Another elderly male virgin takes aim at assisted dying

My life is often full of things that drive me mad.

Motorists who don't indicate, politicians who tell lies (this is a permanent fixture, sadly) and tattoos.  

Yesterday, what drove me to distraction was a man of the cloth.

Not any old man of the cloth, mind you, but the Archbishop of Westminster.

Now I don't want to start the day by bashing the bishop (stop guffawing at the back), but this one, a catholic chap, made my blood boil.

Chris Evans hosts the most popular radio show in Europe, the BBC Radio Two breakfast show. Something like 10 million folk tune in every morning to hear his show and I am often one of them.

He is not perfect, and occasionally steps close to the line of advertising his enormous wealth with references to his expensive selection of cars, his pub and generally his lifestyle.  But generally these are irritations and are probably confined just to me.

But there is one part of the show that offends me: the god slot.

The BBC has form with religious propaganda.  Radio Four broadcasts hours of piety, Radio Two has various god slots, local radio is even worse.  There is even a religious department at the BBC -  a series of non jobs basically.

Anyway, yesterday's spokesman, and it's usually a man because that's how religion works, was a big hitter; an Archbishop.

Vincent Nichols is your standard catholic bishop, an elderly white male virgin, who wears frocks.

Yesterday, he decided to take on what he decided to take on 'the killing clinics of Holland and Switzerland' in what was a full frontal attack on the very idea of assisted dying.

His threadbare arguments were, as you might expect, dressed up in the flowery language of religious superstition, with the usual references to 'the sanctity of life', but oddly little about the quality of it.

And then he made a poor argument even poorer by then going on to  publicise his forthcoming trip to Lourdes.

You do not need me to go into the 'healing waters' of Lourdes except to say that you are probably far more likely to get even more ill splashing it all over, what with all those other sick people doing the same.

Millions go there every year, said our Vince, although he failed to mention how many disabled people had miraculously regrown limbs as a result of their visits.

It was hard not to feel contempt for god's important vicar on earth for attacking people's personal decisions to end their own life whilst praising a bizarre catholic gathering based upon the Virgin Mary being seen on 18 occasions by a simple woman called 'Bernadette' Soubirous.   No one else saw this woman who had a child without procreating but 'faith' demands believing in things that would seem to anyone else to be more than slightly unbelievable.  (See also Joseph Smith and the Church of Latter Day Saints.)

People are, of course, entitled to their 'faith', no matter how absurd it seems to the rest of us who visit churches for weddings and funerals but not much else.  I would be among the first to respect their rights.

But the men of the cloth cannot leave it at that.  They want to interfere with everyone else's lives as well.

If Vince develops some horrible disease in old age - and of course I hope he doesn't - then I would defend his choice to suffer miserably, possibly in pain, incontinence and confusion if that was how he chose to spend his final days.

For for those of us who do not spend our lives worshipping a celestial dictator, then the Godwhackers should mind their own business.  Let us have a choice, not your choice.

Only a religious fanatic would describe the places people choose to die as 'killing clinics' which I regard as hate language from yet another religion of piece.