The Reader: Why assisted dying can be a good ending

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Campaign: Noel Conway, who suffers from motor neurone disease, campaigning last year for the law on assisted suicide to be changed
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4 February 2019
WEST END FINAL

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As a lifelong campaigner for disabled people’s rights, I strongly disagree with those who claim the disabled would be made more vulnerable or marginalised if assisted dying were legalised. A change in the law is supported by 86 per cent of disabled people and the fact is that assisted dying is about allowing terminally ill people to die well, not about devaluing or ending the lives of people who may otherwise be helped.

This is supported by 82 per cent of the public. Such strength of feeling suggests to me that change can and will come to the UK, as it has done in American and Australian states, across Canada and, increasingly, within Asia and Europe.
John Cameron

EDITOR'S REPLY

Dear John

When I was in Parliament I voted — like most MPs of all parties — against changes to the law on assisted dying. I thought it would make patients vulnerable to pressure from families and undermine the central focus on life in medical treatment. I now think I was wrong. We need to help those who are terminally ill and in pain to end their lives in a dignified way.

George Osborne, Editor

Knife-crime orders seem so anti-youth

Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s proposed knife-crime protection orders put me in mind of ASBOs, PSPOs and Labour’s anti-youth policies, with their dispersal zones and curfews on children. Neither seem aware that an accused person is innocent until proven guilty.
Mark Taha

I would be interested to see statistics in respect of the vaunted “children are carrying knives for protection” claim. I doubt it, but if they are, the police will have an even greater job in loco parentis.
Penny Baker

Give police more respect than ‘filth’

Why do the scriptwriters of EastEnders keep referring to the police as the “filth”? Characters Phil Mitchell and Mo from the Slater family often use this vile nickname in their lines.

At a time when our police are having to deal with gang and knife crime, it can do no good to have them being given such an obscene tag. As we are talking watershed time here, why not tone it down a bit with “old Bill” or “plod”? We live in a time of being politically correct, and yet our police are openly slandered.
Douglas Went

Let Onasanya learn from her mistakes

I disagree with Robert Readman and Robert Boston [“Why is jailed MP still allowed to draw a parliamentary salary?”, January 31]. Fiona Onasanya worked hard to become an MP and has paid dearly for her gross stupidity.

Let her serve her sentence and return to Parliament, thereafter a wiser person.

Furthermore, her conviction is under appeal and many well be successful. I, for one, wish her well.
Dominic Shelmerdine

Power of Parliament over the Crown

Michael Rolfe is right: the Crown does have powers over Parliament [The Reader, January 29]. But as Charles I discovered, Parliament can ignore them.
Michael Paraskos

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