Cost of Relationship Seminar.

Baroness Ilora Finlay of Landaff.

The weekend was not all about pottery and pleasure. Saturday I traveled to Margam with the MU to a 'Cost of Relationship' seminar, primarily to listen to the main speaker Baroness Ilora Finlay.

I was glad that I did this on several levels, mainly because it taught me that the MU is about a lot more than the Branch that I belong to, which is just a notch up from a social club. There are many Branches out there working hard for a very diverse range of MU programmes all over the world. The MU is working in 78 countries, mainly in Africa, looking after the needs of families. A target of our particular Branch is 'Water for Africa' whereby we are supporting that cause through donations.

It was however, to hear Baroness Finlay that I really attended. The Baroness is a Doctor working in Wales and a Professor of palliative medicine. An Independent candidate of the House of Lords, she was the representative for the proposal of the bill to ban smoking in public places in Wales. She also introduced the Private Members bill to change the current system of organ donation from 'opt' to 'opt out'. three years before it was eventually implemented in the Principality. On Saturday her keynote speech was about ways to promote palliative care and explaining why she opposes legalised euthanasia.

This was a worth while effort to go to listen to someone who, apart from being a good orator, was actually living through what she was speaking about. She used an elderly lady as an example of why euthanasia doesn't work, and it was only after she had left the building we were told that the lady was her dying mother. What does that say about the Baroness, not just being able to speak about something so very personal to her, in a nice, but detached way; but leaving her seriously ill mum to come and talk to strangers to get her point across at such a demanding time for her? There has been a TV programme recently about her work and views which I missed. These thing are usually repeated, I hope so as this is a lady who I can respect and would like to know more about.