Melanie McDonagh

Coincidentally with the sad passing of Esther Rantzen who spent her last couple of years campaigning for assisted suicide, there’s just been an interesting case of an assisted dying going wrong. The state of Tennessee kills prisoners sentenced to death by means of an injection of pentobarbital, the same substance used by the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland (only not usually by injection) where Dame Esther had considered going after she was diagnosed with stage four lung cancer. Pike has been executed once; that, even supporters of the death penalty must agree, is enough Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on your point of view, a prisoner sentenced to death, Christa Pike, survived a double injection of pentobarbital and is now in hospital being resuscitated.

There are few adjectives more abused than ‘Orwellian’. Sometimes, though, there’s nothing for it but to resort to Politics and the English Language to put weaselly political discourse into context. The most egregious example lately is Angela Rayner’s description of postponing the award of citizenship to the migrants of the Boriswave as ‘un-British’. That calls to mind the old boy’s dictum: ‘But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought’. The thought here is that it’s un-British to be intolerant about immigration. In this case, to be restrictive about the length of migrants’ path to citizenship, especially if they belong to that category that brings out a wave of sentiment in the public sphere: ‘carers’ and ‘NHS workers’.

Hmm. Any minute now, the Church Appointments (Repeal of Discriminatory Provision) Bill will remove the last religion-related constraints on Andy Burnham and any future prime ministers who are Catholic or Jewish, so they will in future be eligible to advise the King on the appointment of Anglican bishops. Really, it’s hard to think that he could make any worse choices for episcopal appointments than the C of E manages all by itself Burnham, who is Britain’s first Catholic prime minister, said last week that it was ‘unacceptable’ that the last remnants of the law of 1829 prevented him from ‘performing all the functions’ of his role.

Simon Baron-Cohen, the distinguished Cambridge autism specialist, has been speaking movingly about his friend, Jason Arday, in a BBC radio interview. Baron-Cohen said the last contact he had with Arday was hours before he was found dead at an address in south London yesterday afternoon: “He really wasn't coping. He was being subjected to relentless scrutiny...ridicule, discrediting every detail of his life... He wasn't coping with the loss of his career, the loss of his reputation. He felt he couldn't go on.” Jason Arday was a victim, but not in the way that his political champions suggest Baron-Cohen went on to talk about him as “an incredibly kind and gentle and caring and generous man”.

God, the avenging Furies had nothing on the Jeffrey Epstein industry when it comes to the pursuit of its quarry. The latest instalment in the ongoing excoriation of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the revelation in the Mail on Sunday that the former Prince may, when he dies, receive a royal funeral. That is to say, it has learned that the King’s brother “remains on a secret government list of royals who will receive high-profile funerals, even though he became a private citizen following revelations of his friendship with paedophile Jeffrey Epstein”. Alas, there are no further details. The paper however surmises that it may involve a funeral service at St George’s chapel, Windsor, and burial at Frogmore cemetery along with other members of his family. What do we actually want?

There’s something more poignant about the death of Ed Stourton, which was announced today, than the passing of a decent man. He was that of course, but what I’ll miss especially is the silencing of a mellifluous broadcasting voice, that of an educated and civilised Englishman. Stourton, who was 68, was famously cut by the bigwigs of the BBC's Today programme in 2008 Stourton, who was 68, was famously cut by the bigwigs of the BBC's Today programme in 2008, making space for more women, more regional accents, and the less posh, after ten years in the programme. But he was really good at the job. He cut to the chase; he ignored the superficialities. He was genial but merciless in identifying the main point at issue and pursuing it.

There was a moving and unusual display of unity in the Commons on Thursday when the Prime Minister apologised on behalf of the nation to the mothers – some of whom were in the public gallery – who had been forced to give up their children for adoption on account of not being married. Reform MP, Sarah Pochin, spoke movingly about how her own mother was obliged to put her half brother up for adoption. Unity and sympathy all round. Our solution to the problem of unwelcome pregnancies is abortion In fact, none of this should come as a surprise.

Poor baby Preston didn’t have much of a start in life. His mother Sarah, now 42, was jailed aged 14 for the 1998 torture and murder of a pensioner. Preston was, justifiably, taken from her after birth. Given these unpropitious circumstances, it was the job of the state – here Oldham council – to give him a fair start in life. To begin with, that’s what happened; a decent foster family looked after him. Preston’s birth grandmother suggested that worries about homophobia may have skewed the judgment of those who were meant to be supervising him It was when he was given to the care of Jamie Varley, 37, and his boyfriend, John McGowan-Fazakerley, 32, that he was subjected to sexual torture, fear and pain over the course of four months that ended his life.

The Schwarzman Centre for the Humanities in Oxford is well and truly open; there was an Open Day this weekend. It’s the product of a big donation of £185 million from Stephen Schwarzman, CEO of the Blackstone Group. It’s an ambitious development close to the old Observatory on the Radcliffe site. There’s a large and airy central atrium with cafes. As well as libraries and lecture rooms, there’s a concert hall and theatre and cinema and high tech exhibition spaces. The place is designed with the University's net zero carbon emissions policies in mind on the principles of Passivhaus; the building is ultra energy-efficient.