But what happens when I'm gone

 Subject: But what happens when I'm gone.

 

Many of you are planning in the next year to go on holiday or have that home improvement started. Those with a more far reaching plan might be planning to emigrate within a two year window or buy a car or sell the house. It's the status of our assumption about life and the part we play in it that allows us to be confident that we will be here but the plight of Esther Rantzem who is stricken with stage four lung cancer and her desire to be able to end her life on her own terms when the time comes highlights the conundrum we face when we get old. There's lots of information regarding frailty in old age, dementia, pain management and a host of unmentionable diseases which strike as the body runs out of puff but of the mental realisation that at sometime in the fairly near future you won't be around to do the many things you thought represented the 'you' especially to be amongst family and friends is a hard pill to swallow. The best that people can say of us is that he is remembered with warmth but the fact is  you soon become only a fleeting thought, an occasional random chemical interaction in someone's brain which presents a memory of an image which in no way represents the person.
This incomplete memorial, other than those who have done something truly memorable and have as their memorial a building named after them or a scientific discovery, a series of books perhaps that keep your thoughts and perhaps your personality fresh.
Your children perhaps and their ability to cleave out a path of their own is perhaps your greatest achievement since their achievement carries your gene and a sense of your story which they take on board in fragments when growing up.
It seems a poor result when we spent so much time applauding ourself for perhaps thinking well of others. This bubble we carry around is largely froth on the side of the glass, your substance, like the froth made up largely of air you are much the result of your environment and the time you were born into.
I have been watching a select committee sitting in the House of Lords who are debating the asylum arrangements in sending immigrants to Rwanda. I'm fascinated listening to the high minded legalities which are being discussed regarding the attitude and ability of the Rwanda government to absorbing the aspects of local governance regarding the  treatment the immigrant might receive once getting there. It reminded me of the debates which went on as we approached our leaving the European Union. Experts in the many of the matters concerning our future trade and the ability to even carry out trade in any meaningful way. People were invited to give evidence and almost one hundred percent, the experts were fearful that what we had, in our European relationship, would be frittered away and so it became true. On the other side we had the politicians who seemed to have skin in the game and were handing out sound bites rather than proper well researched argument.
The reason why I mention this is that, at the time not only did I make the effort to listen to the select committee debates but I wrote a regular opinion piece in my blog. Whether this was read or not it was at least a layman's effort to distil what was available at the time and pass it on. That's the task of a blog of this sort it's a sort of distillation of the arguments which have arisen each week and an effort to try to put the case and its alternative, forward for consideration.
When I'm gone who will carry on the job !!
One of the saddest reflections listening to the various select committees is the level of obfuscation which develops when the subject matter is represented by a government ministers. Swivelling  and sliding around like eels on a hook when asked a question, they are like snake oil salesmen (and women), following the party line, afraid to address the question for fear of falling foul of the Whips Office. One always feels they know the political brief better than the technical, departmental brief and it's been for some time a great weakness in our ability to do the actual business. They are more at home amongst their own type, perhaps propping up the bar in their club and rejoicing in their impeachable  mendacity.