We Must Do More to Support Elderly
I have just read a very disturbing report listing the difficulties encountered when seeking funding for elders suffering with dementia to enter a care home.
A curious state of affairs seems to have developed in that according to recent demographic figures we have more pensioners than young people.
It was suggested that, since pensioners now outnumber children in the UK, this should be a "a wake-up call for the Government". It seems to me that the real "wake-up" should have come at least 10 years ago, and serious money put into research into finding a cure, if not a treatment, for Alzheimers and related illnesses before we got to this stage.
Now we are here and something much more must be done at once, other than putting spokes into the funding wheels when such elders need care homes for which they have paid their taxes all their lives.
It is disgusting to learn, therefore, that there are even fewer elders "eligible" for entry into a care home than there were when Labour came to "power".
Perhaps we should change that word "power" to "responsibility".
The inconsistency of consideration from one local authority to another in the decision-making as to whether a person is eligible for a care home seems to indicate that this may have something to do with funding.
It is bad enough for people with physical infirmities which mean they need a care home to have such difficulties, but for those with dementia, there is almost no category into which they fit. Often sufferers are physically very fit and do not fill the criteria of medical need for care in a care home.
It is obviously as wrong as it can get for elders with dementia to be expected to cope at home by themselves. Yet this is very much the norm in many areas of the UK today, we hear.
Where people live in flats in particular, it is dangerous for other tenants, as sufferers often cannot remember the last thing they did and may very well forget they have left the gas on, for example, which could not only kill themselves but cause an explosion and kill many others.
It is time to put this right – now. Those who are young today will be the elders of tomorrow.
Tess Nash
Helston
Smoking curiosity
These figures must be wrong, as they fly in the face of the Holy Grail of the non-smoking lobby.
Until the Puritans and grim-faced prophets of doom finally gained the upper hand, smoking was, if not compulsory, at least an almost universal habit. So those who have now reached pensionable age spent their youth and working lives, if not actually dragging on a Park Drive, Woodbine or Capstan Full Strength, then passively inhaling the poisons of a smoke-filled office or factory, and their leisure hours in equally fug-filled pubs, cafes, cinemas and dance halls.
Why, then, if not decently dead to comply with the received wisdom, have so many not only survived the miasma, but in sufficient numbers to cause a demographic problem?
Will someone enlighten me? Possibly someone from the experts who, noticing that many who had never allowed the filthy weed near their own lips nevertheless died young from "smoking-related" diseases, came up with the explanation of "passive smoking".
Angela Marks
Dawlish
Snow in Jerusalem
This is not unusual, but perhaps a very bad case was in 1953.
After Christmases in Eritrea it was nice to be in Jordan where I had established Arab Airways (Jerusalem) Limited.
Clear in our memories is snowball fighting on November 18, 1953 – to the surprise of my more sedate Arab colleagues.
But many times from 1953 to 1958, when we left the Middle East at the end of a six-month posting which lasted just over seven years, we had snowball fights in Ramallah, Jerusalem and Qubeibeh – to the delight of our friends the Franciscan monks, most of whom have now gone ahead.
Harry Pusey
Troon, Camborne
Creative words
Thank you, too, for persistently encouraging genuine and continuing debate in your letters supplement – and long may it last.
A small point in relation to accuracy of one press report of the meeting at the Metropole. Mr Cameron said: "What we want is healthy cattle and, yes, healthy badgers."
He did not just say "healthy badgers" alone. What a difference a few words make.
How creative words are – creative for truth or falsehood, if I may be allowed to use such "bigoted" words side by side.
Ann Whitaker
Bodmin
Daft ‘expert’ ideas
Perhaps one should supply a certificate of vasectomy before being able to buy cigarettes or alcohol. Or maybe Social Services should remove children from the home if parents smoke or drink.
And I also see that some "authority" on the subject suggests that families should be limited to two children, because more than that adds to global warming.
Can anyone please tell me dafter official, expert, ideas?
David Walters
Colyford
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