well done Philip and Fern

I came into the living-room this morning to see This Morning hosts Philip Schofield and Fern Britton reading a statement from Max Clifford stating he didn't think the two ambushed writer and pop-singer Kerry Katona on their show yesterday. Intrigued, I looked up the appearance on YouTube:



It seems, according to a bbc.co.uk report that Ms Katona arrived just in time for her interview, therefore the producers of her show had no time to "assess" her beforehand.

Fern referred to Katona's past addiction problems - fairly, I thought, not only because they're in the public domain, but because they were obviously worried about her; Schofield's manner was redolent of a Dad concerned for a friend that his daughter's brought home in a vulnerable state.

Mark Croft, Katona's husband, referred to "bipolar depression", by which I imagine he means bipolar affective disorder where, when active, depression is the predominant feature - I'm not being pedantic, I have the same thing. (And when I'm ill there's no stopping me from doing something I've sent my mind on.)

Croft states she's on medication, as am I. And there's the rub: medication for many mental illnesses can have some quite distressing side effects, which can include slurring of speech. Once I experienced this when one of my meds was raised, and on another occasion when a med was changed I was shaking and sweating until my body got used to it...I was mortified, imagining that people would see me coming into work in the morning with the shakes and perspiring, and draw what they might think was the obvious conclusion. The media's mentioning that she might be on Chlorpromazine - this med is so powerful that in the prison system they used to refer to it as "liquid cosh".

Any other substances can interfere with the levels of medications in your body - for example, paracetamol can keep the liver busy, which means that your blood-levels of other meds build up for a while. Alcohol can have the same effect: as Katona pointed out, she's 28 and can drink if she wants to. Painkillers taken for a hangover can complicate the picture further.

But the crux of the issue is, was Kerry ambushed? Not a bit of it, in my opinion. It might have been more comfortable for Kerry had Phil and Fern glossed over the difficulties she was obvioulsy having, but she would have faced a lot more questions today, especially as she's being followed around by a camera crew for some sort of reality show.

And Phil and Fern would find themselves being accused of collusion. You know, the sort of situation where Mother tells the kids to go to bed early again because "Dad's not well". I don't imagine it was a bundle of laughs for them asking Kerry what was wrong, but they did the right thing and I believe they will come to be vindicated for it. As Fern said:

We are just concerned for you because you're bubbly, you're funny, you're beautiful, you're quick-witted - all of those things, and we can't bear to see you not looking the Kerry we know.

So well done, Philip and Fern, and get well soon, Kerry.

don't go down the road to hell, it's jammed with bendy-buses

In order to survive, any extremist organisation has to turn public opinion against the group from which it recruits in order that some individuals in this group will become radicalised and provide the extremists with an intake.

A case in point was the methods of nationalist and loyalist paramilitary organisations emanating from Northern Ireland, which would carry out operations in such a way as to cause feelings of revulsion in the target community and polarise the non-aligned, often by using twisted logic to classify innocents as enemies and act accordingly. For example, attacks on peace-loving Irish people in London following IRA bombs weren't a side-effect of the campaign, they were one of the desired outcomes, to cause radicalisation.

A similar process can be seen in the 2004 murder of film-maker Theo van Gogh in Amsterdam. Local government, in introducing its action plan to counter radicalisation, stated: "Although we were prepared for the possibility of an attack in Amsterdam, we were totally unprepared for the abhorrent way in which this attack took place. It put an enormous strain on relations in the city."

I wouldn't want to accuse Professor Richard Dawkins of wishing to radicalise those atheists who don't accept that being so doesn't mean they have to be anti-religion in a violent way, but he is involved in an attempt to radicalise them nonetheless.

On June 20 this year, Guardian blogger Ariane Sherine reported seeing a poster posing the question that Luke 18:8 tells us Jesus asked his disciples during a discourse in the house of the Pharisee where he cured the man with the dropsical hand (starting 14:1) - "when the Son of Man comes, will he find any faith on earth?". She went on to write a rather amusing article which she ended by proposing that thousands of atheists club together to buy an advert on a bus that would say, "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and get on with your life." She states the Guardian's Comment is Free editor contacted the head of the National Secular Society for her to check out the feasibility of such a scheme. He appeared not to be very impressed, and suggested people donate to the NSS.

That same day, however, Jon Worth, who in his other life designs websites for Labour politicians, came by the post and changed it from some slightly controversial fun into something else in his blog, in which he states "you can’t spend a day in central London without being confronted by some sign that religion should be your only salvation", adding "what I really loathe is people somehow judging that those with religious belief are somehow superior beings".

He set up a pledgebank page devoted to the cause, and - despite the support of a campaign of bloggers - by the time the pledge had run out, the Telegraph's Matthew Moore reported that only 877 of the 4,678 people required had made a pledge, and the whole thing appeared "dead in the water".

Enter Richard Dawkins, who appended his name to the campaign by pledging to match funds donated up to £5500 ($9350). He seems to have somehow negotiated a deal whereby the message will be carried by as many as 60 London bendybuses for a month for £11,000 ($18,700). But a combination of Dawkins' name and a serious networking campaign (look at the messages at the bottom of Sherine's blog on the issue) led, as Martin Beckford reports, to £31,000 ($52,900) being raised.

I've been to London many times in the course of visiting family, and journeys related to my former job as a drugs-worker, and don't share Jon Worth's experience that you can't escape being "confronted" by religion. Away from the centre, I've seen a lot of hope, but also the sort of sights that drove Ralph McTell to write "Streets of London". But that's ok, seemingly, because bendy-buses will be going round telling people that "probably there's no God" (the first word is there to avoid litigation).

Perhaps wisely, some religious groups and figures have contributed to the campaign, which hopefully will draw some of the poison from it and eventually help indicate the ridiculous nature of the whole venture.

I say ridiculous advisedly - it's time to look at the website which prompted Ms Sherine's musings. (Although what seems to have exercised Jon Worth, who really started the ball rolling, was "a 40 minute sermon" from somebody who from his description may have been suffering from a mental illness.)

The jesussaid.org website opens with a welcome page and has 12 bars down the side indicating different pages. I had to open 11 of them before I came across the mention of hell that Sherine mentioned - she had obviously put a lot of work into being offended. Still, I'm sure it's had a lot of hits through all this, which is obviously a good thing.

But who is the campaign aimed at? I imagine it will offend a lot of people of many faiths or none, and am worried that the poor bus-drivers might get a bit of hassle. But the target of the campaign, I think, is atheists. Specifically, those atheists who lack the visceral fear of religion that pervades The God Delusion, and do not subscribe to the view that lack of faith presupposes hatred of faith. I've known many atheists who have no problem with religion or religionists. And the Second Vatican Council document Gaudium et Spes reminds people of faith that, regarding those who shut out God and try to dodge religious questions, "believers themselves frequently bear some responsibility for this situation". The object of the campaign is for "non-aligned" atheists to be given grief in the hope that some of them will become radicalised.

Pace Cardinal Murphy O' Connor, Archbishop Williams et al, I won't be donating to this scheme, as there's better ways I can use my donations. I can only finish by referring to the 4 pages near the start of The God Delusion that Dawkins devotes to the cartoons of Mohammed that appeared in Jyllands-Posten in September 2005, which led to riots in February 2006. Similarly, some time has elapsed from Ariane Sherine's throwaway remarks in the Guardian to the near-culmination of the campaign to put anti-religion posters on London buses; and if Dawkins thinks the cartoon outcry was a set-up, then this is no less so.



NB: I was not being facetious in comparing the bendybus campaign to those of terrorists; I believe the basic process as regards radicalisation and recruitment is the same. For those interested in the progress of Amsterdam's campaign against radicalisation I recommend a page from Muhammad Haniff, who links to a very interesting (but long) report on the process of radicalisation in the context of Amsterdam.

Ruth Kelly still has a prayer

Sometimes interesting news stories are like buses - nothing for ages, then a few come at once.

The Telegraph reports today that Ruth Kelly is preparing to defy the Government's three-line whip - an order to vote as directed - and oppose the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill (HFE). When she was Transport Secretary, is until last month, it would have been very difficult for her to vote against the Bill as she would have been tied into the Cabinet's collective responsibility for all Governmental legislation.

It's generally accepted that Kelly's membership of Opus Dei, an organisation of Roman Catholic laypeople whose mission is to "help people turn their work and daily activities into occasions for growing closer to God, for serving others, and for improving society", was a factor in her resignation, and Telegraph blogger Jonathan Isaby states that the Bill's passage through the House of Commons was delayed so as not to make abortion an issue in the by-election in Glasgow East (which Labour lost), commenting that the constituency has a high proportion of Catholics.

I don't deny any of this, but I come from around that area, and it is not short of non-Catholics who also oppose the dangerous innovations of the HFE. Not just Glasgow: John Smeaton recently addressed an anti-abortion rally in Stormont, site of the Northern Ireland parliament - a country in which all legislation is subject to public consultation, and the public in Northern Ireland isn't having abortion.

I mention abortion because the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Bill is not all about abortion, but the sort of tortured and twisted situationalist ethics that fuel abortion legislation have been let out of the box to inform the mindset of laws that are drafted to curtail the right to life of people from conception to assisted death. But abortion, the original cause, is so important that Harriet Harman, Leader of the House of Commons, is drafting an amendment to the HFE Bill that would prevent any amendments to lower the abortion limit. She seems to think that she is standing up for a woman's right to do what she wants with her body.

I don't have any problems with the concept of a woman's ownership of her body. But an unborn child , while in its mother's body, has its own individual DNA profile and is therefore not part of it. This seems to have been recognised by the organisers of a staff poetry competition in Cambridge's Addenbrooke's Hospital. It was written by Paul McGhee, the Programme and Information Manager in the Research and Development Department, about stem cells, specifically "how you get from just a few cells, which seem to know what they are doing, to a real working human being that is aware of itself". It's called "Hi, Mum!" and here it is:

Hi, Mum!

I was two cells – one each from him and you.
Fused, not confused, seems they already knew
From all they could be, what they had to be.
Divided, they decided to be me.

With every split decision that they took,
Each chose a route, put on a different look;
A cage of bone, a flow of blood, some skin,
A web of nerves, a mind to keep things in.

Some time amongst that maze I saw a light,
Felt a sharp pain, took unexpected fright;
Heard your heart, sure, but then I heard my own;
Became aware of just how much I’d grown.

Rough-hewn from what heredity portends,
Hi, mum! I’m ready now to shape my ends.

John Smeaton asked for our prayers for Prime Minister Gordon Brown and Speaker of the House of Commons Michael Martin as the HFE Bill sails down the river of legislation like a ship bursting with buccaneers. I would add that Ruth Kelly deserves all our prayers as she faces what is possibly the most difficult decision of her career. All I can say to her is that the best political survivors of the present Labour Party will be those who dared to defy the party line; many of the rest will sink with the ship.

if suicide is the answer, what is the question?

Being manic-depressive myself, I was concerned today to read the very sad case of Kerrie Woolterton, who, having a history of mental health problems, swallowed weedkiller - not for the first time - and called an ambulance, handing staff a letter saying that she did not want life-saving treatment to be instigated.

This was covered by the Mental Capacity Act 2005, under which one can make an "advance statement" ("living will"), which means that, if the document is signed by another capable adult, health professionals may not apply life-giving treatment. I was disappointed to see that the act does not provide for negotiation if the person is mentally ill at the time they hand over their living will.

The poor woman, according to reports, was depressed, and decided that it was time to exit stage left. I wonder how far her treatment had progressed, and if there were any barriers to treatment erected by the organisation of mental health trusts?

Recently we've heard about multiple sclerosis (a terrible ilness which can cause depression and suicidal thoughts) sufferer Debbie Purdie challenging the High Court as to what charges might be laid against her husband should he help her to go to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to be assisted to die, and the police have been questioning people as to Daniel James' travelling to Switzerland to be helped to die after a rugby accident that left him paralysed and depressed.

Am I alone in seeing a theme here?

May God be with the departed and the left.

the suicide solution

Very briefly, news is just breaking that the two people are being questioned by police in relation to a young man's travelling to Switzerland to commit suicide.

Daniel James, who was 23, had tried to kill himself several times because of the "day-to-day fear and loathing of his living existence" due to being paralyzed from the chest down after a rugby accident in March 2007. He died on 12 September, a week before publicisation of comments by Baroness Warnock saying that there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of their loved ones or of society.

Looking at what facts we have as a former mental health worker, the fact that he made suicide attempts indicates that severe depression may have been part of his psychological picture, with six months possibly not being long enough for him to make an accomodation with his new bodily image and and grieve for his lost physical abilities (for a bereaved person, grief does not start to be considered pathological until it has lasted two years).

In the present climate when public funds are tighter than ever due to bailing out financial institutions and disabled people are living ever longer, isn't it remarkable that the mainstream media are being hit by stories about suicide for vulnerable and depressed people being a viable solution to suffering and uncertainty?

Recquiescat in pace, and God be with his family at this time.

normal service will soon be resumed

I've twisted my ankle slipping on a patch of mud in the draughty old fen, and can't sit at the computer desk for long right now. Minora's trying to set up the laptop so it can connect to wi-fi, but not with much success. All three women in my life ask for your prayers for a speedy recovery, they say I'm even grumpier when I can't blog.

Hasta la vista etc etc - FD

first they came for the photogenic

The Director of Public Prosecutions has been asked to clarify under what conditions it would prosecute the husband of a woman woman suffering from MS for taking her to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, where people are assisted to die.

The DPP sees the importance of this case and earlier this month allowed SPUC (the Society for the Protection of Unborn Children) to make a contribution, during which it stated that Mrs Debby Purdy's campaign would "serve to undermine vulnerable people".



Last month, Baroness Warnock commented that people with Alzheimer's disease were "wasting people's lives" and stated there was "nothing wrong" with people being helped to die for the sake of society. Conservative MP Nadine Dorries recognised what she was speaking about: the Telegraph article I link to above quotes her as saying: "I believe it is extremely irresponsible and unnerving for someone in Baroness Warnock's position to put forward arguments in favour of euthanasia for those who suffer from dementia and other neurological illnesses" (my italics).

Warnock's original article was called "A Duty to Die?" This has been the title of various ethical articles, but I believe she chose that title as a reference to a joint statement by Archbishop of Canterbury Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Westminster Cardinal Cormac Murphy O' Connor and Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks in a letter to the Times bemoaning the legislative drift from the right to die for the terminally ill to their "duty to die".

Where Mrs Purdy seems to be coming from is that whereas para. 1 of the Suicide Act 1961 abrogates "the rule of law whereby it is a crime for a person to commit suicide", para 2 states:

(1)A person who aids, abets, counsels or procures the suicide of another, or an attempt by another to commit suicide, shall be liable on conviction on indictment to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

(2)If on the trial of an indictment for murder or manslaughter it is proved that the accused aided, abetted, counselled or procured the suicide of the person in question, the jury may find him guilty of that offence.

However, her campaign is a strange one, given that of the more than 100 Britons who have been helped to die at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland, there has not been one prosecution. She has stated that she feels her husband Omar Puente "would be more likely to face prosecution as he is black and a foreigner".

Joshua Rozenberg refers to the case of MS Diane Pretty, who failed to get a legal guarantee that her husband would not be prosecuted for helping her to die. In her case, the European Court of Human Rights decided that it could not interfere with Great Britain's applying para 2 of the Suicide Act. However, What Purdy and Puente are asking for is a technical clarification of the circumstances in which the DPP would bring a prosecution against Mr Puente for assisting in some as yet undefined way with Mrs Purdy's suicide. Mr Rozenberg's interpretation of the outcome of the judicial review was: "wait and see".

Dignitas has long been the subject of controversy. It assisted people to die in a flat in a residential block until the neighbours complained, and then moved to a hotel room, from which it was also barred. It then resorted to handing over barbiturates to people who wanted to kill themselves in a car park; they would then drive to another car park and swallow the drugs. From 1998-2007, it killed over 750 non-Swiss, charging £3,000 ($5,000) each.

Personally, I think Baroness Warnock made her "duty to die" statement in the knowledge that this case was coming up. I think, too, that the soap Emmerdale will be running a suicide storyline off the back of this - with an abusive husband representing a certain sector of society, and the wife urging him to go on taking the pills standing in for the "enlightened" campaigners who would like to free the aged, ill and sad from oppression.

But how enlightened are these campaigners? Warnock refers to the cost to the NHS - ie taxpayers' money, a hot topic in recent months - in keeping the incapacitated alive. On the other side of the mortal coil, the Royal College of Obstetrics and Gynaecology referred to the "financial hardship in the bringing up of the sickest babies" in its proposal for infanticide. And even Dignity in Dying, for Pete's sake (formerly the Voluntary Euthanasia Society) has criticised Dignitas for its proposal to help people with chronic mental health problems (a drain on society's resources?) to die. Indeed, commenting on the Purdy case, John Smeaton, head of SPUC, referred to the propensity of people with multiple sclerosis to suffer depression and suicidal thoughts.

There is a version of a famous poem about how a populace allowed itself to sleepwalk into calamity on the New England Holocaust Memorial:

They came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists,
and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time no one was left to speak up.

On 9/11, "spin doctor" Jo Moore sent an infamous email to members of the British government stating that it was "a good day to bury bad news". I would suggest that this whole dismal season is time to watch out for the rights of all those who cannot assert them for themselves for whatever reason, or who are being manipulated by a cynical politically-correct media machine as a way to hammer a eugenic wedge once more into the fabric of society. Alternatively, one day if you become less able you might find it is a good day to bury you, and there will be nobody left to hear your voice.