Care and contribution

One of the most pressing problems which lies behind a self imposed smokescreen, for people of my age and not particularly wishing to think about it is, what do you do when you can no longer take care of yourself.

This is particularly acute in the case of someone living alone and even in the case where a partner lives with you, one or the other dies and the remaining one is on their own.

Whilst you are in good health and of sound mind life goes on but when we begin to fail, as surely we will as we grow older then the trauma of sickness and old age takes its toll. Hospitals fix you up, if possible but as we live longer and become more feeble we are evermore in need of assistance.

There was a time when it was the acknowledged responsibility of the 'local municipality' to take care of the elderly and it was assumed that the state, in some form or another had the job in hand. 

Listening to another of these Parliamentary Committees, it is clear that the job of caring for the elderly through general taxation and even the 'assumption', that it is the "responsibility" of the general tax payer to look after this most vulnerable section of society it has now become a matter of 'pass the parcel' as each segment of the health service and the ancillary segments of that huge service have no clear idea of how to cope and organise the problem of old people, bed blocking because there is no adequate alternative for placing the old person who need care when they leave hospital.

I mentioned in a recent blog the scandal of how the London Borough of Newham had sold off a perfectly respectable "old peoples home" the site, now an office block !! When I ask the simple question where have the old people living there gone, there is a stony silence.

Rushing to minimise Government, along the lines of our cousins, 'across the pond' we politicise the message to catch the political vote , enticing the public with the messages, "look how good we are, we have taken you out of taxation. They never speak of the blighted services due to underfunding and like children in a sweet factory, the general public are fascinated by the sweets ignoring the damage to their teeth.

So what happens when the "oldie" falls over. If it's acute dementia I suppose the poor old bugger doesn't know or care but if it's a slow decline, the person is going to need care. 

As the Treasury continues its cuts on Welfare, as it must if we still need Trident or feel it necessary to hand out financial assistance to nations such as India (who have the equivalent of their own Trident), on the assumption we are aiding the impoverished people of the world.  

If we continue to insist that people should keep more of what they earn, believing the individual will be as 'far sighted' as a properly funded government scheme. If we continue to think that the individual who has been brought up in a society which spends today and let's  tomorrow take care of itself, then we are going to hell in a handcart.

People need protecting "from themselves". The future and planning for the future is obscured if people don't understand the value of money. The credit card has disconnected the function of paying off a debt before raising a new one, of producing a mystical, 'never never' land in which reality is for ever swept under the carpet

The States job was to ensure that the books balanced, our role as working citizens was to contributed fully on the assumption that one day we couldn't !!!