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.

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!