When Neil Kinnock issued his famous speech re the danger of a Tory Govt many of us admired its sheer sincerity and raw appeal to Labour's sense of social justice.
Over 20 years on I wonder what has happened in a world where our old people are treated so shamefully and inadequately by an NHS which was once the envy of the world.
My eyes to the reality behind the slogans of the spin doctors have been opened by several weeks spent visiting my father, now desperately ill, in a Manchester care home where staff are clearly struggling with the impact of years of under-funding.
This place, by the way, is no Gothic horrorshow but a new Intermediate Care unit opened several years ago by a New Labour Minister. When my father was admitted several weeks ago, my hope was he would be restored to health with a simple combination of rest and good food. Neither has transpired.
Food is not cooked on the premises - but outsourced and brought in from a private company in Wales.
Little of it is suitable for my father, who has a chronic gall bladder problem, and most of it is frankful woeful and unpalatable. The consequence is he has not put on any weight - yesterday I resorted to taking in two tins of soup in a desperate bid to improve the situation.
The prospects are not looking good because staff seem to have little notion of nutrition - probably not their fault. But I ask what kind of world are we in when we cannot give elderly people in NHS care a decent meal? When relatives have to advise staff on the right diet for malnourished old folk? And when requests to hand out smaller portions to stop loved ones being overfaced are just ignored?
The bottom line Andy Burnham is we are simply not doing enough for a growing population living way beyond the ages of their parents and grandparents.
The people I saw yesterday suffering from the impact of strokes, long illnesses and chronic conditions like arthritis. This is will be you and I one day.
The least all of us deserve is a system where we willl be treated with dignity and respect.
Free care , first-class care, not £20,000 death taxes and punishment for the crime of living way beyond three score years and ten.
Are the staff where my dad is doing their best? Yes of course they are. The stark truth is that , because we don't raise enough money for a decent NHS elderly care, it is simply not enough. Better than the Tories - but simply not what we should be getting from a Labour Government
Wednesday, 17 February 2010
I WARN YOU NOT TO GROW OLD.......
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Two points
a) not all of the staff will be caring types - since the (Tory) training reforms which made nursing training academic rather than on the job, the ethos of care has diminished as 'professionalism' has grown. When my elderly mother was dying of cancer a few years back the nurses on her ward made it quite plain to her that they resented having to take her to the toilet at night - this in a shiny new NHS flagship hospital. She wouldn't let me complain in case it made things worse for her - which is the sort of thing you'd expect from an inmate of a third world prison rather than an English hospital.
b) I don't know if you've looked at the demographics, but the first bulge of post-war baby boomers, class of 46, are about to move into retirement - to be followed by the rest of the great bulge from 1946 to 1964, after which the birthrate collapsed. I wrote about it here last year.
If you think things are bad now, just wait. The ratio between numbers of tax contributors and numbers of tax recipients is going to change markedly for the worse.
Will the young taxpayers want to be heavily taxed to pay for the oldies nursing care ? And should euthanasia be legalised (even de facto) will the temptation to save those precious NHS funds prevail over Hippocrates ? I am not looking forward to my old age with great confidence, to put it mildly.
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