And them saving the work in progress before
checking for a pulse.

Het hele verhaal: http://www.timesonline.co(...)h/article7017199.ece


The Telegraph reports that the BBC has been accused of 'promoting
euthanasia by ignoring rights of disabled' after airing Terry's
Richard Dimbleby Lecture. One does have to wonder if the people
making the complaints actually watched the lecture and listened to
what Terry had to say?

http://www.telegraph.co.u(...)hts-of-disabled.html

Dit is dan weer wat minder leuk nieuws:
Terry has written to MPs urging them to adopt the Digital Economy
Bill especially the part that talks about piracy.

http://www.guardian.co.uk(...)hett-internet-piracy

Terry's opvattingen worden niet overal omarmd:

The door to euthanasia stays shut, as it must
Dominic Lawson

The point of national treasures is that we are meant to unite in worship at the shrine of their sagacity; but it should be possible to remove national-treasure status as well as bestow it. I nominate Sir Terry Pratchett for relegation.

The “Discworld novelist” (as he is known, somewhat mysteriously to those of us who have never read a word of his fiction) has become a figurehead of the euthanasia movement, which in this country now calls itself Dignity in Dying. After the publication on Thursday of the director of public prosecutions’ long-awaited guidelines on “assisted suicide”, Pratchett was interviewed by Jon Snow on Channel 4 News. He told Snow it was only “the far right” who argued that it would threaten the vulnerable and old if the law were changed to give blanket immunity against prosecution in such cases.

Although Snow chose not to query Pratchett’s remark — national treasures may not be challenged on television under any circumstances — it was an outrageous thing to say. Anyone who has taken the trouble to study the voting records in parliament when it has debated this issue would have known that this matter is not predictable by political affiliation; for example, left-wing “old Labour” has always been much more opposed to legalisation of any form of euthanasia than the Blairites. When this topic was debated earlier in the month on BBC’s Question Time, the most excoriating attack on any change in the law came from George Galloway, the Respect MP.

In their fanaticism, the full-time advocates of euthanasia find it impossible to accept that those who take a different view might be as “enlightened” as they are. They are also incapable of understanding the limitations of their position that autonomy alone gives a person the absolute right to demand that the state — via the National Health Service — terminates his life whenever he wants.

As Professor Nigel Biggar of the Royal College of Physicians’ committee on ethical issues in medicine has written: “If we were to regard the individual as the sole arbiter of the worth of his or her life, then how could he or she continue to oblige the care and commitment of other people?” In other words, if we don’t accord any value to someone’s life beyond that attributable to their own estimation of it, why should we care about others’ health at all — beyond the negligible good manners of respecting another’s opinion?

Fortunately, such an atomised view of the fabric of society does not govern the actions of Keir Starmer, the director of public prosecutions. The assiduous media management of Dignity in Dying had been able to spin many newspapers into expecting some radical change in favour of its campaign. Yet Starmer’s allegedly “new” policy, as he pointed out with adamantine clarity, “does not change the law on assisted suicide. It does not open the door for euthanasia”. All he has done is to set out the factors governing decisions whether or not to prosecute — and, as he said on Thursday, “prosecutions are neither more nor less likely” as a result.

Despite the claims of Dignity in Dying, the courts have long been able to display compassion in such cases, assisted by a keen awareness of the circumstances in which a jury would be most unlikely to convict. That is why, so far, none of the 100 or more relatives who have accompanied suicidal Britons to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland has been prosecuted.

This is, necessarily, a far from straightforward matter. Starmer said he is minded to prosecute in cases where “the suspect was not wholly motivated by compassion; for example, the suspect was motivated by the prospect that he or she or a person closely connected to him or her stood to gain in some way from the death of the victim”. Yet how do we know if someone’s motives do not contain a smidgen of hope for gain — looking after an elderly relative properly is hardly cheap — along with all the compassion volubly expressed as justification?

No wonder, when asked if he could give an absolute assurance to Debbie Purdy, another Dignity in Dying campaigner, that her husband will not face prosecution after any terminal trip to Zurich, Starmer responded that no one could be given immunity.

The interesting question remaining is why the campaign to introduce a measure of euthanasia is attracting such widespread public sympathy, at least as measured by the questions of pollsters as they ring up ordinary members of the public to ask them — one hopes not during tea with the children — how they would want to die. I don’t think it can be a coincidence that this apparent trend in opinion towards euthanasia has followed a dramatic increase in the costs of looking after the elderly, especially when it involves care homes.

When David Willetts, the Tory MP, recently published his much-acclaimed book about the alleged selfishness of the baby-boomers in not providing sufficiently for the future, he did not address this point about an unwillingness to provide for the previous generation. Perhaps there are limits to the extent to which even the most intellectually conscientious of politicians is prepared to question the motives of the electorate.

The wittiest British novelist of the baby-boom generation, Martin Amis, got into some trouble for telling this newspaper a month ago that it would soon become necessary to encourage “with a medal and a martini” the old to enter euthanasia booths on street corners. Otherwise, said Amis, “there’ll be a population of very demented old people, like an invasion of terrible immigrants, stinking out the restaurants and cafes and shops”. Cue (as intended) outrage.

Yet I prefer the mischievous grotesqueries of Amis to the deceptive kindness of his fellow novelist Pratchett. In his recent Dimbleby lecture (yes, the BBC loves him too) Pratchett complained that “medicine is keeping more and more people alive” — idiot doctors! — “all requiring more and more care, a burden that falls initially on the next of kin”. Here we see how those apparently arguing for assisted suicide only for the sake of the “sufferer” so easily and unobtrusively descend the slippery slope towards euthanasia on grounds of all-round convenience.

The truth in any case is that if someone feels he has become, in that horrible phrase, “a burden to his family”, he is absolutely entitled to refuse medical treatment — and certainly all invasive procedures. That is why it was so disingenuous of Lord Lester, who has acted as a legal adviser to Dignity in Dying, to declare that “not everyone wants doctors and nurses to strive to keep them alive”. Lord Lester, as a distinguished lawyer, must know no doctor could ever impose on him, while sentient, a treatment he does not wish to have, even if it were essential to preserve his life. As used to be said in such circumstances: he could turn his face to the wall.

In his Dimbleby lecture, Pratchett quoted approvingly in full the line to which Lester merely alluded: “Thou shalt not kill; but needst not strive / Officiously to keep alive.” These words of Arthur Hugh Clough, the 19th-century poet, have for years been obtusely (if not dishonestly) misrepresented as an endorsement of euthanasia. The poem in question, The Latest Decalogue, is in fact a bitterly satirical account of what Clough saw as the perversion of Christian morality in Victorian Britain. That is why another line of his poem reads, “Do not adultery commit;/Advantage rarely comes of it,” and it says towards its end, “Bear not false witness;/Let the lie/Have time on its own wings to fly.”

These lines admirably sum up the strategy of the euthanasia lobby, even if it does have a national treasure to spread a warm glow over its chilling manifesto.

dominic.lawson@sunday-times.co.uk

Mijn persoonlijke mening: Een naar, bekrompen mannetje zonder gevoel voor humor en tussen de regels door lees ik groen-gele jaloezie dat een schrijver van humoristische boeken een 'Sir' is, terwijl een columnist van The Times nog steeds een 'mr' is. Hij zet zijn mailadres onder het artikel en dat heb ik dus meegekopieerd, dus voel je vrij, deze meneer je mening te geven

De Dimbleby-lecture staat in 6 delen op You Tube:

It looks like the SKY adaptation of Going
Postal has been delayed. It was originally scheduled to be
broadcast over the Easter period but it is now looking more likely
to be broadcast at the end of May 2010. There has been very little
advertising from Sky although an empty holding page has been set up
for the show on the Sky website:

http://sky1.sky.com/going-postal

Hot of the press - As of the 1st April Sky have put the trailer
up at: http://sky1.sky.com/going-postal-about

--------------------

Terry Pratchett has written a story for an imaginary character in a
real portrait for the National Portrait Gallery.

In Terry's story it appears that a seafarer named Joshua Easement
gives Queen Elizabeth a present from the Americas. Having no sense
of smell he doesn't realise that he's given her a skunk.

http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=NPG156A and
http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=NPG156B and
http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=NPG156C

---------------------

Authors including Terry Pratchett, Ian McEwan, Philip Pullman and
Roddy Doyle have participated in a survey to find a 'writers' pick'
of the past decade in books.

Terry's choice was Bill Bryson's A Short History of Nearly
Everything.

More information can be found at The Guardian website:
http://discworldmonthly.co.uk?redir=DECADE156