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I think of two deaths. The last stages of my mother’s liver and bowel cancer were dreadful: don’t imagine morphine is a gentle floating away – it det… - Polly Toynbee
" "I think of two deaths. The last stages of my mother’s liver and bowel cancer were dreadful: don’t imagine morphine is a gentle floating away – it detaches the mind, but not always the pain, while blocking the gut until an undignified death, obsessed by constipation. By the time her state was bad enough to long for death, it was far too late for her plea to go to Dignitas in Switzerland: those who take that grim and expensive path to a desolate death room need to go early, long before life becomes insufferable.
Some people might never have reached that point, but fear accelerates their departure. My mother, despite good palliative care, begged her GP to help her die. It might have been done once upon a time, he said, but since Harold Shipman’s multiple murders of elderly patients, every ampoule is counted, making it far too dangerous for a doctor to do anything of the kind. "Oh, where’s Dr Shipman when you want him!" she said to him, with what was left of her laugh. So she suffered on needlessly to the bitter end, and we suffered with her helplessly.
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About Polly Toynbee
Mary Louisa "Polly" Toynbee (born 27 December 1946) is a British journalist and writer. She has been a columnist for The Guardian newspaper since 1998. Toynbee previously worked as social affairs editor for the BBC (1988–1995) and also for The Independent newspaper. Before joining the BBC, she had written for The Observer and The Guardian. She is vice-president of Humanists UK, having previously served as its president between 2007 and 2012. She was also named Columnist of the Year at the 2007 British Press Awards. She became a patron of right to die organization My Death, My Decision in 2021. She was a candidate for the Social Democratic Party in the 1983 general election. She now broadly supports the Labour Party.
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Mary Louisa Toynbee
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Additional quotes by Polly Toynbee
Research published this month into OECD countries shows the poor gamble away a larger proportion of their income than the better off. Inevitably the temptations are greater when a £4,000 jackpot feels life-changing to someone on the minimum wage. So countries with more poor people - like the UK - are likely to gamble more. Britain is already the fifth highest gambler among developed nations.
Dominic Cummings was brought in by Johnson to swing a wrecking ball at Whitehall, local councils, the BBC and anything that smelled of good government. No surprise that those who don't believe in the state have made the worst possible fist of running it in a crisis. Brexit embodied their mindset: break away, break things and disrupt.
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[At HMP Pentonville where the visitors centre was closing] There was, for example, the case of a youngish woman with a large family who visited her husband every fortnight. Each time they came they returned to the centre in a more miserable state. One day they were in tears and the youngest child was sick. The woman said her husband was clearly ill. He had been wild and violent. Each visit he seemed to be getting worse.
He was receiving no treatment. The centre called the assistant governor and asked for an urgent inquiry. He acted at once. The man was found to be in appalling state. He was rushed to the medical wing where he was diagnosed as having Huntington's Chorea, an hereditary disease which strikes suddenly in middle age, bringing insanity followed by death. The whole family had been watching, visit by visit, as their father went mad before their eyes.
No doubt the prison officers did not like the implied criticism of their negligence. There were many other such incidents, though the centre was as careful as possible not to make the officers feel they were being criticised.
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