Treatment of elderly people is a disgrace
At LONG last something is being done about the scandal of 15-minute care visits.
Councils have been told not to schedule carer visits lasting less than half an hour
Councils have been told by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (Nice) that they must not schedule visits lasting less than half an hour. About time too. You can't expect carers to wash, dress and feed an elderly person in just quarter of an hour and there have been a glut of horror stories about people being left half-dressed and with no food.
You can't blame the carers though. It is badly paid work and, if they are paid by the visit and that visit is expected to last no more than 15 minutes, then they are going to cut and run.
Unless you have first-hand experience it is hard to comprehend how vulnerable the elderly are. But the way we treat them is a disgrace.
We dote on our pets (me included) but we leave the old in the cold and dark with no company, frightened and alone.
We waste billions on foreign aid to countries that have their own space programmes but we can't fork out to help the people who have worked hard all their lives, paid their taxes and their dues and now need something in return. Where is our compassion? How have we turned so horribly bad?
They say you can judge a country by how it treats its elderly. Well we are falling pretty badly short.
We are being stupid too. It costs far more to put people in residential care homes or hospitals than it does to send carers to look after them and so if we made sure they were doing all right in their own homes then there is less of a chance they will have to live in an institution.
The faster we recognise this and do something about it the better. As matters stand, it's a national scandal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
A SCIENTIFIC study has proven that potatoes make you fat whereas broccoli is good for you. Coming next week: the Pope is thought to have a Catholic turn of mind while bears frequently make their homes in woods.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Beeb could at least try to be impartial
Anyone listening to Radio 4 last Saturday could have been mistaken for thinking they had tuned in to a party political broadcast for the Communist Party.
From Our Own Correspondent, a programme that is supposed to bring us news from around the world, chose to run a piece about the dire housing shortage in one part of middle Britain - no mention of the Labour Party causing the problem by opening the door to mass immigration of course.
Broccoli - surprisingly good for you
Beeb director-general Tony Hall is a decent man but when is he going to put a stop to all this?
This was followed by The News Quiz, which was its awful usual self, this time with the panellists (it would contravene the Trade Descriptions Act to call them comedians) each doing their bit to choke with tears over the refugee crisis ("It's just really, really awful").
And then came Any Questions in which Jeremy Corbyn was cheered to the rafters and any mention of the party that actually won the May election was booed and hissed.
Beeb director-general Tony Hall is a decent man but when is he going to put a stop to all this?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I AM baffled by attempts to class chess and bridge as sports. They require input from the mind, not the body. As one of my colleagues in the office pointed out, any game that can be played on the internet is not a sport. What's the big deal?
Jackie Collins, pictured here in 1970, sadly passed away this week
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
SO farewell then Jackie Collins. A few years ago I was lucky enough to sit next to her at a lunch for book reviewers.
Dripping in jewellery and wearing sunglasses she was every bit as fabulous as she came across in public. We had been warned not to mention Joan but within five minutes of sitting down she uttered the words "my sister" and a thrill ran around the table. She sent me a note a year later contained in her latest book. I was star-struck then and I am now.
Jackie will be very much missed.