Viewer’s chance to influence events

Press, 16 August 1978, Page 19

Viewer’s chance to influence events

By

A. K. GRANT

Television One’s Monday night programme, “Decision: Steel” was quite absorbing. Would strongman Ron Atkin, of the agricultural drawl and baldness-concealing hairstyle, persuade British Steel to buy two Korf direct reduction processing plants for S77M instead of one for S46M? Would yes-man Herbert

Morley say yes once too often and find himself on the wrong side of the argument? Would highly impressive Finance Director Lionel Pugh spike Atkin’s guns and persuade Chairman Sir Monty Firmistion that he, Pugh, was right and all the other directors were wrong? It all made ‘‘The Power Game” seem like “The Brady Bunch.” For no very good reason I became committed to the twoplant proposal, though my absence of very good reasons in no way distinguished me from the directors who voted in favour of the proposal. I am pleased to say that our side won. Next time I am in Scotland I must go to visit t'”'-’ plants. I feel I have <yed a part in putting them there.

Perhaps I found the programme so absorbing because things are decided the same way in our house. My own chairman decides what shall be done, and then exercises her casting vote in favour of her proposal. I then vote with her, in order not to find myself in a minority.

There was an interesting although rather alarming discussion about definitions of death on “Dateline Monday.” The discussion centred on the legal repercussions of the fact that doctors can now keep people alive on lifesupport machines who would formerly have been unquestionably extinct. The Wellington lawyer, Michael Bungay, argued for a new definition of death to clarify the sort of situation which arose

in a recent murder trial. The doctors were horrified by this, and, true to the great patronising traditions of their profession, argued that the question of whether or not somebody was dead should be decided entirely by them. They chose to ignore the fact that this meant that where the victim of a serious assault was being

kept alive on a life-sup-port machine, the question of whether his assailant stood trial for murder, with a mandatory life sentence, or some less serious offence, with a discretionary sentence, could depend on whether Doctor

A pulled the plug out or Doctor B left it in. It is typical of the arrogance of the medical profession that its representatives could see no legal implications to this situation. However, in an endeavour to resolve this dispute between the two professions, I hereby formulate my own legal definition: “Death is when you can no longer get down to the pub without bringing your life-support system along on a trailer.”

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