SIR TERRY CASTS A COLD EYE ON LIFE, ON DEATH

And immediately unleashes a volume of hate mail for doing so. Only to be expected, I suppose, but it would be encouraging to feel that critical comments were well founded.

Not so. The Care not Killing Alliance complains that the programme was 'propaganda'. Well, what else do they exist for if not for the dissemination of propaganda? Only Our Sort, the right sort, of course. As usual, care for truth is the first thing to go out of the window. 'There was no presentation of the alternative.' Untrue - we were shown one patient who had chosen to reject anything to do with euthanasia, and was well satisfied that in relying on palliative care he had made the right decision. Sir Terry made no comment.

And in any case we are surely well past the stage when every broadcast had to be 'balanced'. If an individual or a group wish to present a point of view then they have a perfect right to do so (within the bounds of generally acceptable decency). Those who do not agree are equally entitled to make their own programme in reply. No politician, for example, feels any need to present the views of his opponents - and very confusing it would be if he did.

And the dear old C of E? Here is a bishop, brought out of retirement to tell us that 'life is a gift; we do not have the right to take it'. Well, that is an opinion, and he has a perfect right to hold it. What he does not have is the right to impose the force of the law on those who, for good reason, utterly disagree.

So the obstructionist forces are still out there, hard at work. But could we hope that the increased shrillness of their utterance might just indicate that they are at last aware that their case is crumbling?