By the way, global warming is not a binary thing – it’s not a “it will happen” or “it won’t happen”. There are varying degrees, from nothing right up to catastrophic. However it might be anywhere in the middle too.

I do find your take on working conditions in the 1950′s (?) interesting. It was such a funny society compared to today.

However when you start to create rules about it it all falls to bits. Having doctors say when a baby should be terminated or not is many levels of woe. So sure – if a baby is completely brain dead then that’s OK, but what if they’re only slightly deformed, and you don’t actually know what that will do – where’s the line drawn? And then there’s the parents anguish at having a baby taken away – they don’t understand the doctors jargon, why is their baby being taken away?!

Are you trying to tell me that you don’t binge drink? I would say that most of the time when I see you you have a glass of something in your hand and you don’t exactly drink one glass and leave it at that. In fact I remember Grandma telling me stories about how you got so drunk at my Dads 21st that you had to be sent home and they couldn’t get you in the taxi! So don’t give me this codswallop about your generation being all mature and sober and current generations not.

Apart from that, I pretty much agree with the rest of what you say:

A) Children are bubble wrapped these days – parent paranoia. I think this is mostly due to the media rather than anything else. You even have that story about Grandma’s offcuts of dress material being used in a kidnap/murder! So it happened in your day and age too, but I bet you just didn’t hear about them all – or maybe all the old people when you were young were sitting around saying how terrible the world had become.

B) I think you meanraising the drinking age – not lowering it. I agree, raising the legal drinking age will stop those who are goodie goodie two shoes, but the rest of us it will not affect. I don’t think you can legislate anything that will stop the recklessness of teenagers as I believe it is physiological. And if alcohol is unobtainable, then it’ll be pot, LSD, ice, cocain, glue or petrol so I know which one I’d prefer.

C) I think if you asked any 15-17 year old if they were adults or children they’d probably say that they’re adults, it’s only hindsight that enables you to see how you’ve changed. Though I can totally see how having your country bombed and seeing death would make you grow up quickly.

I work with Simon and was sent a link to this post. I find too much agreement here for my liking (and I think there is some potentially interesting discussion I’d like to read people’s thoughts on), so time for a devil’s advocate to say a few words:

I think the main difficulty with the issue of euthanasia is how to decide what would ultimately be best when no-one can predict the future. A patient suffering from cancer could recover and/or be motivated/talented enough to cure/vaccinate against this killer, a dementia patient could still produce art or words that can inspire and uplift a large number of people, a physically disabled person could still push the boundaries of science. The trouble is these scenarios have very low odds of happening. If the caree is to decide on how to respond to the odds then moments of weakness or doubt can have massive repercussions potentially for many people, which could warrant the choice being taken out of their hands, if the carer is to decide on how to respond then, like it was said in the article, they may not make a choice in the best interest of the caree.

So what to do? You would probably need to have an ‘objective’ carer or board of carers who weigh up the odds of a person performing deeds of, or experiencing, ‘good’ (you could take into account such factors as family situation and history, education, wealth, history of charitable work, field of employment, references from friends etc.) against the magnitude of the tally of ‘bad’ (prognosis, amount of visitors, pain level, history of suffering etc.), also obviously taking into account the wants of the person and potentially any carer. This would need to be continued to be evaluated over time until the odds are too low and euthanasia is allowed.

Having an objective carer council could also mean other similar scenarios can be considered where the odds of good vs bad are key and someone is requesting euthanasia, all of which would save us money and are problems largely of our own making which would get smaller with legal euthanasia, things like:
- Criminals who are sure to be tortured and killed by other criminals upon release from prison can request to be euthanised to avoid this, or it could be they’re repeat offenders who have no hope and are sure they’ll just repeat offend again, they could get depressed enough to request euthanasia and due to their history and outlook it is highly unlikely they will accomplish anything good and hence could be considered.
- People who have suffered emotional damage due to abuse or other similar trauma and would prefer death to living with their memories, as long as they are essentially paralysed by their history and haven’t responded to counselling they could apply
- People born with severe mental illness, who have been institutionalised could potentially be considered as suffering enough to warrant euthanasia with some education of course to inform them of their choices
- People born into poverty who can’t hope for anything except starvation and death, the cost of ongoing health care and support would be much greater than giving them the option of avoiding their suffering, obviously a streamlined process would be needed in this case

I hope you see by those examples, that there is a very fine line between committing a morally reprehensible act and ‘playing the odds’. Deciding which is which most of the time in my opinion will be beyond any committee and hence while euthanasia is a nice idea ultimately it cannot be implemented, there is too much scope for misuse and odds are if it were to become mainstream it will do more harm than good.

By the way Happy 80th Birthday today

Sante,
Petch

Based on my observations and experience, I would say that there is the law, and there is justice, and the two have nothing to do with each other.

If there was justice, Alan Bond would rot for the rest of his life in a dungeon after robbing his companies (meaning the thousands of people who invested in his companies) for his own extravagant personal benefit. That would be justice. What the law gave him was a couple of years in minimum security, he got to keep all the stolen goods, and he’s now living in luxury, unlike the people he ruined. Similarly with Christopher Skase, and all the other fancy-dancers who ran ENRON, Worldcom, and apparently every bank in the world. Those mongrels continue to live high on the hog, taking their obscene salaries and bonuses while the send the world to hell.

Don’t get me started! Oh…I think I’ve started…:-)

Cheers

Geoff

it’s been quite a while since I had a look at your writing, so I thought it was time to have another refreshing update of free thinking.

I read your article about the constitution after returning from a trip to Port Douglas in North Queensland. The people who live there are governed by people in Brisbane who live over 1200 km away, I had a number of conversations with local people, and was struck by the resentment that they felt about decisions being made that affected their lives and livelihoods, when the decisions were made by people who were so removed from them. My parents, who live in northern NSW, feel the same about the state government in Sydney.

This reinforced my view that a great improvement could be made to this country by getting rid of the small minded, petty, greedy, self-interested and generally corrupt scum who make up the majority of the state governments. I was struck therefore, when I saw you express the same view in your blog post.

What we need is a single federal government that implements programs of national interest in areas such as health, education, transport and defence etc. I went to school in 3 different states and the ACT, and the curriculum differences severely affected my education, so I speak from personal experience.

Then, at the local level, we just need reasonably sized non-political regional administrative areas that provide day to day operation of services like garbage collection, road maintenance etc. I say non-political, because I see no reason why (like in the ACT for example), the people who are responsible for things like getting the garbage collected are arranged on party political line. What does that achieve apart from a lot of noise, and not much signal?

Imagine having a single Australian drivers licence instead of a state licence, a single educational curriculum, a single rail gauge, a single Australian legal system etc. The benefits of standardisation and removal of duplication of effort would be enormous!

Anyway, I’m sorry it’s been so long since I last visited here. It’s been very refreshing to read your thoughts and know that I’m not the only person in the country who thinks these things.

Cheers

Geoff