'The woods decay, the woods decay and fall / Me only cruel immortality consumes' writes Tennyson in Tithonus. The poem's namesake learns, not unlike Dorian Gray, that living forever is not all that it is made out to be. 

We live in a time when the desire to remain young, to hold onto whatever vestige of youth that we can, is centre stage. There is talk in popular science that ageing will increasingly be halted, with a view to extending life indefinitely. I don't doubt that science has the capacity to greatly diminish fatal illness and greatly extend lifespans.

But what can work for the body may not work for the mind. Already, depressed or desperate people, some only in their teens, are taking their own lives. They will certainly not leap at the offer of another two hundred years of that which they dread.

I have said many times that modern Western economic systems are making people sick in body and mind - not intentionally, mind you, - but as a by-product of their all-consuming drive for profit. It is a marvel to me that conservatives so love a system that undermines their very values, monetising anything it can, no matter how sacred.

'It's about freedom', one opined when asked. Is it really, all about freedom, or is that just another lazy slogan that sounds good whenever it's trotted out?