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GeronimoJones

Listed below are comments made by GeronimoJones between Sunday, 12th July 2009 and Sunday, 2nd August 2009.

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A message to you, Rudy! 6:10pm on 02 Aug 2009 My concern with euthenasia is that a law change would give us a two tier system (tha favoured option of Nu Labour right on thinking) where if you're rich enough you get the option of the easy way out, otherwise the poor masses are stuck with suffering.

I now understand that Nu Labour decided under Tony Blair that the white working class vote was a 'gimme' so they decided to spread their appeal, and chose to target the middle classes. This was the Mandelson way, and they seek to rekindle those magic years by bringing him back from the 'stiffs'. Their thinking is so fundamentally deranged, and a such a sign of desperation, I had wondered if it could be possible for them to do worse than had been projected. I now know they can. If they think that any working class person is going to find the smarm of Mandelson appealing, they've lost touch - big time.

Though I personally have little sympathy for the hacker who is under threat of extradition to the USA, I can't help noting that others, actually charged with terrorism, are managing to remain beyond the clutches of the USA without any trouble, even though at least one is claimed to have given finacial support to the Taliban - the organisation we are supposedly sending our troops to fight in Afghanistan. You couldn't make it up.

Harriet Harmon derided the Tories today for taking for granted they would be the next government. Well Harriet - that's simply because they have no credible opposition. We can only hope you don't finish off the scorched earth policy you have been implementing so far.
A message to you, Rudy! 10:39am on 02 Aug 2009 The issue of euthenasia, I have to admit, does send my head spinning, because even if the government sanctions people assisting suicide for the terminally ill, this is allowing the option for the small few who are wealthy enough to be able to send their relatives to 'Dignitas'.

The discussions I have read and heard don't cover half the issues involved that we have raised, and I agree that withdrawing nourishment from someone terminally ill is not a humane option as it will lead to various organ shutdowns which won't be a pleasant experience. Withdrawing food may soothe the conscience of medical staff, but surely they must use the method least discomforting to the patient, not the one that makes them feel better.

I know that my thoughts have been clouded by my experience at one of the NHS's 'nutcase' hospitals where you can be left screaming in pain without relief, and yet drug addicts can saunter in without a care in the world and get morphine by claiming a fictional complaint. I won't mention what that complaint is.
A message to you, Rudy! 1:56pm on 01 Aug 2009 I know the risks and problems meninwhitecoats associated with euthenasia, but what concerns me is that it exists unofficially already, without any form of control.

The trouble is that targets and expense already exist as treatment limiting factors which currently take precedence over the wishes of the patient. I'm only alive today because I'm not stupid and I made a FoI request for my medical notes.

Hearing David Cameron's story of sleeping on the floor at his child's bedside appears to indicate that people of note receive a preferred level of treatment in NHS hospitals, as he wouldn't have wanted to sleep on the floor of the hospital I was in.

The NHS make life and death decisions, that cannot be argued. My experience and concern is at what stage they do that. Is it done before providing treatment to avoid expense and missing targets ? I believe that in some parts of the NHS it is.

In writing this comment, the logic has occurred to me that in making any decision regarding euthenasia, the patient and relatives will be guided mostly by the advice and guidance of the medical staff, and as I have experienced, they will be under pressure from the NHS authorities who may have concerns other that the patient's medical interests.

My feeling is that the patient should have the right to decide themselves, as the NHS already take that right unto themselves, but I would be wary of basing that decision purely on the guidance of NHS medical staff, who operate under the pressure of targets and finance.
A message to you, Rudy! 10:03pm on 31 Jul 2009 I admit that I don't quite understand the euthenasia issue.

Do we imagine that the NHS doesn't already allow patients to die already ? I won't drag up my experience again. I'll just consider that to have been a one in a billion malfunction (hollow laugh).

Frankly it would be cruelty if hospitals didn't decide at some stage that further treatment is merely prolonging suffering and not achieving anything. If that is accepted then the NHS is telling us that they wish to assume the GOd-like authority to decide for us when to terminate our existence, but deny it to ourselves.

The medical profession must be careful not to take their conceit to outrageous levels.I'm still rather dazed to hear that paying patients from abroad were able to obtain organs donated freely by UK citizens. The example published didn't sound like the working of any reciprocal EU arrangement.
Nobody comes out well of this... 02:37am on 13 Jul 2009 I can only gasp in awe that Gordon, who always preaches to us from such a lofty pulpit of moral superiority, is using our troops to install a government in Afghanistan we'd condemn in any other part of the world.
Nobody comes out well of this... 9:43pm on 12 Jul 2009 Gordon and Miliband might be interested to contact the people from whom I took the quote about the political situation in Afghanistan.

They appear well informed with better credentials than the Taliban, war lords and drugs dealers they are used to dealing with.

"RAWA, the Revolutionary Association of the Women of Afghanistan, was established in Kabul, Afghanistan, in 1977 as an independent political/social organization of Afghan women fighting for human rights and for social justice in Afghanistan. The founders were a number of Afghan woman intellectuals under the sagacious leadership of Meena who in 1987 was assassinated in Quetta, Pakistan, by Afghan agents of the then KGB in connivance with fundamentalist band of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar . RAWAs objective was to involve an increasing number of Afghan women in social and political activities aimed at acquiring womens human rights and contributing to the struggle for the establishment of a government based on democratic and secular values in Afghanistan."

If I were a journalist I might consider contacting them to get an opinion, from their perspective, on how well Gordon's doing with his strategy.
Nobody comes out well of this... 7:03pm on 12 Jul 2009 Afghanistan Rights Monitor

"The report claimed that criminal charges pending against infamous Uzbek warlord Abdul Rashid Dostum and his suspension from a senior army post were dropped in exchange for the votes he would bring from his party.

"Those close to President Karzai and Dostum say the warlord has been promised at least three ministries in Karzai?s future government," it said.

Another "ruthless warlord" Mohammad Muhaqiq came out in public support for Karzai because he was promised two provinces and at least three ministries in government, ARM said."

Is this the democracy Gordon brings at the muzzle of a rifle to the people of Afghanistan ? - and don't doubt for one second that they'll turn Taliban the minute the West turns its back.

It'a mess and always has been. Standing in the middle of it is fatal.
Nobody comes out well of this... 5:30pm on 12 Jul 2009 Gordon Brown is certainly going for a major footnote in history.

After a catastrophic financial disaster back home, resolved by rewarding those responsible with the contents of the country's economic coffers, he's now seeking to re-enact the disastrous Shah of Persia debacle. In doing so he's embarking on a schedule of military campaigns that would impress Richard the Lionheart, and this from a Socialist government that would shrivel at any suggestion of colonial aspirations.

It wouldn't be so bad if it were well considered with a hope of success and not likely to prove totally counter productive. He was put in power (or not as it happens) to look after the interests of the UK and its citizens, which now also happens to include a sizeable number of persons who won't look kindly on a long drawn out conflict with their kith and kin.

The greater threat from yougsters going to terror camps in Afghanistan is that they'll get robbed and murdered out there and it's doubtful they'll learn anything they couldn't google from home in the UK.

Having persuaded Pakistan to launch a blitzkrieg on the tribal territories, surely asking their co-operation to monitor or block UK citizens visitng terror camps would be easy.

If the Government could then stop itself from greeting and adopting every terrorist and undesirable who lands on our soil, we might get somewhere. It's almost as if the government wants to create an influx of Afghan refugees fleeing from our soldiers.

The BNP must be quite confused by criticism from Labour, but reassured that their policy of driving half the population of Afghanistan to our borders will be fantastic for their chances at the next election.

The army is in an impossible situation.
Nobody comes out well of this... 2:32pm on 12 Jul 2009 # 113

I must say meninwhitecoats, that for someone renowned for talking complete drivel, for Gordon Brown to claim that launching war on people living in a desert hell hole will keep terrorists off the streets of the UK, is indicative of someone losing his last vestiges of sanity.
Nobody comes out well of this... 10:57am on 12 Jul 2009 Clearly the solution to the Afghanistan problem is for our Government to impose a Nu Labour regime, a mirror image of itself, riven with corruption, but it must be done in an eco-friendly manner without hurting anyone at the point of a gun.

At the behest of the West the Pakistan government took a more robust stance, and anyone notice their use of artillery ? A highly indiscriminate form of ordinance delivery that achieves area clearance more than destruction of the enemy, but that's what armies do. It's highly effective but very messy, though it does avoid you having to shake hands with the enemy and getting your head blown off.

In Afghanistan I'd get local commanders to have a talk with the local tribal chief and tell him that 25% of his poppy fields will be torched if any IED's go off or attacks on NATO forces occur in his area. As tribal chief, he knows everything going on in his area and has it under his control. If he didn't get the message, a second offence means he loses 50%. The benefit is that you're talking a language Afghans understand, you don't look weak and pathetic, you aren't killing people and even if it doesn't work you are dealing with the opium trade and depriving the Taliban of finance.

I can't help feeling that government in Afghanistan, the opium trade and the Taliban are so inextricably interwoven, that you can't have any one of them without the others. The government we want in place wants the opium trade to continue and that finances the Taliban.

Our government are being played for fools.

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