As MSPs prepare to vote on the assisted dying bill, one vital point is being missed: the gift of life (“Jersey proves the public wants choice at the end of life”, Forum, last week). I have seen the difference that choice can make to a dying person.
My husband, Antony, travelled to Switzerland in December 2024. Once he was accepted by Dignitas, everything changed. Fear no longer dominated our days. His mental and emotional state lifted, and he began to live again, seeing friends, fulfilling his bucket list and looking forward to the next day. He lived during his last days, instead of existing in misery.
Antony had motor neurone disease, and he truly suffered. His final days were likely to include being trapped in a body unable to move or communicate while his mind remained active. He did not want to die, but MND had control.
I held Antony as he drifted to sleep. He died calmly, without pain or suffering. This is what modern medicine can offer: the chance to live what time is left without dread. Right now, that gift is only available to the wealthy. I urge the Scottish parliament to give everyone who is terminally ill the same choice.
Louise Shackleton, on behalf of Friends at the End (FATE)
Edinburgh
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There is a belief among some sections of society that the assisted dying bill should pass into law however flawed it is. I write to commend peers in the House of Lords on their close scrutiny of the bill. They are seeking to amend its loose wording so that vulnerable people are protected.
It is almost 14 years since staff at a nursing home tried to pressurise me into granting them the power to withhold medication from an elderly relative. I am aware it was easier for me to resist them than it would have been for a spouse or partner of the same age as my relative.
As a society we should be protecting vulnerable members. In my opinion, investing in more hospice care would be a better use of our resources than an assisted dying scheme.
Patricia Morris
High Wycombe, Bucks
Reform party funding
You note how Reform UK is now financed largely by the secretive, Thailand-based British billionaire Christopher Harborne (“Christopher who?”, Editorial, last week).
According to research from Democracy for Sale, since 2019 three quarters of Brexit party/Reform UK contributions have come from three very rich men: Harborne, Jeremy Hosking and Richard Tice.
Keir Starmer’s characteristically timid plan to ban political donations by foreign firms does not address the issue of unlimited, unregulated donations by UK billionaires. Five billionaires funded 61% of the 2016 EU referendum leave campaign.
While most European countries limit such donations, the UK is an outlier together with the US, where billionaires have jumped from 1% to 16% of total contributions since the 2010 supreme court decision to deregulate campaign financing. The result has been Donald Trump.
Joseph Palley
Richmond, Surrey
In for a penny
Neil Griffiths declares: “customers must pay £14.99 for a paperback. Not £12.99.” (“Mainstream presses are not taking risks”, New Review, last week) Whatever the price, could it at least be rounded up to the next pound mark rather than persist in the intelligence-insulting deception of 99p-ending prices?
Francis Harvey
Bristol
Drug gangs run supply
Andrew Rawnsley reports Keir Starmer as saying that the Greens wanted his teenage boy to be able to buy crack cocaine and heroin when he turned 18 (“Gorton and Denton will force Labour to change strategy – it is no longer the only anti-Reform option”, Forum, last week).
Starmer is clearly unaware that his son is able to buy these products already, thanks to a supply chain controlled by organised crime. The suggestion by the Green party that the supply and regulation of drugs instead be controlled by the state seems a vast improvement on the current arrangement.
Michael Woodgate
Bristol
The food of love?
Orchid mantis (“My Week”, Forum, last week) forbore to tell us of the fate of her late husband(s). Can she enlighten us?
Nick Wyatt
London N6
Orchid mantis replies: “If I’m to produce good eggs I must have good food. And a husband is so handy... ”
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