Punk poet, John Cooper Clarke totally opposes assisted suicide.

The writer of "Bed Blocker Blues" opposes assisted suicide.

Alex Schadenberg
Executive Director, Euthanasia Prevention Coalition

In a recent interview with Judith Woods that was published in the Telegraph, former punk poet and writer of the Bed Blocker Blues, John Cooper Clarke, stated that he is totally opposed to assisted dying. Woods reports:

“I’m totally against assisted dying,” he says. “I’m sure people have the most heartbreaking tales to tell but extreme cases make for bad legislation. The whole issue is literally a matter of life and death and in Europe where it’s legal, we’re already seeing a mission creep where people are ending their lives for things like incurable depression. Just because someone is feeling a bit hopeless that’s no reason to kill them or help them to kill themselves and to make it worse, it’s dressed up in the language of human rights, as if there were some kind of liberation to it. I just don’t see how helping people die improves life as we know it.”

Clarke (75) is currently on tour promoting his latest volume of poetry.

Clarke lived a punk lifestyle and is "enjoying a 21st century Renaissance nobody saw coming." Woods reported:

Cooper Clarke now describes the post-punk era, when he descended into drug addiction, as his wilderness years. In his well-written and hugely well-received 2020 autobiography I Wanna Be Yours he describes his early years in fabulous detail but rather brushes over the 1980s. “Those were dark times,” he says simply. “Why would I want to dwell on them?

For the euthanasia lobby folk who think Clarke opposes assisted dying because he never experienced death, Clarke also commented on a friend who recently died of brain cancer.

Clarke is responding to this life and death issue from a straight forward human perspective.