Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Showing posts with label MP Maryan Street. Show all posts
Showing posts with label MP Maryan Street. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 11, 2015

David Seymour and ACT’s Continuing Desertion of Classical Liberalism. Expositions of Cowardice & Cruelty: Seymour; Andrew Little; John Key. #Euthanasia:



 Faye Clark has a problem, rather, a death, none of us want to think about for ourselves or loved ones:

TO END her life with dignity, without violence and at a time of her choosing is Hamilton woman Faye Clark's final wish as she helplessly watches terminal cancer eat its way through her bones.

The 71-year-old's new reality of intense medication, chemotherapy and constant pain has been slowly closing in on her since her 2009 diagnosis.

A new study shows New Zealand is overwhelmingly in support of people like Clark ending their lives legally, with the help of a doctor. Auckland University researchers published their findings in the Journal of Palliative Medicine last month.

[Snip]

Clark doesn't have depression and is thankful for the interventions that have kept her alive - but she can feel her body has had enough, and so has she.

Her incurable form of blood cancer has meant her recent life has been a cycle of chemotherapy, stem cell transplants and radiotherapy to repair holes in her bones. Pain saps her energy and morphine sucks her strength. She has cruel muscle cramps, sweats profusely and has a compromised immune system.

Clark no longer has control of her bodily functions and finds it very difficult to walk. "I want my family and friends to remember me as a person who loved life, somebody who was 'alive', not a bedridden, pain-racked and drugged shell of my former self, totally dependent on others . . ."

But with assisted death not available to her, she has had to weigh up her options. "I can refuse food and drink, slowly starve myself to death. In the absence of legalised euthanasia my other option is self-inflicted suicide, a lonely, perhaps violent and uncertain death by my own hand, using pills, poison, a rope or knife."


And Faye is not an isolated, not-to-be-repeated case; remember Mrs Mott? Faye, Mrs Mott, countless others: dying is axiomatic to the human condition. All of us may have to face the hell Faye finds herself, forced into such heinous circumstances because every compassion-challenged MP, sitting and historically, other than some very few such as Labour’s Maryan Street, have not given us the basic right of euthanasia. And that despite latest polling shows 82% of New Zealanders want this civilised right, and just this week Dr Havill of our Voluntary Euthanasia Society asked for Maryan’s Bill to be put back into the ballot after  Canada has overthrown their ban on ‘physician assisted dying’.

I was gutted when the new Labour Party leader, Andrew Little, in a failure of leadership, ordered minion Iain Wowser-Galloway to sadly, criminally, drop Maryan’s euthanasia bill because he felt there were more votes in pin-pricking the National Party over  labour law, even though as Opposition there is nothing they can change about Labour law over the next three years, while they could get Maryan’s bill through via the ballot, and save so much suffering and angst.

Quite apart from it’s possible to needle the Government on labour law and have kept Maryan’s euthanasia bill alive, I don’t think Faye cares much for the ins and outs of labour law debate just now.

And our conservative – too many of them Christ-afflicted - MP’s are worse. Including the new chap cloistering himself already inside the Fortress of Legislation, thinking he’s playing Dungeons and Dragons, or some such damned game, ACT’s David Seymour.

David Seymour is ACT’s only MP and leader of what I thought was New Zealand’s only classical liberal party; that’s the assumption many Libertarianz voters would have voted on when the Libertarianz Party disbanded before the 2014 election and gave their vote to ACT. Unfortunately, as the below exchange with Seymour proves, it’s merely another party of social conservatives at best, cynical political game-players at worst: regardless, a wasted vote for every social liberal who is also a capitalist and who has no representation in New Zealand politics. On Andrew Little’s cowardly dropping of Maryan Street’s euthanasia bill by his Labour Party, ACT equally cowardly won’t be picking it up. There are no options - read enlightened politicians who give a shit - from which a euthanasia debate will now be had. Further proof of how dysfunctional – as in how far removed from voters - our democracies have become, even for those who accept the tyranny of majoritarism (which no properly functioning democracy should have succumbed to).

I have more to say at the end of this piece, but first look at what the shonky political game playing in Epsom has dealt to us:


















From this point the ideologically crippled ACT Party and I permanently part company, and this time I mean forever. If you are a social liberal and a freedom loving laissez faire capitalist, any vote for ACT is wasted. Such a pity Jamie Whyte didn’t stand in Epsom: he was that party’s only hope. On Seymour’s refusal to answer to whether he is a social liberal - because he never did - I have to conclude that as with Andrew Little, he is a social conservative – an alarming knowledge to many Labour Party voters as well, one would think (noting no one in their right mind would’ve believed National MPs could get themselves out of the superstitious Middle Ages on social policy issues.)

And again, despite decisions around our deaths need be nothing more than an extension of how we self-manage health issues throughout our adult lives, not a single MP in the infantile sandpit in Wellington will give us that volition, that basic individual right, ownership of our bodies in death. And for those looking at deaths which horrify them, such as Faye Clark, it’s too late. For reasons which are unfathomable to the humane, every sitting MP is prepared to leave Faye to the dreadful options of her last paragraph – ‘ I can refuse food and drink, slowly starve myself to death … my other option is self-inflicted suicide, a lonely, perhaps violent and uncertain death by my own hand, using pills, poison, a rope or knife.’

Rather than compassion for Faye’s horror, John Key and the National MPs are in church worshipping a fairy tale, or some other form of moral cowardice; Andrew Little wants to ineffectively snipe away at comparable irrelevancies he can’t change – comparable, that is, to Faye’s fate - rather than achieve something tangible which would bring his party the saturated exposure surrounding the debate on that bill – which further makes him a dolt; and David Seymour already wants only to play the cynical game of politics, without the humans, thus humanity at all. And this because … why? WHY! For fucks sake. What’s wrong with you rotten bastards? Every one of you, why did you enter politics? How does Faye’s dreadful circumstances, and everyone who will follow her, not fit into that answer?

A last, heart-felt, reasoned and humanistic plea to the conservative foggies which appear to comprise ACT’s board: what is the game-plan? You can, via the ballot, achieve a worthy piece of classical liberal legislation that will get you blanket coverage for the entire period of the debate, including first and second readings then through to hopeful enactment, allowing you to differentiate yourselves from the National Party, or … what? Is the strategy to simply remain the school-boy joke the MSM rightly treats you currently, as you toady up to a statist, pinko government? Talking about game-playing, do any of you have a shred of political instinct?

If my challenge to give New Zealand individuals what they, what we, want, in the form of a civilised, compassionate euthanasia law, is not taken up by any party, then to every sitting MP, a pox on your state-worshipping soulless and pointless careers. As you go to your graves, understand you made life worse for we subjects, not better.

And for reporters: every story like Faye’s, please, go to Key, go to Little, go to Seymour, go to every party leader, put her life and dreadful death in front of them, and ask what the hell are they doing?




Update 1:

Peter Cresswell kindly featured the above post on NotPC.

In respect of that Seymour has penned a ‘right of reply’ which Peter has posted this morning.

I’m afraid Seymour answers to nothing, still won’t tie himself down even to whether he is a social liberal or conservative - and the lengths he has gone to avoid that now gives me the answer - and worse, he seems to believe the National Party is a ‘defender of freedom’.

ACT is dead.

Scroll down on Seymour’s right of reply post above to comments and you’ll see my responses, although they are as follows. A bit scattergun, sorry:


My first comment:

Weasel words David.

Peter's header post linked to my own blog post here:

http://lifebehindtheirondrape.blogspot.co.nz/2015/02/david-seymour-and-acts-continuing.html

That post has one specific purpose, to ask your reason for not championing a euthanasia bill via the ballot?

From that, the question of are you a social liberal on issue of euthanasia, drug legalisation, et al, or a conservative? "Flourishing' tells me nothing.

You know, after all this, you still won't even place yourself on the line on if you personally, even, agree with assisted dying legislation, and the basic individual right transacted by that?

Do you? Forget the politics: do you personally believe in that right?


Though I hate politics and 'public' I'll offer all the back office support I am able to for you to get the equivalent of Maryan Street's Bill into the ballot.


My second comment:

Addendum: I'll offer the back office support for that one bill, but I certainly won't be joining ACT with this wishy washy nonsense.


My third comment:

Jesus, re-read. Helping 'the National Party as the defender of freedom' !!! Really?

And you have no desire to even try and differentiate ACT. What's the point of you or ACT?

Cynical political game playing career building, at best, clueless at worst.



I can’t think of an easier question, and thus a better litmus test, for a classical liberal than do they believe in euthanasia as a basic, inalienable right: take it for granted me and ACT are over.



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Sunday, September 21, 2014

My Random Unstructured Thoughts on NZ’s 2014 Election.


The result was a lot better than some scenarios might have been, but we still have socialist, big brother state government that is more dangerous than an outright Left win as it’s in the guise of a party professing to believe in small state, limited government. 


The most important debate to be had over the next three years in the pursuit of individual liberty, was Labour MP Maryan Street’s Dying With Dignity euthanasia bill. I am gutted that Maryan did not get back in last night as that means her bill is dead, with little likelihood the social conservatives in National will look at opening this essential debate. In a time when the Chief Coroner is trying to change the death certification process in order to catch out humane doctors over-prescribing pain medication to bring on early death in judged circumstances, this issue becomes urgent. I am still sure, although Maryan has denied it, Cunliffe pressured her to pull her bill from the ballot pre-election, an occurrence I’m sure Maryan herself now regrets, and I wish she could have been persuaded to have run with it, even if it had meant fighting her leader.


A heartfelt thank you to Labour MP Kelvin Davis for actually going against that same leader early in this election in taking the fight over Maori seat Te Tai Tokerau  to that abomination of hard-left/1% dirty politics, the Internet Mana Party, and ultimately obliterating them from the political map of New Zealand. In Davis, Labour surely have their most viable option for future leader.


While on the Maori Seats, I wrote a piece last month against the libertarian dogma of one-law-for-all in New Zealand and supportive of Maori self-determination. In that I stated the Maori seats only make sense in the context of Maori identity, not within the Left’s class war where the ruling ethic must be no self-determination allowed any group or individual. Maori Party leader Te Ururoa – wish I could spell that without looking it up each time – Flavell recognised this in his party’s Relationship Agreement – not coalition - with National, but was unfortunately punished for it by Maori voters who gave all but one of the Maori seats to Labour thus consigning their votes, with their hopes, to oblivion. I am glad that National will talk to the Maori Party, and personally hope they give Maori Affairs to Te Ururoa, so Maori continue to have a voice at the table where decisions are made. If Maori had given Maori Party seven seats, imagine the further influence they would’ve had.


The Greens found, again, the country doesn’t believe child poverty, or poverty per se, can be solved by growing the welfare state, but rather by dealing in the causes of poverty, particularly the cycle of dependence that has been grown on the state. Ahem, self-determination.


Thank you New Zealand voters for making Winston Peter’s irrelevant over the next three years.


Thank you New Zealand voters for keeping the xenophobic, authoritarian Conservatives irrelevant for the next three years, although this morning no commentator is giving Colin the congratulations he deserves: 88,000 votes *is* a remarkable feat.


This morning’s interview on The Nation between Patrick Gower, Jamie Whyte and David Seymour was a perfect example of how a cynical MSM operates to exact its hatred of Libertarian politics. Patrick, who had been monotonously grilling his two victims over the disadvantageous scenario of leader Whyte outside Parliament, looked Seymour direct in the eye and asked an unrelated policy question, Seymour began the answer to be interrupted by Patrick saying ‘why doesn’t the party leader answer that’, redirecting the camera to an obviously confused - because he wasn't asked the question - Whyte, so trying by deceit and malice, actually, a school boy level trick, to set ACT up as incompetent where it isn’t. Whyte has valid complaints at the treatment he received by too many journalists, putting the answers they wanted into his mouth, or letting their inner child loose to write some infantile articles and tweets on various pronouncements from him. Normally I like Gower, but this was showmanship, not interviewing.


The Twittersphere was repugnant abundant with the Left wondering why the Left vote  collapsed, given Hager and #dirtypolitics. This is my answer:















This Labour/Green wannabe government would’ve been dreadful: in his paid piece on NBR, editor Nevil Gibson sums up well the Left’s problem:


Labour and the Greens, with partial support from New Zealand First, pinned their hopes on defeating National with populist policies of nationalisation, price controls, higher taxes, increased minimum wages and curbs on immigration, investment and property purchases.


They all signalled major changes in monetary and economic policy that would have been detrimental to business and the country generally.



With that, thank goodness it’s over, I’ve been getting bored with my own blog. I’ll continue on politics from time to time, I’m built that way, but back to the odd book review and, well, life, pieces as well. Plus I’m almost finished a novel I’ve spent the last four years writing in every spare moment I can crib late night and early morning: it is probably unpublishable, (albeit I’ll try the traditional route), but I may soon post some discards. For the rest of today I’m reading David Mitchell’s new novel, The Bone Clocks; I’ve been looking forward to it for weeks.

Monday, July 7, 2014

Euthanasia Debate III: Fact File: Pain Remediation Alone Is Not The ‘Answer’; Polling of British Medical Association has a Lesson for NZ Medical Association.


In the upcoming euthanasia debate that will be held in New Zealand post-election around Labour MP Maryan Streets die with dignity bill, I hope MSM reporters are going to make the New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA) answer the questions I have posed them in my last email: it is not right they will get to (overly) influence the debate, when they refuse to justify their position against a reasoned argument: there is no basis argued by them for stating euthanasia and assisted suicide are ‘unethical’ in what constitutes a policy statement on euthanasia which is first deficient, then negligent in stating that despite euthanasia being – for whatever their reason, it is not explained – ‘unethical’, it is yet ethical to give pain medication in doses that may ‘shorten life’. That remains an ethical mess that could see medical professionals put needlessly in fear of their careers, or freedom, given the current actions of the Chief Coroner MacLean to change the death certification process, so such doctors who are over-medicating can be found out, and presumably convicted; a course of action taken by Judge MacLean which NZMA has plainly not anticipated. Furthermore, the evidence grows that worldwide, as within their own association, there exists no consensus against euthanasia amongst medical professionals.


The majority of this blog is my mind working my life out, I’m not interested in simply copying and pasting the dailies with a one line opinion attached, however, on this post – and throughout on this topic - I will be deliberately derivative simply to show the wealth of educated, knowledgeable and wise support for euthanasia that exists, and also the facts surrounding the science of medicine that still leaves many of us inevitably dying in pain. The below is a summary of two articles that appeared in The Guardian over the last week, namely:






The UK is debating its own dying with dignity legislation, known as Lord Falconer’s assisted dying bill, which comes up for its second reading on July 18, meaning there are many facts coming out of their national discussion, relevant to the coming debate here, and I’m glad to say, all of which backs up virtually the totality of my points made previously in correspondence with Dr Mark Peterson, Chairman of the New Zealand Medical Association (NZMA). To begin with, the position of the British Medical Association, like our own Association, following the World Medical Association, is against euthanasia, however, the British Association has polled it’s members, and 61% of them believe it appropriate their Association remain neutral in that country’s debate, because as I stated to Dr Peterson, the issue of euthanasia is not about the medical profession, it’s about us; our lives and deaths; our choice as patients.


many supposedly representative medical bodies have a stance of opposition to assisted dying. This is despite the view of the majority of doctors (some 61% in a recent poll) that organisations such as the British Medical Association should remain neutral, as this is a matter for society, not the medical profession, to decide.


Furthermore in response to Dr Peterson’s scaremongering to our press a fortnight ago that if euthanasia were brought in ‘where would it stop’, the mentally incapacitated, the elderly and infirm, et al, overseas experience in those many jurisdictions where euthanasia and assisted suicide are legal show this simply isn’t the case; regarding, by way of example, the state of Oregon:


The 17-year experience of the Death with Dignity Act in Oregon has shown that a law similar to the one proposed by Falconer (though the latter has more safeguards) can be administered safely. The worries expressed by opponents that it might have adverse consequences for medical care and society have not been realised. The Oregon Hospice Association initially opposed assisted dying. It withdrew its opposition after eight years of the law, finding that there was "no evidence that assisted dying undermined Oregon's end-of-life care or harmed the interests of vulnerable people".


The British campaign has benefited over recent months, by one of Britain’s most senior medical professional’s publicly supporting Lord Falconer’s bill: Professor John Ashton:


Doctors should be able to help terminally ill patients end their lives days or weeks before they die, one of the leaders of Britain's medical profession has urged.


Terminally ill patients should be provided with the professional equivalent of midwives to help ease the pain and suffering and if necessary shorten the end of their lives, said Prof John Ashton, president of the Faculty of Public Health.


He demanded a change in the law so that doctors caring for people who are dying can end their suffering by giving a lethal dose of drugs to those who want it without the risk of prosecution.


He is the most senior doctor yet to publicly back patients' right to die.


Regarding assisted dying, Prof Ashton states:


"All over the country people are spending their last days and weeks in major discomfort because their medical carers are not willing to accept that it's the end of the line and to give them the necessary sedation to just speed things up a bit."


Just as midwives help babies come into the world, some terminally ill patients in pain may seek the help of a health professional to end their life. "We have midwives; we need an equivalent of a midwife at the end of life," he said.


He also urged the NHS to stop "keeping people going at any price" when they are near death by doing everything possible to prolong their lives, such as using drips and trying other forms of treatment, which he described as "a big problem".



And striking at the heart of our Dr Peterson’s claims to a medical consensus against euthanasia, I note this quotation:





Prof Raymond Tallis, the chairman of Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying, a 1,000-strong group of doctors and nurses, backed Ashton. "It's totally appropriate that they should have the assistance of physicians if they have intolerable symptoms. It's very much the humane response to human suffering," said Tallis, an ex-professor of geriatric medicine at Manchester University.

Ashton had previously said that he "absolutely" supported doctor-assisted suicide. "As a humanist I believe each person as a citizen has an exclusive right to the final freedom – the choice of when and how to exit life," he told the BMJ.



Before I end this round up, I want to press home a point that exists indirectly in all of the above, that being palliative care leaves many, still, dying in barbaric suffering:


Ashton's call for "midwives for the end of life" is a response to a serious problem in the way the medical profession approaches the care of dying people. In part, as Ashton points out, this is driven by the false expectation that there is a medical answer to every problem and an unwillingness to recognise when medical interventions are futile, or worse, compounding the patient's suffering.


The development of palliative care, in which Britain has led the way, is partly a corrective to this unthinking attitude. It begins with the acknowledgement that there is a time to move away from aggressive treatments and the illusion of cure to a focus on symptom control. But we need to recognise that while this serves the needs of the majority of patients, many still suffer terribly.


A recent survey has found that even in hospices (which offer the best possible care) 2% of people – at least 6,000 adults - have no relief during the last three months of life. We can anticipate that this proportion rises for the final days and hours.


No civilised society can ignore this level of suffering. On grounds of compassion alone, the Falconer bill must command our support. If it is passed into law it would be possible for terminally ill, mentally competent adults with a settled wish to die to be given a life-ending prescription by a doctor.


For people such as me, we look on this debate in confusion at how, by the twenty first century, any individual or body could deny a compassionate euthanasia. But we don’t have to look far for the cause. As I explained in my email to the NZMA, that Association hides behind their deficient policy which merely channels a darkness from our past in the form of those who are the vanguard of that belief the lot of humanity is suffering ordained by some ridiculous, arbitrary and monstrous God: Christians. Back to the situation in Britain:


Andrea Williams, the chief executive of the Christian lobby group Christian Concern, led criticism of Ashton. "To say that it's care for a doctor to kill is … a complete denial of their Hippocratic oath," she said. "A doctor is there to care for the patient, not to kill the patient. Midwives joyfully bring life into the world. It's not a doctor's place to play God at the end of life."


Here’s an idea Andrea: grow up. Thankfully, unlike Islam, we in the West had our Enlightenment to blunt the sword of an infantile obsession with Christian myth making; please don’t hold our lives, and the nature of our deaths, our choices, to your medieval faith and superstition. Your cruel God does not own my life, I do. And Prof John Ashton is very clear about what those who would deny us sovereignty over our own bodies are dooming some portion of us to:


Those who oppose the bill must recognise that in doing so they are riding roughshod over a fundamental principle of medicine and medical ethics – respect for patient choice. And they should also remember the alternatives to medically assisted dying: botched suicide attempts, death by voluntary starvation and dehydration, pilgrimages to Switzerland and help from one-off amateurs who have the threat of prosecution hanging over them.


And I note already, sadly, Prime Minister John Key is on record this weekend he won’t be voting for Maryan Street’s bill because it goes ‘too far’ - and before you get to it, go to hell, John, with the watered down 'political' version you're no doubt worming your way toward. We are so badly served in New Zealand, where our choice seems to be between a left wing that will destroy us economically, while tethering our individual lives tighter and tighter to the Big State, or right wing conservatives who still hold the Big State front and centre of our lives in issues such as euthanasia (abortion, et al).  There is no choice for freedom loving capitalists who are social liberals, so be warned right wing: you’ve had my vote up until this election simply because of economics, however, this election, I may yet make a protest party vote to Labour, for the only reason of giving Maryan moral support. Now if you read my blog you’ll understand what a sacrifice that would be, but from that, right wing parties, you better start figuring this out, because the issue of getting such civilised law through that for once defends my rights, and my sovereignty over my own damned body, is that important to me I will party vote Labour, this once.


For those of you who support euthanasia, Maryan is going to require all the help and pressure she can muster to prick the consciences of the too many old fogey authoritarian social conservatives in our Fortress of Legislation: email them, lobby them, and then email Dr Peterson, care of the New Zealand Medical Association, that perhaps he might want to put pen to paper and responsibly answer my last letter to him: you can read that letter here. Because if we can get the NZMA to at least stand on the side-line, there may be the inkling of a chance. Not otherwise though.




Footnote:
 


Whaleoil is running the partisan line that John Key is the hero in the piece who is prepared to discuss this issue prior to the election. Unfortunately Key’s statement came from a mere discussion, and his stance will be counter-productive. My thoughts on it are as I have posted to Whale’s post:
 


Unfortunately Key will only support a watered down version of Maryan's upcoming bill, thus he will be voting down that bill. His comments were only from a general discussion, there is no talk of him changing the current rules, so by not voting for that bill, we will be even further away from civilised assisted dying legislation. That's a disaster, especially in light of the chief coroner's current efforts to change death certification process so those doctors currently mercifully over-prescribing pain medication in such circumstances can be found and convicted.
 


Key's better approach would be to work with Maryan to ensure we get legislation in the statute books (and he should tell Judge MacLean to pull his head in.)
 


Update 1:

Well my offer to give a party vote to Labour hasn't lasted long. On David Cunliffe's mooting of changing the burden of proof in rape cases on a Labour win, that is, that every person charged with rape no longer must be proven guilty, but must instead prove they had consent, I would be voting for a basic individual right - euthanasia - at the expense of the very foundation of a free Western society, for once you take away innocent until proven guilty, there's no free West left anymore.

Note the burden of proof already is reversed in tax cases to run the tax surveillance state, so there is no free West, but extending that to criminal jurisdictions such as rape is *the* end. Mind you I had foretold in this earlier post how identity politics and Marxist feminism would lead to this.


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