Coppola Comment

I can't stop looking at this table. Mortality rates in England rose between 2011-16 for teenagers and most working-age adults under 50: That's bad enough. But what should give all of us pause is the reason that Public Health England (PHE) gives for rising mortality among young and middle-aged adults: Among people aged 20-44, an increase in mortality rates from accidental poisoning had a negative effect on life expectancy between 2011 and 2016 of -0.06 years in males and -0.11 years in females....  Data from ONS indicate that in this age group, over the whole period from 2011 to 2016, 70% of accidental poisonings were due to drug misuse and 10% were to alcohol. PHE also notes a slight increase in male mortality rates due to cirrhosis, which is in the top 10 causes of death for men. Among women, suicide is playing a slightly larger role: An increase in the female suicide rate in the 20-44 age group also had a small negative effect on life expectancy between 2011 and ...

On Remembrance Sunday, we remember those who died in war. Particularly the First World War, but also those who gave their lives fighting in subsequent wars. This year, I sang at two remembrance services in which all the music was written by people who either died in war themselves or had relatives who died. The poems of Wilfred Owen, who died one week before Armistice in November 1918, brought home poignantly to us the "pity of war". Perhaps one day we will also honour those who did not fight but still lost their lives, and all those whose lives were ruined by war - the parents desperately trying to find out what happened to their children , the wives left to bring up children on their own, the soldiers whose mental and physical health was ruined, the villagers and townspeople whose homes and livelihoods were wiped out, the thousands of women raped. And perhaps one day we will end the jingoism that disfigures many of our remembrance services. There is nothing to celeb...

Last Friday, I watched my father die. It was the first time I had witnessed death in a human being, though I have seen it in animals. I will never forget what it looked like. The pallor of death is quite different from paleness due to shock or illness. Even before death arrives, the blood drains away from the face as if bleached, leaving behind something more like wax than human flesh. Right up to the end, I knew he could hear. He tried to open his eyes when I spoke to him. He knew that my brother and I were there. I don't know if he was in pain, but his breathing was distressed, so I asked the palliative care nurse to give him morphine. Perhaps the morphine stopped him fighting the process of death. He died shortly afterwards. I have sung about death many times: in the classical song repertoire, death is almost as ubiquitous as love. And I have read many, many words about death. But nothing prepared me for this. So many of our ways of describing death are euphemistic. Pe...

“What do they teach them at these schools?” wondered the Professor in C.S. Lewis's The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.  The Professor, of course, was concerned about logic. But I wonder too - not about logic, but about maths. Especially among journalists writing about life expectancy and other long-term trends. Here is the FT proclaiming "Average life expectancy falls". This is the headline for a chirpy piece about how reduced life expectancy could make things easier for pension funds facing big deficits.  There's only one problem with this. Life expectancy isn't falling. And the report the FT cites does not say that it is. This is how the press release from the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries summarises the findings of their report: Recent population data has highlighted that, since 2011, the rate at which mortality is improving has been slower than in previous years However, mortality is expected to continue to improve and there is signi...

My mother, Joy Cooke, died last Wednesday, 24th May, at the age of eighty-seven. It was a peaceful end. Beautiful, in a way. Mum had been ill for a long time. She had vascular dementia, triggered by an accidental morphine overdose after an orthopaedic operation in 2013. She also had COPD, brought on by a lifetime of smoking. For the first year of her slide into the oblivion of dementia, she was cared for by my father. But in August 2014, after she became doubly incontinent and both physically and mentally frail, he had to admit that her care was too much for him. She went into a nursing home that specialised in the care of those with dementia. There she remained until her death. I wasn't there when she died. But I had been to see her earlier that day, along with my father and my youngest brother, Tim. She was very weak: though she reached out to each of us in turn to hold our hands, her grip was feeble. Sadly, she who had smiled so much during the last four years had lost he...

In the latest of his excellent reports for the BBC on the refugee crisis in Europe, Feargal Keene focuses on the plight of children. A baby, only a month old, makes the hazardous crossing from Turkey to the Greek island of Lesbos. Little children, freezing cold and wet through, climb the muddy path up from the beach. Volunteers from many nations provide food, blankets and medical care for these tiny lives. But Lesbos is only the start of their journey, And in Europe, it is winter . Across the continent, refugees - including many children and babies - huddle round camp fires at the borders, waiting to be admitted. But the signs are up everywhere. "No room....." At this time of year, Christians sing carols about a baby born in a stable, because there was no room in the inn. A baby born to a migrant mother, in freezing conditions in the middle of winter. "Behold a silly tender babe, in freezing winter night, in homely manger trembling lies. Alas, a piteous sight...

This week saw the deaths of the great mathematician John Nash and his wife Alicia in a car crash and the suicide of terminally-ill businessman Jeffrey Spector in Switzerland with the help of Dignitas. This post is written in their memory, and also in memory of my friends and musical colleagues Gavin Williams, who died last week, and Lindsay Purcell, who died at the beginning of April. May they rest in peace.  This post is unashamedly long. After all, death is forever.  From time immemorial, humans have been obsessed with death. Or, more correctly, with the mess that death leaves in its trail. We fear death, not just because of our own extinction (or not, depending on your belief system), but also because of the consequences for those we love. There were so many things we meant to do, so many things to sort out, so many relationships to heal……But whether we are prepared or not, death will brook no delay. “It's too soon!” cried my aunt, on being given a diagnosis of te...