John’s Blog No.84 – Elderly Care 2

The White Paper on elderly care was a non event, doing nothing to tackle the problem or advance and meet the needs of the elderly population; its main content being to specify the legal right to care but not who, how, what and why. Any decisions or action are postponed for several years at least until after the next election, but increasing the burden on the individual and Local Authority without defining the Health care boundary. Of course owners will be given the opportunity to mortgage their home again at an undefined interest rate to meet care costs. The main effect of these ill thought out and incomplete ideas will be to encourage anyone retiring to sell their property and rent, or take out equity release before the State does and spend or distribute the money to one’s children. It will not be worth owning a house after age 70! The Government will go down as achieving all the ideals of Communism in the complete redistribution of wealth from the middle classes, whilst maintaining that of the rich and privileged, just as its predecessors destroyed mining, manufacturing, the railways etc and our way of life. It is no longer worthwhile to work and save and build up an inheritance for your children, or even marry and have children at all, meanwhile you are forced to live beyond your natural lifespan in a state of increasing poverty and misery and often advanced senility. We need to return to basics and define the purpose of living, its aims and objectives, family, moral and social responsibilities and adjust that with the material needs. Work and providing for your personal needs, children and elderly is an inherent part of Society, completely opposed to the current greed, envy and self-interest. The problem of longevity and increasing elderly care need, requires assessing carefully not with wild figures snatched out of thin air or quick fix cost cutting solutions. The numbers, levels and cost need defining, where does £100 per day come from, one can get a short break at a third of that cost. A good example is the over 80 population projections, the figures available appeared based on a uniform linear projection of reduced mortality rates, yet life is not like that, ageing occurs at a much more rapid exponential rate. There is no immortality elixir and numbers fall off more rapidly with age. The real problem is the lack of Government today, at least half the expenditure is wasted on military systems scrapped before use; expensive PFI rents; idealistic benefit and human rights costs; innumerable post mortem enquiries and gross overcharging for external services and goods, with no overall objective or purpose. We need to get back to a working and saving society, living within our means, with pride in our family, community and citizenship, plus our ownership of home and possessions, lifestyle and knowledge. The spend today forget tomorrow has failed, with no better example than our pension and retirement provision. The economic and banking crisis has shown the way, we just need the will, determination, vision and leadership to proceed, which unfortunately appears to be lacking in the present approach. Large amounts of money are still being poured into the Banks in so called “quantitive easing”, who are not passing it on; the economic approach is outdated and our overspend balance of spending abroad remains unchecked and increasing. We are living hand to mouth from crisis to crisis with nothing fully planned or managed from immigration chaos, Olympic security, Benefit reform, military expenditure and all other State expenditure, whilst time and effort is wasted in Parliament on non-essentials. Pension savings are the hardest hit by the present policies and yet are the area which could create growth, stabilise the economy and give large potential State expenditure savings. If “QE”was used to reform all State pensions to funded schemes, the money would serve a dual purpose, ensure pension stability and provide large investment funds directly into infrastructure and UK Business expansion. The real “Big Society could start here by giving freedom of retirement choice to all in work, not off loading unwanted costs onto charities and individuals, effectively indirect taxation. House of Lords reform, well overdue, could be the next step. It should remain non-political, elected members should be truly independent and representative, from Community groups, Charities, Welfare groups and all voluntary groups. We just need basic commonsense and vision for our future.