The Telegraph page hidden until The Telegraph advises
Suicide is for the rich cared-for
SIR - Today is Carers Rights Day as seen on other pages. Carer support provision in every county is available to all unpaid carers. However, little attention has been given to the cared-for who have decided they can no longer be a burden to their carers.
On 7 June 2011, Telegraph readers learned about Peter Smedley who had planned his own assisted suicide and travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end his life. He was a millionaire hotelier and scion of the Smedley’s tinned food empire, and had been an intensely private man.
Is it not time to make such choice available to all in the UK irrespective of income? Dying at home, if inevitable, is the ideal. Why must we be forced into travelling so far away to achieve our end?
Help with a wide variety of unpaid carer topics is available to all via carerworld.info - a nonpartisan website.
Alan F Harrison (Prof)
Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire
Notes for Letter page and Newsdesk staff
There is more to this than a letter. If you do an article, the letter won't be needed. All I ask is the mention of
carerworld.info
You may well have plans in respect to Carers Rights Day. My purpose is to raise awareness of Carers Rights Day on 29 Nov in conjunction with The Telegraph, using this website.
The Updates page, with your cooperation, will have a link - Suicide is for the rich cared-for
As soon as I receive a go-ahead email, the announcement will be posted.
The page for readers is based on what you see here minus comment aimed in your direction.
Alan Harrison (Prof) Contact
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Suicide is for the rich cared-for
SIR - Today is Carers Rights Day as seen on other pages. Carer support provision in every county is available to all unpaid carers. However, little attention has been given to the cared-for who have decided they can no longer be a burden to their carers.
On 7 June 2011, Telegraph readers learned about Peter Smedley who had planned his own assisted suicide and travelled to the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland to end his life. He was a millionaire hotelier and scion of the Smedley’s tinned food empire, and had been an intensely private man.
Is it not time to make such choice available to all in the UK irrespective of income? Dying at home, if inevitable, is the ideal. Why must we be forced into travelling so far away to achieve our end?
Help with a wide variety of unpaid carer topics is available to all via carerworld.info - a nonpartisan website.
Alan F Harrison (Prof)
Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire
The last para might end thus
Help with a wide variety of unpaid carer topics is available to all via carerworld.info - a nonpartisan website. It is generally upbeat and recycled songs help browbeaten carers through the jungle of provision. Sing one or more today and at future carer events!
Here is some material of possible use. After the songs, there are Telegraph articles. They begin with the Smedley situation on the right.
Songs
The graphic caption says "Plenty to sing about". Here are some recycled songs:
- Clap your hands
- The hot-water bottle song
- Carers, carers, (dem) carers
- Joshua at the Battle of Red Tape Square
Plenty to sing about.
Carers Rights Day - Carers UK
This year Carers Rights Day is taking place on Friday 29 November and the theme is 'rights, advice, support', focusing on ensuring that carers understand their rights and get access to good quality advice that can support them to care.
Carers Rights Day aims to make carers aware of different kinds of practical support that could support them to care ..
Each year Carers UK organises Carers Rights Day to:
- Increase the take up of benefits – it’s estimated that millions of carers’ benefits aren’t claimed each year.
- Make sure carers know their rights – every year, more than 2 million people become carers, ...
- Guide carers towards practical support - it's not just about benefits. .
- Raise awareness of the needs of carers - Carers Rights Day raises awareness of the needs of carers with the public, decision makers and professionals.
The declining provision of public toilets is dealt with at No. 9 here.
If you can use this to good effect, you're better than me.
The 'Allo - 'Allo NHS - by a GP
Where are zey putting all the earth from ze tunnel?’
‘In the graves they have already dug.’
‘But where are zey putting all ze earth from ze graves?’
‘They are digging more graves…’
And there you have it — the NHS, in a nutshell.
more and comment here
7 Jun 2011
Millionaire hotelier Peter Smedley's Dignitas assisted suicide - filmed by the BBC
A few days after Peter Smedley’s death last December, his close friends found individually-written letters from him in their post, telling each one how much they had meant to him. ...
“We didn’t know until after the event that he had gone to Dignitas, and we didn’t know about the film until we went to the memorial service and the film crew was there,” one of his closest friends said last night.
Telegraph 7 Jun 2011 here
Chicks: helping the children who care for others
In the cramped council flat that Gemma Davis shared with her parents and five siblings, family meals were unheard of; there was no space for a table.
It was only when Gemma was 12, and went away on a respite break for children from disadvantaged backgrounds, that she had her first real “family dinner”.
Sunday Telegraph 24 Nov, page 20 here.
The Cole Morton Special Report,
Sunday Telegraph, 24 November, p 13
The bullies picked on Simon Walters because he was different. That’s what they always do. The 14-year-old from Wolverhampton wasn’t too fat or too thin for them; he didn’t have a different colour skin.
pagetop here