Should we help a suicide with a sudden push?

When you see someone standing on a bridge about to leap, you have a choice. Perhaps there are three choices even if the suicide feels the opposite. 1. We could say we agree with the intention and offer him a helping push.

2. You could just walk on by, pretending in that distinctive London way that you haven’t noticed.

3. And you could stop and point out the good things – the advantages - of the alternative.

It seems to many, and it would be hard to disagree, that good old Britain stands on the brink, too.

Extreme rationing

Those opposed to our political suicide are often people of more mature years, many who remember well the second world war, and after the battles and the appalling fire bombings of German cities.

Nor are we likely to forget the extreme rationing that ruled into the early fifties.

 Britain has its batch of noisy extroverts shouting about the advantages of, as they put it, going it alone.

In the war with Germany, we confronted (if I might put it like this) a violent nutter with a totally un-humanitarian approach to contemporary life.

One of the great advantages - in human terms probably the greatest - of being united with Europe has been these years free of a European war.

Of course, our own hotheads are too young to remember or know of sirens and bomb shelters and excruciating rationing. And they seem too deafened by their own words to do much weighing up of what’s good for the majority.

Three points about the argument stood out for me yesterday. I’ll offer one here and two other personal experiences tomorrow, feelings that really surprised me. ...

Continues on the blogs for my ocean adventure book, Sailing to Purgatory, at SailingToPurgatory.com