Tough Choices

Sometimes I get panic-stricken at the thought of my dotage. The way the world is going though, including the euro, I may not have too much to worry about because we're all be ruined and living under bridges, but if the economy manages to hold itself together enough not to implode, the future of our pensions is still enough to keep us all awake at night.

Anyone with a house of their own will probably be okay as they'll have walls come what may, but I've favoured bringing up my kids in a rental house in a nice place rather than buying a flat in a no-go ghetto. 

Still, I think I've found the solution. Prison. Thanks to an article by Libby Purves today in The Times (££) about State intervention in prisons, care homes and foster homes, I've come to the conclusion that prison might be just the place for a comfy old age.

Apparently, there's a charity that assists and studies older inmates - Recoop (which sounds more like a chicken house manufacturer) that has found that older inmates often do little exercise, isolate themselves from the younger ones and basically just wait to die. Actually this doesn't sound an awful lot different from the lives of many old people, but in prison you have the National Offender Management Service which makes provisions to alleviate this situation.

There will be a palliative care “hospice” type suite at Whatton Prison, instructions to prison kitchens to include soft foods, widened cell doors for wheelchairs, hospital-style beds and bathrooms. Some prisons have special gym sessions and chair-bound exercise classes. We learn that at HMP Leyhill, where the oldest inmate is 82 and Recoop is active, there is a raised garden, a day centre, relaxation sessions, quizzes and “reminiscence therapy” with DVDs of life in the 1940s. Young prisoners are invited to “buddy” and assist the feeble.

Sounds quite attractive, doesn't it? I mean if the choice is a bleak, cold flat because fuel is so costly, sitting wrapped in 3 coats, mittens and woolly hats eating baked beans and seeing no one from one week's end to the next, or committing some heinous crime followed by a nice warm cell, three meals a day plus as much entertainment as you want... What's not to like?

So I've been thinking about the heinous crime I could commit. Obviously one doesn't want to harm anyone physically, although the temptation might be great sometimes, and one wouldn't want to impoverish a nice group of fellow oldies with a financial scam. However, bankers are fair game, as are estate agents, car salesmen and anyone who's too smug. I quite fancy a bit of hacking actually although my computer skills are not really up to it as of yet. I could call myself GrannyHacEsq. That would confuse 'em.

Or a bank raid? I could borrow my son's balaclava and stick painted loo rolls to myself with bits of wire coming out of some Plasticine and attached to a little box with a flashing red light (you can tell I used to watch Blue Peter), and yell "This is a bank raid! Stick 'em up or I blow you all to Kingdom Come!" Then someone would press a button, the police would come screeching round the corner, sirens deafening the eager crowd, I would pretend to take a hostage (a nice young man...), demand a helicopter and a passage to India, and allow myself, with a slight struggle, to be arrested and hauled off to prison. YAY mission accomplished.

Once in prison, if anyone started talking about releasing me, I'd pretend to go all Alzheimery and a danger to myself if left to my own devices, and settle down once more to a nice spot of gardening and some reminiscence therapy.

I predict the prison population will explode after a series of petty crimes committed by the elderly looking for a cushy dotage. It would also take a huge weight off our children's shoulders, knowing we're safe behind bars and not getting up to further mischief.

It's either prison or a cruise ship, anyway; the advantage of a cruise ship being that you can hop overboard in a drunken haze when the money runs out. Of course, you'd have to clear it with your kids first just in case they objected to the idea of you being lost at sea, eaten by fish, and a having body-less funeral.

Tough choices.

Us and Them

François Fillon

With the weather raging outside wild and woolly, it's an appropriate setting for the raging that's going on in the finances of the French state. If you can believe what was being said on tele last night, M6's Capital with special guest the Prime Minister François Fillon...

The French believe very strongly in democracy with one proviso, they must be allowed to demonstrate (and win) against arguments which attack their levels of comfort, and complain when others exercise that right and disrupt the lives of everyone else. French governments in the past have been very lilly-livered about doing the right thing and have caved in to demands which made no economic sense.

The result is that the national debt is soaring at stratospherically high levels and the country is living way beyond its means, and has been since the end of the 'trente glorieuses' when economic growth kept the coffers full and everyone happy.

So, belt-tightening all round is the order of the day. What does that mean? For the state: more taxes, reductions in spending, rationalisation of pensions.

According to François Fillon, it's only now that the off-shore tax-havens are being tackled. Previous socialist governments did nothing and in fact, one wonders why. They are such a potentially marvellous source of tax revenue it seems strange that such public spending enthusiasts didn't try and get their grubby paws on all that lovely lolly before. Of course, those in power have friends in high places and sometimes it doesn't do to bite the hand that feeds you, so maybe a convenient blind eye was turned in favour of party donations and political support... A well-known strategy.

Desperate situations however have the effect of concentrating the mind, something which is happening all over Europe. The state is going after tax cheats, and the programme last night showed us how. Unfortunately, those with financial means can afford the best evasive measures and pursuing the rich is a costly business, so, who does the state go after? Yes, got it in one, the little people. Anyone on a salary would be nuts to lie to the fisc nowadays as all income paid is declared by banks, employers, uncle Tom Cobbley and all. In fact all we have to do now with our tax returns is sign on the dotted line because the fisc has already filled everything in for us.

The self-employed are targets because of the opportunities of cheating the fisc by not declaring all cash transactions. Tax inspectors search for anomalies in income/spending and slam you with an inspection if something doesn't add up.

Elsewhere, the public sector is being trimmed down, with one out of two jobs not being filled upon retirement. Education is a particular target because its cost is higher than any other department. It seems that while the number of children has stabilised, the number of teachers being employed has shot up by a third. The government wants to bring back teacher numbers to the level of 2005. This means that specialists such as language teachers at primary level have not had their contracts renewed, and these subjects have been added to the primary teachers' workload.

Class numbers are closely monitored to rationalise teacher/pupil ratios, and supply teachers are having their schedules better organised. They are paid for 18hrs work a week, but often don't do more than 14. M Fillon doesn't consider this a rational use of their time and wants them to work the full 18, unsurprisingly. All it takes, he said, is organisation.Where there's a will...

The thorny pensions report made scary watching, and anyone with half a brain should see that a rise in retirement age is essential if pensions are to be sustainable. The trouble is though that certain sectors feel that they should not be included in the reforms and should keep their avantages acquis intact. These include people who start work at 18 or before, people who have physically strenuous jobs, train drivers, people with freckles, people with children, people without children, and everyone else. Hence the demonstrations this weekend. No one can count, no one can add up, and no one thinks any of it applies to them. Frankly, I'd rather be able to work longer and maintain a decent standard of living than be forced to live out of a plastic bag beneath the Pont du Gard.

I thought François Fillon did a good job explaining the situation. The journalist, as usual, was a pain in the butt interrupting and not letting him finish so it was sometimes difficult working out what was being said. The message was straightforward enough though. Things cannot continue as they have been; it will be tough, but it'll be worth it. If nothing is done, the country will simply go bankrupt and Greek-style disturbances, even civil war could break out.

The message from rational people is also pretty straightforward: we accept the cuts, but only if they apply to everyone, including the guys at the top. I'm not sure it's quite what Sarkozy has in mind, and it's that which will lose him the next election. Let's all suffer together, or no one suffer, but don't pick on us without picking on them too!

Just Die

The online front page of the Telegraph today declared that 'Number of pensioners in poverty increases' with almost one in three in that terrible state.

Gordon Brown, when Chancellor, ransacked the pensions funds to pay for God knows what, leaving many, having paid into a scheme all their working life, with a worthless piece of paper. Now the situation is being compounded with rising costs all round - council tax, food, fuel - which are all rising faster than the rate of the state pension.

So you get hundreds of thousands of people who've been screwed over by the Government raiding their pensions schemes and are now being told 'Screw you' by that same Government who don't seem to be able to spend public money in any way that enhances the lives of those in need. They are very good at spending it on themselves, however, and I can assure that their retirements will be golden.

On the other hand, the same Telegraph front page gives a link to a letter written by a gentleman who is looking after his 'essentially dead' wife and asks for moral guidance. One of the miracles of modern medicine is to be able to prolong life. The temptation to ask 'for what?' is pretty strong, given the misery in which a large number of elderly people live, thanks to 'Screw you' Government policies.

While these medicines might exist, and new techniques developed to enable us to go on and on, the NHS deprives those who need them because they are over the hill. New treatments are too expensive to spend on those who need them (over a certain age), so once you hit 65 or so, you can look forward to increasing decrepitude whilst starving and freezing to death. God forbid if you wish to put an end to such an existence, however. At that moment you'll get a whole bunch of sanctimonious, healthy, twats telling you about the sanctity of life from their groaning dinner tables and functioning centrally-heated homes.

If you're caring for an 'essentially dead' spouse, it's a matter of luck whether you'll receive any help. Most spouses are similarly aged, so looking after a severely deficient person when you're the same age, and not so healthy as you once were, is a guarantee to hurry your own demise. There is no national plan to ensure that carers are helped to care for their partner/parents which means that some have to cope 24/7 alone, with a lunatic. Is it any wonder that, driven to desperation through physical and mental exhaustion, some get violent?

The whole situation is an absolute disgrace. It's incoherent and illogical. The Government's right hand is not communicating with its left, which means that policies are irrational. You would think they could look at the whole problem, not just individual bits here are there. There again, that would need them to actually care. Since they will not, themselves, be bothered by such situations, they can quite happily apply the odd patch here and there, and quote statistics to say how everything in the garden is peachy.

I think there's a niche market for blue pill fabrication opening up. Old age will simply be too ghastly to bear. The Government could fund research and development because, with all these OAPs ducking out of the pond, they'll be saving millions for the NHS. How tidy...

Now, there's something to look forward to!

Eat, Drink and be Merry

You would think that the UK Government would be encouraging us to eat, drink and be merry, not warning us of the dangers of over-drinking, smoking, and doing no exercise. There'll be no money to pay either pensions or the NHS, so we might as well have a really great time, and go out with a bang early.

I find it rather distasteful that they try to party-pooper us into a long old age on the one hand whilst removing the means by which we may enjoy it on the other.

The latest effort to bring us into a strict, no nonsense line is by warning us about the dangers of fun things in relation to the onset of Alzheimer's.

How much is seven years of sanity worth to you? It could cost you drinking less than two units of alcohol and no more than 20 fags a day to prevent the early onset of Alzheimer's. Considering that not everyone is liable to catch this disease, we are, as usual, all being thrown into the same bucket and exhorted not to enjoy ourselves just in case.

Maybe the Government ought to be researching our likelihood of catching Alzheimer's, then we would know whether to refuse that third class of wine, 21st fag, and get out the pilates video and elastic band instead.

I think the Government should come clean. It seems to me that they are going down the path of 'I told you so' about being healthy, so if one refuses to follow the exhortations and blatant nannying, then we will be punished by reduced access to medical care. Although, as the less healthy die younger, they should be able to offset medical costs against reduced pensions payments.

Not only must you drink sensibly and not really smoke too much, but you must also, by the age of 40 have low cholesterol or you will be one and a half times more likely to get Alzheimer's by your older age. It's reckoned that 2.5million people could have dementia within 50 years if they don't radically reform their dissolute lifestyles. For the moment, Alzheimer's affects 'only' 400,000 and it's already a strain on NHS budgets looking after them.

If the Government wanted to save money all round, and reap in wads in taxes, it should be encouraging us to smoke, eat and drink to excess making us all die young but happy. It would save on pensions, and NHS care for the old and batty because we'd die before we reached that point.

As it is, the Government want us to lead sober, hard-working lives where we pay out in taxes so much that there is nothing left for fun, but when we get to a much-deserved retirement age, they'll turn round and tell us there is nothing in the kitty for our pension and the NHS is bankrupt so we'll have to pay for private health care. This will be so expensive for the retired that they won't be able to afford it so they'll die early, having lead a joyless life. A bleak prospect.

You might just as well go out and have fun while you may. The alternative is dire and the end result is the same.

History?

There are times when I read the Telegraph online and scratch my head totally perplexed. The latest article to render me thus is one on the teaching of history.

I know history is a difficult subject to teach. I remember hours of tedium taking down dictated notes when I was at school. We didn't have worksheets where you coloured in Anne Boleyn's hair-cap, we just wrote and wrote and learned and learned.

However, nobody shied away from provocative subjects. We were not given a politically correct watered down version for universal consumption where everyone's a winner. There were baddie nations, goodie nations, baddie religions, baddie kings and lots of dates. Today, teachers are avoiding teaching certain subjects because, for example, in the case of the Crusades, the balanced approach taught in schools challenges what is taught in local mosques.

I sit scratching and wondering whether these teachers are merely lily-livered baby-sitters or the most pathetic examples of what has become a national disgrace; liberal pc infiltration of teaching. The Communists re-wrote history, your average dictator re-writes the bits that concern him; democracies lauding free speech do NOT (except to give both sides).

Why is causing possible offense so bad, anyway? Surely, discussion, respectful debate and participation helps each side to understand the other. They may not agree, but dialogue helps both sides feel integrated, their opinions heard.

Why is everyone so scared? The Labour Government has a lot to answer for because it is under them that policitical correctness and feminazism has been allowed to expand and destroy much of what was good in society. People are more suspicious of their neighbours than ever before, white males are society's bad guys, boys in general are considered a nuisance and the government is pandering to all the loonier lobbyists.

Come on people, wake up. You already have no more pensions to look forward to thanks to that thief Gordon Brown (although I'm sure his is safe!), don't let the lack of education of your children jeopardise the country's future! Without a clear understanding of history; a learning of its lessons, we are doomed to repeat the same mistakes. Get the bastards OUT!