Readers' Letters: Assisted dying would be a good thing but palliative care must improve

It is surely significant that when asked about Assisted Dying in relation to Palliative Care, Liam McArthur responded, “we need both”. What is certain is that the considerable number who seek assisted dying, at both great expense and undoubted discomfort, in Switzerland and Canada, will welcome this bill. It's surely unacceptable that assisting a loved one to die is deemed a criminal offence

It's important that assisted dying remains a moral option, alongside palliative care. The downside of medical advances, where 80 becomes the new 60, is that the quantity of life can far too often outstrip its quality.

Hopefully, in the not too distant future, both palliative care and assisted dying will share the status as acts of mercy within end of life care.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Error of judgment

It really is quite shameful that a majority of our MSPs now regard certain lives as unworthy (“ ‘Landmark moment’ as MSPs vote to back assisted dying bill”, 14 May) and in some Orwellian manner believe introducing state-sponsored suicide is compassionate, caring and dignified.

Truth be told, whatever its motives and means, so-called assisted dying consists in ending the lives of the disabled, sick, or dying. It is morally unacceptable.

Therefore, an act which causes death in order to eliminate suffering constitutes a murder gravely contrary to the dignity of the human person, and for those of faith, to the respect due to the living God. The error of judgment into which our MSPs have fallen does not change the nature of this murderous act, which must always be forbidden and excluded.

One can only hope that they will find their moral compass and reject this harmful Bill at the next stage.

Martin Conroy, Cockburnspath, Berwickshire

Action needed

Marie Curie remains neutral on the matter of assisted dying, but we are absolutely not neutral on the need to urgently fix end of life care.

The Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill is intended to be about choice for people at the end of life. But there is no choice at all if people can’t get the palliative and social care they need when they are dying.

As the Bill progresses we’ll be pressing for amendments to make sure that if it passes, it recognises and delivers people’s right to palliative care.

Nine out of ten people would benefit from palliative care, but far too many miss out. With major funding issues, workforce shortages, a postcode lottery for access to services, huge gaps in out of hours care and an aging population, palliative and end of life care is in crisis.

Many MSPs spoke of the value of palliative care and the need to improve access to quality palliative care across Scotland. While their support is welcome, we’ve heard these calls previously, and the warm words from the Scottish Government in response. But warm words won’t fix end of life care.

We’ve waited far too long for the promised Scottish Government Strategy for Palliative Care. Dying people in Scotland need action, accountability and clarity. After years of strategies and steering groups it’s time for legislation guaranteeing the Right to Palliative Care, with clear standards so people know how to get the care and support they need, and accountability for Government and Health Boards to make sure palliative care is properly resourced and accessible to everyone.

Amy Dalrymple, Associate Director of Policy & Public Affairs, Marie Curie Scotland, Edinburgh

Torpedo ferry

Regarding your story “Ferguson Marine reveals major new delay to Glen Rosa ferry completion” (13 May), is there anyone in Scotland willing and able to put a torpedo into the Glen Rosa to allow the Scottish Government to have a little more revenue for meaningful purposes, such as improving school education or providing more money for necessary social care to relieve the pressure on hospitals, rather than pouring a constant stream of our money, year after year, into a project that is clearly never going to produce a seaworthy vessel to serve the people of Arran?

Then perhaps Ferguson Marine, who are clearly unable to build ships, could start the necessary liquidation process.

Magnus Peterson, Dunblane, Stirling

We’re sunk

When will it ever end ? Another £3 million and another nine months delay.

I bet when there is a final accounting for the two ferries the bill will be in excess of £500m,

The lesson from this SNP debacle is that on no account should Fergusson Marine be retained in public ownership, it should be sold to private enterprise or closed down if there are no takers, a suggestion I made in this column a number of years ago

The SNP record of public ownership and management has been nothing short of disastrous and their reign should not be allowed to continue post the 2026 elections.

Robin Jack, Edinburgh

Time for change

The SNP gained power at Holyrood under Alex Salmond in 2007, with 47 seats. Labour took 46 seats, the Tories 17, the Liberals 16, and there was one independent. By 2011 the nationalists had an outright majority.

But the situation at Holyrood is destined to change. The SNP's fate will mirror that of the 2024 general election; they will sustain huge losses. No amount of campaigning by John Swinney and his few remaining followers will see them in power after the Holyrood election in the spring of 2026. They will return to the backbenches, as will their Scottish Greens colleagues.

Hopefully the Labour/Lib Dems coalition will re-emerge after so many years of SNP misguidance and provide strong administrations at both Parliamentary and local authority levels.

Closer links between Holyrood and Westminster will be re-established.

Robert IG Scott, Northfield, Ceres, Fife

Save ourselves

Ah, the familiar stench of Westminster’s self-regarding nationalism! This tawdry spectacle, where the political class engages in a vulgar competition to exhibit the most pinched and parochial mindset, now presents Scotland with a choice as stark as it is insulting. Either genuflect before England’s slide into a Little Englander delusion, or, with a sharp, decisive movement, exit stage left towards independence.

Consider Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour; once feigning custodianship of something resembling solidarity, they’ve now donned the very jackboots of nativism with an enthusiasm that would likely elicit a pursed lip even from the ghost of Enoch Powell. If this dismal display constitutes “progressive” governance under the Union Jack, then Scottish independence transcends mere preference; it becomes a categorical moral imperative.

The Scots, long treated as inconvenient bystanders to Westminster’s authoritarian whims, now find themselves witnessing a chilling preview of the xenophobic theatre that Nigel Farage’s grinning cohort will soon seek to codify. The subtext is as clear as it is ominous: a state that brandishes xenophobia to obscure its own profound inadequacies is actively conditioning its populace for a descent into tyranny.

These architects of austerity, these peddlers of neoliberal nostrums, Starmer and his ilk, aren’t solving crises of housing and healthcare by scapegoating migrants.

They are, instead, sanitising the rancid rhetoric of the far-right, diligently laying the groundwork for Farage’s inevitable populist ascent. This, my friends, is how the insidious creep of something truly unpleasant takes hold: not with overt thuggery, but with the blandishments of policy papers and the mendacity of press releases, as “sensible” politicians launder prejudice into the language of governance.

Scotland, with its lingering inclination towards a more civic nationalism and a decidedly European sensibility, serves as the proverbial canary in this poisoned political mine. The very notion of remaining tethered to this sinking, xenophobic vessel isn’t merely politically untenable; it smacks of a craven complicity. George Orwell, with his customary acuity, noted the nationalists’ penchant for abandoning reality in favour of power fantasies. Starmer’s Britain, obsessed with its border theatrics and utterly devoid of empathy, has embraced precisely that delusion.

For Scotland, independence is not a separatist fancy; it is a necessary act of self-preservation. To remain is to tacitly endorse a regime that confuses cruelty with strength and diversity with decay. To depart is to reject the looming spectre of Farage, a man who would sooner burn the principles of human rights than share a pint with someone who is deemed insufficiently “British”.

The spectacle is complete: a Labour Party so terrified of losing a few votes to Farage’s noxious brand that it clumsily imitates him, thereby all but guaranteeing his eventual triumph. Scotland, at least, possesses the intellectual honesty to recognise the stench of incipient fascism on the wind – and the moral fortitude to declare, unequivocally, Not in our name.

Alan Hinnrichs, Dundee

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