Week 45 2011 15.11.2011

Tendring Topics……..on Line

‘The road to Hell is paved with Good Intentions!’

A well-meaning piece of advice given on the BBC tv’s breakfast programme this (7th November) morning threatens to upset the equilibrium of scores of  old people this Christmas and lead to many doctors’ phone-lines being jammed by anxious well-meaning callers in the New Year.

It seems that the early symptoms of dementia in the elderly are being missed and a great many of them are failing to get treatment and support that could help them endure their affliction and slow down (but not halt or reverse!) its progress. It was suggested that those who are seeing an elderly friend or relative this Christmas should look out for these symptoms and get in touch with his or her doctor to let them know.

The symptoms to look for are loss of short-term memory, anxiety, occasional confusion, and personality changes. It is, so we were told, all too easy to put these symptoms down to ‘old age’ when there may well be a more sinister reason. Well, I suppose that there could be, but I reckon that old age does have similar indications of its own for which there may be no other cause

None of us lasts for ever. Our bodies and our brains experience wear and tear as we get older. The results of this show themselves as ‘symptoms’ of what I believe is probably a natural progression for which the only remedy is to die young! There are, of course, lots of things that – with the help of medical science and possibly social services – enable us to make the best of it.

I no longer describe myself ageing or elderly. I am unequivocally old. No other member of my family has, as far as I know, ever made it to 90. I am in a position to confirm that old age is not ‘all beer and skittles. I am glad to say though that it isn’t either– at least isn’t yet – the extreme old age referred to by Shakespeare as ‘Last age of all is second childishness and mere oblivion, sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything’*. Mind you, without modern dentures, two cataract operations and two pairs of spectacles, hearing aids, on line access to my friends and relatives, and an electric mobility scooter to give me independent mobility, my condition might be approaching that. Much as we oldies sometimes complain about aspects of life in the 21st century, there’s no doubt that modern technology has made old age and disability a great deal more tolerable!

Yes – I do have an increasingly failing short-term memory (though I can remember, word for word, poems and short pieces of prose learned long ago!). I am absent minded, and any deviation from normality does make me anxious. I don’t think that my personality has changed much but perhaps I am not the best person to judge that!

I shall be visiting friends and relatives over Christmas. I know them all well enough to be confident that no one will be writing in a little note-book that ‘the poor old chap was anxious about leaving his bungalow empty for a couple of days’ and ‘He forgot to bring his reading glasses, fell asleep in his chair after Christmas Dinner and told us a story that I’m sure I’ve heard half a dozen times before’, all ready to be reported to my doctor in the New Year!

*From Jacques’ ‘all the world’s a stage…..’ speech in ‘As you like it’.

Age and Income Inequality

The fact that we are all living longer and those lucky enough to have a job are expected to work longer, has given extra urgency to the world wide demand for a more equal distribution of the world’s wealth.

A recent article in the Financial Times comments on a report by Sir Michael Marmot, professor of University College, London and former Chairman of the British Medical Association. Sir Michael forecasts that due to the inequality of health standards between rich and poor, two thirds of today’s population will not reach the new retirement age of 68 without chronic and debilitating illness. His report, based on the 2001 census reveals that the average difference in ‘disability-free life expectancy’ between people living in rich areas and those in poor areas is 17 years!

A blog reader points out that throughout Europe and North America we don’t have enough jobs for young people. We in the UK have 20 percent youth unemployment while in Spain no less than half of its young people are unemployed. Meanwhile the compulsory retirement age in Britain is being raised from 65 to 68 and old people are expected to work longer.

The reader asks, ‘How can it possibly be better for our economy to leave the strongest, fittest, child-rearing generation out of work while older people, many of whom are overweight, arthritic and suffering from mental exhaustion, are forced to carry on working?’ It is true that I was working – and earning – till I reached my eighties, but it was at freelance writing that I enjoyed, and from which I could take a break whenever I chose.

Have we already forgotten that a very high proportion of the rioters and arsonists of last August were unemployed young people. Satan will find mischief still for idle hands to do!

Signs of the times

There have been three items of news during the past few weeks that I have found profoundly depressing. They seem to me to exemplify everything that is wrong with Britain today. The first was the news that in a time of cuts in public services mainly affecting the poor, growing unemployment in both the public and private sectors and frozen or reduced salaries or wages for most people, the directors and chief executives of Britain’s most profitable enterprises have been awarding themselves salary increases of up to 50% - and 50% of a salary already nudging a million a year is a very large sum indeed!

I don’t know how they have the gall to accept it – but they have. I heard one of them interviewed on tv say that if an attempt were to be made to limit the salaries of top earners, they would all disappear to the USA or Asia. I’d say ‘Let them go – and the sooner the better!’ If, to stay afloat, Britain needs the support of those who have no interest in life beyond making money – then Britain deserves to sink.

Those who make such threats will be among the first to accuse public servants of holding the country to ransom when, very shortly, they go on strike because their jobs are imperil, their wages have been frozen, their savings are diminishing as inflation outstrips interest on savings accounts, and they are going to have to wait longer and pay more for their – in most cases – very modest pensions.

Then there were the pictures of long queues waiting up for hours to be the first to buy the very latest, most realistic and most violent and bloody video game on the market coupled with the news that creating the make-believe world of video games is one of Britain’s most successful industries. And to think that the writers of popular fiction used to be accused of encouraging ‘escapism’!

And the last item! It occurred on a day when the financial foundations of the world were shaking; on which we learned that an unknown number of terrorists may have entered the country because the Home Secretary had lost control of part of her Whitehall ‘empire’, and on which there appeared to be a real risk of the UK being dragged by its ‘special relationship’ into yet another Middle East conflict, this time against Iran. Not one of these matters was the lead story of BBC Breakfast, the first BBC News Bulletin of the day. Oh no – the first story was breathtaking news about who had actually administered the final lethal dose of a drug to an American Pop Star with a questionable life style who was already drugged up to the eyeballs. I had felt just a tiny amount of sympathy for the doctor who, it appears, was responsible – until I learned that he had been receiving a salary of 95,000 dollars a month as the pop-star’s medical attendant. That was in a country where, despite the efforts of its present President, millions live in poverty and thousands of the poor can afford no medical care of any kind!

A Damascene Moment!

This afternoon, as I was preparing a packet to send to send off to Germany by post, I had a vision of the future. Quite suddenly, I realized what global capitalism was all about, what was meant by preparing Britain to compete in a global market place – and the inevitable result of trying to do so.

My little ‘honorary’ German niece Maja had recently celebrated her fifth birthday. One of my British real nieces had thought that she would like to give the child a belated birthday present. She gave me a charming child’s shoulder and hand bag to send to her. I duly bought an appropriately sized padded envelope/bag at the Post Office and, with the help of Google Translate, wrote a suitable message in German to enclose with the present. I addressed it and took it to the Post Office for despatch.

It was as I sealed up the envelope that I had my epiphany (sorry about my Biblical vocabulary. It seems to go naturally with the nature of my vision). There was the envelope, bulging with its contents, with Royal Mail stamped proudly upon it, together with Maja’s address, an airmail label and – in small print in the corner - Made in China!

All became clear. Of course there are firms in Britain that could have manufactured and supplied comparable, perhaps better, padded envelopes. However, free competition and the global market insisted that even such a very British institution as the Royal Mail has to accept the lowest tender. A firm in China could manufacture them and transport them halfway round the world, just a little cheaper than any manufacturer in Britain, or in Europe, could manage to make them.

How then must Britain, or indeed any other European country, prepare itself to compete in the wonderful new Global Market, so beloved by both the Conservatives and New Labour? The only way that I can see is by reducing British wages to below the level of those of the factory workers of China and India, and increasing their hours of work, cutting public services, social housing and public transport to the level in those countries and by regarding the poor, the disabled and the homeless with the indifference that many in those countries regard them. ‘They’ve got families to support them haven’t they? Everybody knows that the poor breed like rabbits!’

Who knows, if we do it thoroughly enough we may one day be able to turn England’s green and pleasant land into a brave new world capable of obtaining contracts with the Chinese Mail Service to supply them with padded postal packets! Even then, of course, there’s still the chance that some country in Africa or South America will manage to undercut all of us.

It makes me wish that I were young enough and fit enough to join the protesters at St. Paul’s Cathedral!