Patricia Hewitt the ex-Health Secretary has put forward a motion for MPs to debate a change to the law that would allow people to legally take others abroad to die.

The motion is not expected to succeed. I think that’s unfortunate. We need European cohesion on this subject, because at the moment we’re in the utterly absurd situation that you cannot have a legally assissted suicide here in the UK, but you can if you travel abroad to Switzerland. So for some reason the price of a plane ticket makes the difference.

Then we have the further problem that technically anyone helping out by taking, say, a loved one to a foreign country to die, could then face prosecution back here. Yet the CPS have brought no such prosecutrions. Hewitt’s motion would sort this out, and yet sadly it is doomed to fail under the nonsense spouted by the anti-Euthanesea crowd. So unfortunately it looks like we still will not get any clarity over this, and people finding themselves in this position in the future will continue to have to take a legally hazy chance to help out their loved ones.

Well the voting in the commons last night passed through by 386 to 175 for a ban, with the status quo and licensing options being rejected. The debate now moves to the House Of Lords, which, I expect, will be somewhat predictable in its response. It remains to be seen if the bill will be pushed through or if Blair will chicken out. Bets anyone?

Meanwhile, a terminally ill woman wanting the right for assisted suicide is taking her case to the European Court of Human Rights. It’s a difficult case issue this one I think, maybe we will really see if the ECHR has any teeth, instead of seeing silly rules on bananas.

Also, across the world a big piece of ice shelf has fallen off the Antarctic Peninsula into the sea. Whilst this doesn’t alter sea level much because ice has the same volume as water it does show that parts of the world are warming up. Though of course this could just be the natural curve of the Earth’s temperature over the years.

38 and 50 ml of rain yesterday, some of the largest readings yet.