It seems to me that there’s a lot of stuff just being made up this week!

This week I read that diet drinks can contribute to depression, but coffee can stave it off! Girls need aunts to stay on the straight and narrow, and apparently anyone who doesn't want anyone to live their whole life on the benefit system supports all conservative ideals – including the big society (even though I’m still not sure that David Cameron or Nick Clegg know what this is themselves, but continue to pat themselves on the back for what they think sounds like a very labour – sorry liberal slogan), and thinks that those who want to find a job and are on job seekers for what it was intended – a safety net, should be shot! Honestly, what a lot of nonsense!

Clearly I've had a slow first week back at work, but you really do have to ease back into things. For anyone who read my blog last week you’ll know that I was in over Christmas, but still I found that this week was still a shock to the system. What was it with everyone else being back at work, turning off their out of office and replying to emails?

Anyway aside from having to do some work, I’d like to hazard a guess that I, like the vast majority of the people who were back at their desks this week, found myself occasionally browsing the beeb or some other online media service and some of the articles and news stories were irritating to the extreme!

I appreciate that advancements in science are always on the go, and in truth this should be supported if not applauded, but I wish that the media would keep their noses out. I’m not sure causing confusion with the findings has any benefit to the general populous. Conflicting reporting on whether or not to have mammograms a couple of years ago led many women to be unsure or not to know whether to be screened, and there is always conflicting data over various different health issues depending on usually what’s on trend. This month you can read more information than not about how dry January is a waste of time than you can in support of it, although I’m proud to write that its day 12 and I’m still without an alcoholic drink!

This week the media reported the very weak finding that diet drinks could be linked to causing depression (if you drink four or more diet drinks every day). Fear not though because if you are a coffee drinker this could stave off depression. What I read delved into no greater detail however, in that there was no prognosis for you if you were both a diet drink and coffee drinker, or if you drank coffee and have depressive tendencies, or if you’re a diet drink addict and never feel blue. Also these findings seemed to only be in their preliminary stages, so it could be absolute hogwash!

Could it be that depression has absolutely nothing to do with aspartame? It could be an interesting campaign tactic though couldn't it? Clegg and Cameron handing out flyers and coffee, with Osborne crying out; “four, or four and bit more years till we fancy calling the next election” – not too catchy but our political system isn’t quite as smooth cut as the Americans, whilst Milliband and Balls hand out Diet drinks and chant; “we’ll make coffee free on the NHS, courtesy of Starbucks of course!”

So aside from the this story, and the headline story in The Sun yesterday about a man shaving his girlfriend’s Shih Tzu – really I just don’t have the words, the other commentary has been about the books that I suppose you’d best categorise as self help books on how to raise girls.

Being January this seems to be a time for stats. We’re all too fat – but fad diets don’t work, we all drink too much – but dry January is a waste of time, more of us now suffer from depression than ever before – quick hit the coffee cart, and more significantly the girls of today are more prone to eating disorders, drugs, depression, bullying, and going off the rails than ever before!

Firstly I’m not entirely sure I agree with this. I think that in an era where there are more stats readily available than ever before it’s just easy to compile data than ever before. I also believe that data is very easily manipulated so that it appears the way that you want it to, just ask a good accountant! It’s also my opinion that girls have been going off the rails in every generation; and I don’t always think this is a bad thing.

Secondly the eating disorder isn't unique to the noughties. Drugs too are not a new trend unique to girls of today, and drugs if anything seemed far more prolific in the eighties and nineties! As far as depression, and bullying, and anxiety are concerned, could it not just be a case that there is far wider understanding of these issues now. The sheath that they were once forced under has now been lifted and there is now an awareness and a desire to address and help not only girls but anyone suffering one or any of these afflictions!

I hate the notion in these raising girls books though that there is a right way and a wrong way to do it, whether that means relying on an actual aunt, pseudo aunt, or no aunt at all. Each child is bound to be unique, and is whether you like it not bound to test the limitations of your patience – and I would assume at some point your love. Yet I guess that’s what you sign up for, but I also guess that’s why there isn't actually a handbook that you’re given at the hospital!

I don’t have children, but I was one and the only thing I can say is that if I’d ever caught my parents making reference to a “how to raise your girl” book is well .... the only thing I can hear in my head right now is the music in Jaws right before the shark’s about to eat someone!

Teenagers will be Teenagers, and they’re going to make mistakes. Surely as parents you just want to be there for them when they do. The only thing I continue to learn is that no one is perfect, and maybe that’s what we need to teach the next generation rather than pretend to act as though we've solved the meaning to all that afflicted us as we grew up and write a book about it! I don’t know, perhaps I just need another cup of coffee minus the sweetener!

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

Maybe the simple New Year’s Resolution can help us all look at the bigger picture, but in order to do that I’m guessing we’ll probably have to keep them past January!

Okay so like most people I have massively over indulged this Christmas. Yet I feel that I have had more reason than normal this year to eat and drink in excess. My birthday falls on the 24^th December. Yes, that’s right Christmas Eve, and I’ve long since gotten over the fact that whenever I have to give my date of birth the first thing that gets said to me straight after is; “do you know your birthday’s on Christmas eve?” (If that’s what you were thinking) I also, sadly, tragically, somewhat depressingly, turned 30. This meant that in the lead up to my birthday, and then on my birthday I was drinking and celebrating (and obviously eating) a lot, then you have Christmas, then the leftover period, and before you know it you’re into the New Year festivities.

Anyway, back on point, I like most people have massively over indulged this Christmas. So I, like most people of my age group (please no one comment that I have slipped into a different tick box on forms) will be doing dry January from the moment that I am sober on New Year’s day, and I will also be starting some diet of one kind or another. Probably taking the advice from whichever of my friends reckons they know someone who knows someone who lost half their body mass in a month!

More seriously though, the dieting and non drinking aside, it is that time of year when you can reflect on the year gone by or alternatively look forward and plan and hope for the year ahead.

What will be the great resolutions of 2013? For President Obama, well surely he has the greatest resolution to make? Can he forge a path in America’s history where gun control can finally be brought under some element of I don’t know, let’s say, control? Where the right to bear arms which was arguably never intended by the founding fathers to allow anyone and everyone outside of the militia the right to buy guns, machine guns, and rifles and shoot up innocent people can be amended?

The founding fathers had a common enemy when they wrote the Second Amendment. It was an occupying force. The enemy was not small primary school children. It was not any children. It was not any innocent man, woman, or child for that matter. As an Englishwoman I have no qualms in writing this (also it’s historically accurate), it was us. We did it! We were the enemy. We were being greedy and colonial, but times have changed and the right to bear arms is surely passed. Although that said, I don’t think anyone has a problem with farmers, hunters, or the army having guns. Surely as always, gun control as with most political wrangling it’s a matter of degrees.

What I do think would be terrifying to see in 2013 would be the whole of America armed in a response to the government’s failure to deal with gun control. Yet this seems to be an approach favoured by the head of the NRA Wayne LaPierre when he was speaking in his response to the recent shootings in Newport. Instead of showing any kind of humility in the face of tragedy, his response was to become like a parody of a Hollywood blockbuster, he said what you could be forgiven for thinking was the kind of thing Al Capone might once have said (granted if you swap around where good guy and bad guy are in the sentence); "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." No Wayne LaPierre, no! All this does is arm people and raise the probability of more innocent people getting caught up in the cross fire!

Turning away from what could be the greatest resolution of 2013, I want to look at what could be great resolutions for us all to try and keep and these are based on the findings of a nurse who has spent her career in palliative care looking after the elderly. She found that the elderly and dying had very similar regrets, and here are the top five;

1.     I wish I'd had the courage to live a life true to myself, not the life others expected of me.

2.     I wish I hadn't worked so hard.

3.     I wish I'd had the courage to express my feelings.

4.     I wish I had stayed in touch with my friends.

5.     I wish that I had let myself be happier.

I want to say that going in to 2013 I will make each of these a personal resolution. Yet sadly I know that this is a rather flippant thing to write, I also know that I’m already breaking 3 and 4 as I write. 4 in so far as I’ve just silenced a call from a friend so that I can finish writing this blog, and 3 because sadly I’m quintessentially English (and I don’t mean that in a good way). Yet I can honestly say in the couple of days between Christmas and New Year, I absolutely excelled at 2!

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

Surely, some people are just too stupid to run for government?

I am of course directing my blog this week at the Missouri Representative for Senate Todd Aiken. If you don’t know who this guy is, he is the Republican who this week raised two highly contentious issues that one can only guess Mitt Romney didn’t want to have bought up with only a few months to go before the November 6 2012 elections. On top of this he also did this whilst setting his statements against the most ludicrous and ill-founded science known to man.

Sometimes, I find it hard to believe that so many in the land of the free are opposed to abortion. To me a women’s right to choose is a fundamental freedom, and so I often find myself bemused by the controversy that this causes in the States.

This blog however is not about the prolife argument. I am not a politician, nor do I wish to be one. I am also not an American. This blog is about the absurdity of Todd Aiken, and his comments, and about how he can possibly be taken seriously as a Representative for Senate following on from what he’s said.

I like to think that the PM and MPs in this country are relatively intelligent, after all they have important decisions to make – you know, like what to spend their expenses on! Similarly I like to think that Congressmen and Senators in the US are intelligent, again they have important roles to fill – I’ve watched the West Wing, and also that debt ceiling isn’t getting any lower.

So you’d think, that when voting in a Representative for Senate or Congress the State doing the voting will want to choose a candidate that they feel will surely not only represent them well but who can also do the job. I’m not persuaded that I’d vote for a man who clearly has no idea how basic biology works, in fact I might want to see a transcript from his high school days. Did he even go to high school, and if so did take biology?

Todd Aiken said – with a certainty that despite his back pedalling has made it hard to retract from; that a woman’s body would shut down and prevent a pregnancy from happening in the case of a legitimate rape. Now aside from all the certified doctors, pharmacists, health practitioners, nurses, biology teachers, and anyone with common sense in every country around the world suddenly and collectively saying “huh!” You also heard the same thing from voodoo doctors, witch doctors, and the whole cast of the TV series Doctors!

I honestly didn’t still think that it was possible that people still thought this kind of thing, much less said it out loud. Yet for some of prominence to say it, for someone seeking a position of responsibility and leadership to say it, well I was astounded and incensed. Not only was what he said biological balderdash, but I can only assume that it was also unimaginably hurtful to any woman that has found herself pregnant as a result of the horrific ordeal of rape

Let’s not forget though, Todd Aiken made another faux par. He also used the word legitimate when determining when a women’s body would shut down or not during the course of a rape.

I’m just thinking about our judicial system now, and I can’t help thinking that the courts have been a bit slow over the years. In fact what have they been doing? Why have they been trying to struggle with evidence, and all the difficulties of he said she said. Judges and Lawyers have obviously never realised that Mother Nature, has already resolved this highly contentious issue for them. Who needs CSI? All you need to know according to Aiken is; is the rape victim pregnant?

I shouldn’t be flippant about this in all seriousness though, because what Todd Aiken has said is detrimental to all the work that prosecutors, counsellors working with victims of rape, and anyone who works with victims of rape going to court, do on an everyday basis to put the people who commit this atrocity behind bars. Yet I have read that apparently that Representative Aiken is in meltdown. I wonder if that’s the body’s natural response for when the mouth has made a legitimately stupid comment.

The title of my blog was; surely, some people are just too stupid to run for government? I don’t know the man, and I honestly wouldn’t wish to, but there is a chance that he isn’t stupid at all. It’s possible that he is instead simply ignorant, but regardless. Stupid or ignorant, I feel it matters none. To my mind, neither of these seem like the qualities that you’d want to vote for if you were selecting a representative for Senate for your State. 

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

It’s a good job Accurist weren’t the sponsors of the closing ceremony!

Now according to my television planner, last night’s closing ceremony was supposed to be done and dusted by 11.30pm. Yet at 12.10am the fireworks hadn’t even started – oops!

I have to say by 11.30 I’d honestly had enough, but I’d felt that I’d already invested two and half hours of my life so I was adamant that I was going to see it through. I also did really want to see Take That, and I was eventually disappointed that they only did one song. Although possibly for the best – was Jason Orange feeling okay? He seemed to acting very odd and not in line with what the other three were doing. Or maybe he was just doing a little bit of show boating, a quip there for anyone who was tuned into channel four for the evening and was watching the Wedding Crashers!

Okay, so the closing ceremony. This morning I’m trying to be objective. I’ve had the night to sleep on it and this morning I’m trying to evaluate it fairly.

Overall I think it was fun, a little weird in places, too long, and once again quintessentially British. Although I was absolutely dumbfounded when McCartney wasn’t rolled out at the end, isn’t that what we do? Perhaps not, perhaps Queen were wrong and the show can’t always go! At some point it does have to come to an end, and perhaps Seb Coe was worried that if the closing ceremony went on any longer Boris Johnson would pull the plug siting the boroughs noise restriction hours.

A couple of my favourite parts of the closing ceremony came from two of our musical best who are no longer with us; the great John Lennon and the brilliant Freddy Mercury. How awesome (please when you read the word awesome can you imagine David Hasselhoff – aka the Hoff, on America’s Got Talent saying awesome, as American’s just say it so much better than us Brits,) was it when the audience participated with the recordings of Freddy Mercury?

I personally thought it was amazing! Actually, I thought it was even better than that. The man was truly something else and is a legend. Brian May and Roger Taylor were also pretty cool, but I don’t think they needed Jesse J. We will Rock You is so iconic that I thought she brought nothing to the stage, apart from in my opinion a huge fashion faux par.

I thought that The Who did well closing out the closing ceremony, but I can’t help feeling the McCartney will be feeling disgruntled about that! I thought that the Spice Girls were okay, although I feared a little for their safety when their taxi’s started belting them around the stadium. I mean come on fellas, these ladies are now in their late thirties early forties and most of them are mums! Yet credit where it’s due, I thought Victoria Beckham looked very good. As for that matter did Kate Moss. In fact Kate Moss has now looked that good since, well, actually pretty much since I can remember and I’m starting to find that annoying in a ‘does she have special genes’ kind of way?

What else? Oh, the Pet Shop Boys! That part of the evening mixed in with Madness’s performance made me feel like that moment when you wake up and you can hear your alarm going off but you can’t quite place where you are! That goes in my ‘a little weird in places’ category, as does Annie Lennox’s performance, but I doubt that will surprise many people reading this. One Direction made me want to vomit. They are just so sickly sweet it actually hurts my teeth, but in fairness I suppose that might be how my age group felt when Take That were big the first time around!

George Michael, Fat Boy Slim, Eric Idle, and Russell Brand I’m putting into quintessentially British, with a slight cross over into a little weird. Ray Davies though, I’m not sure what to say. I love the Kinks, but I think his day as lead vocalist may have come and gone.

So that’s it on my summary and opinion of the closing ceremony. It was not all bad, but not all good. I’m so British! And on that I’ll just quickly add that at least it didn’t rain, but it is awfully close today that I think we could do with a shower.

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

Who knew that that mascot and muse for the British opening ceremony was Jimmy Saville!

Madames et Messiuers, bienvenue ...... No hold on a second, aren’t the 2012 Olympics in London?

Okay, so last night the greatest show on earth – we’re told (but hold on I can now feel all London commuters rolling their eyes at me), arrived in London last night. At 9pm – past the watershed (I wasn’t sure whether to expect nudity or bad language!) the opening ceremony began and the 2012 Olympics commenced.

I thought that overall the ceremony went well. Was it on the same scale and spectacle as Beijing four years ago? Well no, I can’t say that in my opinion that I thought it was. Was it uniquely British? Well let me see, it had Bond, Bean, and as always we rolled out the McCartney to bash out some Beatle classics. So with the three B’s present, and the Queen and the royals in attendance; yes – you’d have to say that it was as British as we’ve come to expect – especially following the recent Jubilee!

However I have to say that as much as I loved the Bond and Bean segments of the opening ceremony, I did feel that there were certain things missing. Now I know that this may be slightly controversial given that the comments on twitter and facebook seem to be glowing with how brilliant the opening ceremony was – but why did Danny Boyle decide to start our history with the rise of the industrial revolution?

I appreciate that we’re hosting the Olympics as the United Kingdom, but I sort of felt that a good 1600, 1700 years of our history – and by our I don’t just mean England, was written off, forgotten, ignored, swept under the carpet – you get my gist! I don’t feel any homage was paid to the history or cultures of Northern Ireland, Wales, Scotland, or yes England. However, everyone with origins in pastures, the black country, or miner towns must feel well represented.

I reckon that if we made everyone play a game of family fortunes – with the question being; name one thing most commonly associated with the United Kingdom? Surely, the top the answer would be the Queen? No, is this just me? Yet Danny Boyle made no reference to our history of Kings and Queens. No worries though, as Bevan sleeps soundly as Boyle chose to celebrate the NHS for a good ten minutes!

Again, back to family fortunes you’d hope that someone would also answer Shakespeare – no? I’d like to feel that that’s when you’d hear waharah waharah (where the contestant also wins a mystery prize – probably a trip to Stratford upon Avon in keeping with their answer you’d guess) but was any reference made to our literary greats? No. Boyle made no reference to the phenomenal literary history that we have. Although he did celebrate Lord Voldemort, and anyone watching at home will have heard the BBC commentators say JK Rowling was the greatest writer to come out of the UK ever!

This comment however, sort of seems reflective of the whole opening ceremony. Boyle seemed to concentrate only on the new, or not very old. The music focused on the past sixty plus years, we celebrated the inventor of the world wide web, and the medium of social networking. But our history, our long and industrious history, was ignored.

I feel that with a country as old as ours, we should have celebrated a whole lot more. If we’re looking at music why couldn’t we have included bagpipes, to be representative of Scottish heritage? We are the United Kingdom, and I kind of thought that the opening ceremony would have reflected the heritage of the whole of the United Kingdom. I wonder how heavily involved the political correctness police were, and how high the rug stands – where they managed to sweep the 1700 years of our history!

Finally as you might have guessed from my opening line, I was a bit confused as to why all the announcements and introductions were being given in French before English. I can only assume that this is because the Olympic Committee and Chairman of the Olympic Committee or Committee Olympic is French. But still – if we’re paying to host the event and we’re hosting the event, they could at least let us have the announcements in English first!

As I sit on the train writing this blog, in a carriage filled with passengers here for the Olympics, I know that I should be feeling happy that we’ve got this amazing event. Yet sat listening to two American tourists talking about how there is nothing to see in the UK – makes me want to scream at them and send them back home with Mitt Romney. Yet, what can I expect? According to Boyle all we once had was pastures and then industrial cities! Don’t worry about Snowdonia, Stone Henge, Edinburgh Castle and the Giant’s causeway, to name but a few of the wonderful spectacles that can be visited!

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

I’ll have what she’s having!!

Screenwriter Nora Ephron has died this week aged at 71, and as such I felt that I had to blog about her greatest screenwriting triumph – When Harry met Sally.

Ephron was without doubt the Queen of the romcom and When Harry met Sally is for me a classic of this genre, and a truly great film to boot. It is so good in fact, that I am always genuinely shocked when people haven’t seen it. Yet for all those who haven’t seen it, this is one of those films where everyone knows what it’s about.

Whether you’ve watched it or not, everyone knows that it stars Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal, and everyone knows that it contains a scene in which Meg Ryan’s character; Sally, fakes an orgasm in the middle of a crowded diner.

This scene is a highlight of the entire genre alone. The look of shock that registers on Billy Crystal’s face is classic, and I wonder how many men – who over the years have chosen to watch this film or been forced to endure it by their other halves, have been astounded and unnerved at Meg’s accurate portrayal.

I always think that while woman watching this scene are secretly laughing to themselves, the men sat next to them, are clearly, despite their sexual arrogance and what they’d admit to their mate, sitting more uncomfortably than they were only moments before.

I wonder how many women have been asked in the hours or days that have followed the climax of the film if they’ve ever faked anything, and better yet I wonder how many women have faked their answer. My bet would be a lot, and most with; “yes, but never with you!”

In a film that is tit for tat between a man and a woman throughout, a man and a woman who are both friends and then not friends, this scene is delightful and comedy gold. It also gives the scene over entirely to the female character. Sally holds all the cards over Harry in that moment, and her character has the power. Ephron makes Sally’s character bold and strong and she does it without any action, violence, sci-fi, magic, or foul language.

The other notorious moment in the film, and the one that for years left me in a quandary and almost unhappy with the film, is when Harry makes his quip about men and women not being able to be friends. He says; "You realise of course that we could never be friends... men and women can't be friends because the sex part always gets in the way.”

When I first watched this film I’m honestly not sure I was old enough to appreciate this statement, and I also have a lot of female friends now who de-cry that this is untrue. However, I don’t have any male friends who disagree with Harry’s sentiment.

Personally I don’t agree with the notion entirely, and I have a lot of male friends. I think that you can be friends with the opposite sex, and that the true warning of the film is actually that if you involve sex the friendship will be marred by it. Once sex is a factor you are usually going to either end up a couple, or as two people who were once friends!

I believe that it’s more than likely that if you’ve had a long standing friendship with someone of the opposite sex, over the years and at some point in time even if it’s just for the briefest of moment, one of the two people in the friendship will have harboured more than just platonic feelings. My male friends tell me that it can be as simple and as innocent as absent-mindedly wondering what you’d look like naked or be like in bed, and some of my female friends say that they have wondered what it would be like to kiss a certain male friend or potentially had a rogue dream or too.

Men and women can obviously be friends, and anyone who says otherwise needs to widen their horizons and get some more friends, and I think that a lot of relationships can stay purely platonic and that will be all that either people will ever want. Yet I think that drink, sex, and both of you being in bad emotional places at the same time, can cause issues with the friendship that same gender relationships perhaps can’t.

So maybe – just maybe, Harry wasn’t too far off the mark? Regardless, he does give pause for thought. It has also made a great conversation topic, and cause for many a heated argument between a mixed group of male and female friends since the film was released in 1989.

Thanks Nora Ephron for the film, for the ingenious scenes, and for the tantalising mischievous debate. When Harry Met Sally is a masterpiece, and a timeless romcom classic. 

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk

Shades of Grey

Despite the Evening Standard and other newspapers making waves over the rise in the popularity of erotic literature this week, my blog is not actually about Fifty Shades of Grey. Although, as I have made reference to it, I will say that I don’t understand what all the fuss is about!

Erotic literature has been around for eons. If you wish to Wikipedia the topic you will see that the interest in this type of literature dates all the way back to Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome.

The only thing I find slightly fascinating about the whole “re-vamp” or “re-popularisation” of the genre is that it seems to have flowed from the publication of Fifty Shades of Grey, which I have yet to find a good review of. It seems that a blend of poorly written prose combined with a storyline that lifts heavily from teenage fiction (Twilight and the characters of Edward Cullen and Bella Swann) doesn’t do much for the critics – I can’t imagine why!

Yet as I say, the subject of erotic literature and Fifty Shades of Grey is not what this blog is about. In The Telegraph on Friday I came across this article; Woman who wants to die must be force-fed. The article is about the decision that has just been made regarding the life of an un-named 32 year old woman who suffers from anorexia.

 

From here on in, everything that I am likely to write is bound to be marred in some form of controversy and that is because this subject is sure to bring highly conflicting opinions.

 

My personal opinion on this case and article is that I don’t think that the right decision was made. Yet I must underlie this statement by saying that given the complexities of anorexia – which is so much more than just a physical illness, I appreciate that what a person wishes when suffering with this illness must often be ignored.

 

I do not therefore condone that every person suffering from anorexia who would rather die than be force-fed should be allowed to. In my opinion that would be nonsensical, and it would seem that in the vast majority of these cases that is the illness or disease of anorexia talking and these sufferers / patients should be treated by professionals and given a chance to get their lives back and learn to try and see the line between their own sense of mortality and that of the dark demon of “Ana”.

 

The reason I feel so differently in regards to the woman in The Telegraph article is because of all of the facts that surround both her illness and her desire not to be force-fed.

 

It is reported that she was physically abused between the ages of 4 and 12, and then began suffering from eating disorders. At 15 she was admitted to an adolescent eating disorder unit for treatment. The woman is now 32 and according to her barrister and family is completely aware of the decision she is making in regards to her own life, and in fact twice last year signed forms to say that she did not wish to be treated. In addition, at this point it is reported that she would be required to be force-fed for at least a year and at the end of this time she would still only have a 20% chance of survival. Her family are reported as saying that they wish to support her decision to refuse treatment.

 

Whether this case is completely unique or not, I do not know. I do know though that this topic and this type of case will never be a black and white subject.

I truly feel for the family and the woman, and I cannot agree with the decision that has been made by the judge. I accept that his must have been a horrendous job, and that whatever the outcome he would have had his critics and his advocates. Yet to my mind, this woman has suffered enough.

 

Force-feeding someone takes away their control, and will to my mind only cause further fear and pain to a woman who one can only assume is already deeply emotionally and physically scarred. When terminally ill patients no longer wish to accept treatments, such as chemotherapy for cancer patients, they make choices to refuse further treatment. It is a decision that they must make, and only they can know the rationale behind their decisions and I cannot see the difference in regards to this 32 year old woman.

 

I can already hear the cries as I type of “it is different!” But is it I ask back? Yes a terminal patient faces death anyway, but doesn’t this woman? A 20% chance of survival is not high, and I think it is probably clear that her will to live is much less than that. Should that not also be factored in here? Is it really fair to impose a year of force-feeding on her, because there is a belief that she will survive the year and at some point in the future she will be able to control her demons??

 

As I say, this is not a black and white subject and the area of grey seems to have no boundary here. So I will conclude by saying that surely if she is considered to be of sound mind, and her family are not against her wishes, this is a personal decision. 

www.nataschaholloway.co.uk