Readers' Letters: Assisted dying bill a slippery slope

Slippery slope

Already, before the proposed law has even been enacted, backers of assisted dying are seeking to weaken the safeguards. The necessity of a High Court Judge's rubber stamp they now want removed. Instead, some kind of committee, which will include a social worker, will take its place. This is pretty much what happened in Canada and from that point on, things only got worse.

This is what many feared. Given the slightest chance, the hardliners have begun to chip away at the strongest safeguard. In general, I am in favour, but we need more safeguarding, not less.

Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, centre, who proposed the private member's bill on assisted dying, meets campaigners after a parliamentary vote on the issue last November (Picture: Carl Court/Getty Images)

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Blocked beds

Further to Jill Stephenson’s report (Letters 12th February) I can give another example of an unnecessary delay in discharge from the Royal Infirmary of Edinburgh.

Following a stroke a family member was told that she was medically fit to be discharged on a Friday once she had been assessed by the Occupational Therapist (OT). However the OT was unable to carry out the assessment – the safe boiling of a kettle to make a cup of tea – until the following Monday despite there being a fit person at home who would be doing all the catering.

Three bed days wasted.

How many times is that scenario repeated? No wonder there are "blocked beds"!

Dr R G Smith, Edinburgh

Learn lesson

Five years after leaving the EU, and nearly nine years on from the referendum I was clearing out old papers and came across a booklet issued by the then Tory UK government prior to the EU referendum. It outlined the reasons they believed voting “Remain” was right for the UK in this “once in a generation decision”.

It stressed the advantageous “special status” that Britain already had in Europe and warns of the risks leaving would entail. These included losing full access to the single market that buys “44 per cent of everything we sell abroad”, making it less attractive to invest in the UK, risking lowering the value of the pound, increased border controls and restrictions with less co-operation on law enforcement and national security. It also judged that there would be “Ten years or more of uncertainty as the UK unpicks our relationship with the EU and renegotiates new arrangements with the EU and other countries around the world” and that we would have less influence in world affairs.

With hindsight, readers will judge the accuracy of these predictions for themselves, but I would guess that most SNP voters would believe they were largely correct.

However, here’s the perplexing thing. If you applied the wording of the leaflet to the likely effects of Scotland leaving the UK, it would require little change other than to reflect a larger proportion of Scotland’s trade with the rest of the UK and the fact that we are far more entwined and therefore more difficult to unpick.

If a definition of insanity is to “keep doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result” then one can only draw one conclusion from the SNP obsession with separation from the UK.

Mark Openshaw, Aberdeen

Life in a bubble

Out of curiosity, I looked up the two MPs, Andrew Gwynne and Oliver Ryan, who have just been suspended by the Labour Party, on Wikipedia.

Mr Gwynne became a local councillor at the age of 21 in 1996, while studying for a BA in Politics and Contemporary History, and remained so until he entered parliament in 2005. He has been an MP ever since.

Mr Ryan joined the Labour Party at the age of 15 in 2010, and became a local councillor at the age of 19 in 2014, while studying for a BA in Modern History with Politics. He then obtained a Graduate Diploma in Law. He remained a local councillor till he stepped down in 2023 and entered parliament the following year.

These two gentleman appear to follow a pattern that is sadly all too common in Westminster, in Holyrood and, I presume also, in the Senedd in Cardiff, with politicians of all the established parties: teenage membership of a party, an arts degree, becoming a councillor or working for a parliamentarian and then becoming a parliamentarian themselves.

What is glaringly missing from the CVs of this type of parliamentarian is significant experience of working in the world away from politics. Any real experience of business and commerce is inconceivable. Furthermore, given their arts degree backgrounds, one can’t help but wonder whether some of them are numerate, or even sufficiently scientifically literate to know a Watt from a Joule.

Is it any wonder the country is in such a mess, when it is governed by such people?

Otto Inglis, Ansonhill, Fife

Refinery failed

The clip of Scottish Labour leader Anas Sarwar's election debate promise that a Labour Government would spend “hundreds of millions” on saving Grangemouth refinery has been seen by thousands, but the main culprits are the SNP and Greens, despite their attempts to blame past and present UK Governments.

The latest is local SNP MSP Michelle Thomson's complaint that none of the £63 million of UK Sustainable Aviation Fuel seed money.is coming to Scotland.

She's right, it's all going to England: of the 13 selected companies, five are in “Red Wall” Teesside (also the location of several carbon capture plants), one is in Cheshire, on the Stanlow refinery site (sound familiar?) and the rest are in the south, near the big airports.

When you think of all the extra Barnett money the SNP have squeezed out of UK governments over the years and the myriad quangos they've created, they should and could have found a solution for Grangemouth. Scottish Enterprise, the “go to” organisation to work with Ineos and the SNP, seem to have been sidelined or excluded this time, and when Sturgeon blocked the shale extraction and production plant some years ago.

When it comes to saving Scotland's upstream and downstream oil and gas industry, the capercaillies are coming home to roost.

Allan Sutherland, Stonehaven, Aberdeenshire

Call out Trump

Donald Trump’s ultimatum that unless Hamas releases all the Israeli hostages by noon on Saturday “all hell will break loose” sounds more Western movie gunslinger than international diplomat. Trump wants to be remembered as a peacemaker but seems intent on destroying the remnants of Gaza so it can be turned into a “riviera”.

We are taught to call out bad behaviour or be complicit in its consequences. Not to call out Trump’s reprehensible behaviour would be to support the potential slaughter of thousands more innocent Palestinian women and children. Starmer faces the choice of continuing to support Israel’s “right to defend itself” or objecting to the forcible eviction of Palestinians, the vast majority of them innocent of any connection to the October 7th attacks. The world can’t stand by and watch the US take illegal ownership of Gaza, and have Egypt and Jordan bullied into taking Gazans against their will.

Starmer must echo King Abdullah of Jordan’s call to assess the Arab/Egyptian plan to rebuild Gaza without exiling Gazans. The Middle East stands on the edge of the abyss. The UN, EU and Arab League should call out Trump and Netanyahu for threatening ethnic cleansing in contravention of international law. Trump says “nobody’s gonna question it” but surely Israel and the US should be thrown out of the UN and face sanctions if Trump and Netanyahu don’t wind back.

Neil Anderson, Edinburgh

Church is people

The historic Dunfermline Abbey is facing an eyewatering £8 million development bill, whatever that means, and £4m for repairs with a congregation of 425, no doubt most of them elderly (your report, 12 February). The key word in that long sentence is “historic”.

The question is, just how many historic buildings does the Church of Scotland own? Admittedly, the historic aspect symbolises a proud heritage. Such buildings, however, are now a heavy and, some would say, unnecessary, burden, placed upon dwindling congregations, all the more so, considering that Jesus Christ himself said He had nowhere to lay His head.

Some years ago, the Church of Scotland ran a thought-provoking campaign, The Church Without Walls, emphasising people, not buildings. So much energy and finance are spent on keeping buildings open and watertight, that it's all too easily forgotten what the church is there for in the first place.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Admit mistake

Rachel Reeves assures us that Government support for the farmers is “steadfast”! Where was she on Monday? If she had looked out of her Whitehall window she would have seen what the farmers think of that.

She is acting a bit like an SNP politician. What she says is one thing; reality is another thing. Is no politician able to say they made a mistake?

Ken Currie, Edinburgh

Two by two

A picture paints a thousand words. Two cyclists selfishly riding two abreast on “danger road” (your report, 12 February). Total indifference towards other road users!

Niven Kelly, Edinburgh

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