Quality of life

We all get old and as we do the burden we can put on the Health service increases exponentially, not in every case of course, but as a generality it's pretty close to the mark. There was a time when doctors used to try and move heaven or earth to keep someone going long past a term my ex wife (a nurse) considered to be a quality of life, well that was until Liverpool Health devised the conveyor belt 'Care' pathway to off unfortunates. Unfortunately it's now getting worse, the NHS is considering denying anyone old necessary drugs if they aren't a productive member of society anymore.
Mail.

Patients who have had a ‘fair innings’ could be denied life-saving drugs under proposed health reforms.
The plans would mean experts taking into account whether there is a ‘wider societal benefit’ to giving a patient crucial medicines.
The NHS rationing body, Nice, fears the Department of Health proposals could see younger people deemed a higher priority for drug treatments because they have more years ahead of them – potentially contributing more to the economy – than the elderly.
The reforms, which are being consulted on, would see new drugs assessed for the first time based partly on whether they would benefit society as a whole – not just the patient.
For example, a drug that helped people to live longer in an expensive care home, or on welfare, might have a ‘negative’ social value not outweighed by the benefit to the individual, because such patients take more from society than they can put back.

Not quite euthanasia, but certainly heading that way even if they would deny such a claim.
What I believe it should boil down to is that elusive quality of life, if the drug enables someone to live their life a bit better with all mental facilities intact then I don't believe societies needs should even be considered at all. This is someone who has probably contributed into the ponzi National Insurance scheme all their lives and is worth treating, not left on the scrap heap simply because they are 'inconvenient' or expensive.
As a libertarian I'm generally with Ayn Rand where it comes to individual rights...

Individual rights are not subject to a public vote; a majority has no right to vote away the rights of a minority; the political function of rights is precisely to protect minorities from oppression by majorities (and the smallest minority on earth is the individual).

Pensioners may not be a minority as a group but when it comes to the decision-making process they are effectively disenfranchised from it due to health and non working status. In other words people are deciding just who does and doesn't get the treatment they need at a level way above most of us and they are starting to prioritise only those who work.
Yet we're still told the NHS is the greatest thing in the world...
Getting harder to believe by the day since Labour's reforms allowed bean counters in to monitor every penny.

Working on

The new reality for a lot of folks is that they are going to have to carry on working once they've passed their retirement age either through choice or simply because they cannot afford to retire, particularly on a state pension. Well according to various headlines today anyway, though most seem to miss a very obvious omission in the people who will have to carry on working.
Express.

BRITAIN’S economic crisis has almost doubled the number of pensioners forced to work in their retirement as they struggle to cope with the rising cost of living.
Pensioners are driving taxis, cleaning houses and even taking care of the elderly in a bid to pay their bills.
As many as 1.4 million ­people were working beyond 65 last year – up from around 800,000 in 2000, ­official figures showed.
A high proportion of men had stayed on in “higher skilled” executive jobs – such as sales directors or chief executives, the Office for National Statistics found.
Vince Smith-Hughes, a retirement expert at Prudential, described the research as reflecting a “new retirement reality” which will see people having to work for even longer.
“More than 10 per cent of people who had planned to retire this year are making alternative arrangements and putting off drawing their pensions for the time being,” he said. “The retirement landscape is changing and as a result retiring at 65 is no longer a given for the vast majority of people.”

Retiring at 65 will soon be a thing of the past anyway, the government intends to raise the retirement age to 67 by 2028, though why they're waiting so long is a bit of a mystery. But the hidden omission in all this talk is that whatever the retirement age is for the private sector or getting your hands on a state pension, the same rules don't apply to the public sector who are hell bent on keeping their gold plated index linked pensions and retiring at an age that those who work in the private sector can only dream of (whilst paying taxes to pay for the public sectors largesse in its pension scheme) Indeed if the state hadn't run up such a massive public debt (thank you Labour and thank you Tories for continuing the madness) we wouldn't be in this position now, there would just about be enough money in the pot to keep our pensioners in a degree of comfort. That coupled with the politicians lunacy in demanding 'green' energy coupled with expensive fuel bills means that many of us will never ever be able to afford to retire unless we get lucky on the lottery.
This sadly is the legacy of massive government, idiotic left wing policies, socialist leaning unions and a lack of duty of care to a vulnerable section of our society.
Work, starve or freeze in the winters that we were no longer supposed to have.

Carrying you out in a box

I'm finally in the position where I can now save for a pension, kids are all gone and there's only myself and my good lady, problem is, it's probably too late to make a difference, well not unless I'm prepared to work well into my 70's (which sounds ok now, but wait till I reach them) Not that the situation has been helped by the Gordon Brown pension raid back in the early Labour days which transformed a fairly successful scheme into an gravely underfunded one, as one off taxes went, that was a stonker and hit the less well off far harder than most, so much for Labour being the party of the working class.
Express.

THE demise of Britain’s private pension system has been graphically exposed by a damning official report revealed to the Daily Express.
Government experts have predicted the era of final salary pensions is coming to a rapid end and that within six years no new members will be enrolled on to the lucrative schemes.
Department for Work and Pensions analysis shows that many of the schemes have died out already.
Millions of workers now face the grim reality of having to work well into their 70s.
The death knell of generous final salary pensions has been sounded in a damning official report which ­confirms how millions of us will have to keep on working into old age.
The stark analysis by the ­Department for Work and Pensions warns that many company defined schemes have already closed down and those that survive will be closed to new entrants within six years.

Problem for the companies is that because of reduced staffing and increased costs plus the losing of their float by Browns robbery they can no longer afford to keep their pension schemes going, it's costing more than what's actually going in. This means that anyone who wants a fairly decent pension is going to have to save longer and harder, which kind of rules me out, I had a fairly good private pension scheme till the CSA got it's claws into me then I struggled to bring up two families it seemed as strangely enough the CSA did not chase after the father of my good Lady's kids as he was self employed. Don't get me wrong, I'm not bitter about the situation and I never begrudged paying my way and the kids turned out fine, it's just that I now have a bit of a problem on my hands and it's going to cost me, so in a sense I'm back to square one.
Of course we could resolve some of the problems by topping up the state pension, taking a chainsaw to government spending and using the excess to top up the pension scheme, the foreign aid budget could go for a start along with all the money spent on fake charities, quangos and translation services.
Mind you, so far the pension crisis only applies to the private sector, the public sector are being cushioned (as ever) and that needs to change too.
If we're all in this together, then we need the system to be fair, I don't like the idea of paying through my taxes for someone to retire earlier than me and on a better pension, especially if they haven't contributed a decent amount into the system themselves.
I expect I'll have to work till I drop to pay for some civil or public servant to retire in relative comfort, that grates a little and I suspect that the older I get the more it will grate.

Not the biggest at all

Not many of the general public probably know what a Ponzi scheme is, I suspect that they know it's a scam, but that's about it, I might be wrong though as my access to the general public tends to be limited to friends, family and workmates. Most people reading this though will have a little political savvy and knowledge and know that a Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that pays returns to its investors from their own money or the money paid by subsequent investors.
BBC.

Two men have been convicted of taking part in UK's biggest "Ponzi" fraud scheme.
John Anderson, 46, from West Hampstead, and Kenneth Peacock, 43, from Surrey, were found guilty of unlawfully accepting deposits from investors.
The scheme's mastermind Kautilya Pruthi, 41, of Wandsworth, London, had already admitted seven fraud counts.
Southwark Crown Court heard hundreds of people including cricketer England Darren Gough lost £115m.
The jury is still out on whether Anderson and Peacock deceived investors.

Well done the fraud squad (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) but the BBC are wrong, the UK's biggest (and longest running) Ponzi scheme wasn't being run by those guys, it's being run by the UK government. A lot of people think that National Insurance is money being put away for your pension by the government. It isn't, like a Ponzi scheme National Insurance is being taken in and used to pay out to today's pensioners, there is no savings involved, unlike a regular pension scheme your payments are not nurtured and invested to get a profitable return in order to fund your retirement, they are being used to pay for today's pensioners now. That in part is why the government allows mass immigration, as the working population levels drop, there's less income coming in to top up National Insurance and the countries finances struggle. This is particularly apt in the public sector final salary pension schemes which our (private sector) National Insurance is also being used to top up. So whilst we're left with the dregs of around £6,000 per annum when we retire (assuming we don't have a private pension) someone who has done their bit for the public sector and got their years in can retire early on a decent pension and we're paying for them.
This is also why in the private sector at least the retirement age is going up, the Ponzi Scheme aka National Insurance cannot cope any more unless more people are working to pay for peoples retirement.
So expect the next government to raise the retirement age again (though probably not in the public sector), eventually we'll work till we drop to pay for someone else's pension whose wages we also pay via our taxation.
Believe me, it's coming...

No cold comfort here

Hypothermia deaths are up again from 950 in 2006/07 to 1,876 in 2010/11 almost doubled in fact, no doubt the recent cold snap will have claimed a few more. It used to just be pensioners at risk at this time of year, but the risk has moved into other age groups too as fuel prices consume a much higher percentage of a household budget than they did  10 years ago.
Mail.

Frozen to death as fuel bills soar: Hypothermia cases among the elderly double in five years

• 1,876 patients treated for hypothermia in 2010/11
• Hypothermia death toll within 30 days up from 135 to 260
• Coincides with a surge in energy prices
• Industry analyst estimates 8 out of 10 households ration energy use

Age UK says a quarter of all pensioners live in fuel poverty
The number of pensioners dying from hypothermia has nearly doubled in five years, a period when a succession of cold winters has been coupled with drastic rises in energy bills.
The official figures emerged after several days of Arctic conditions which drove temperatures across the whole country as low as minus 10C (14F).
They showed that 1,876 patients were treated in hospital for hypothermia in 2010/11, up from 950 in 2006/07.
An industry analyst, uSwitch has calculated that in 80% of home energy is being rationed, and called for a cut in VAT on energy bills. 

Some people are complaining that energy firms are making a profit, though I'd expect any firm anywhere to try and make a profit, the profit margins though come on top of government levies such as VAT (20%) and the so called "environmental or green levy" (12%) so 32% of the charges you get go directly to the government, not the supplier, yes that's right, 1/3rd of your fuel bill goes straight into the governments coffers to pay no doubt for bird mincers and expensive solar panels which are then subsidised so they can sell you back the expensive power produced and line the pockets of those who have invested in the useless "green" energy scam.
This government and the previous one have put in place measure that have killed people struggling on the margins of financial stability. They have instituted policies that have driven up the price of heating a home in the name of non existent global warming and the cost has been thousands of our elderly and infirm dying of the cold in the winters they claimed were becoming a thing of the past.
Yet they show no sense of shame, will not remove their grubby paws from out of our pockets and their influence away from our lives.
I wonder just how many would die if say we reduced their heating bills by a third?
They wont though, they'd rather have blood on their hands than give up on their cherished principles of preparing the country for something that isn't happening...

Compare and contrast

Admittedly its a target rich environment though in this instance it's our idiot governments determination to give away our cash to foreign governments which again has piqued my ire.
Mail. (usual caveats)

Taxpayers are funding aid to Brazil even though it has become richer than Britain, Whitehall officials admitted yesterday.
Millions has been handed over in development aid in recent years despite the rapid rise of Brazil to the top rank of world economies.
And money is still going to the Latin American powerhouse in the week it was revealed to have overtaken Britain in the world’s economic league table.

This is the same Brazil who wont allow Falkland flagged vessels entry to their ports anymore too. Yet it remains an enigma as to why we give money away to a country who is richer than we are, other examples are India (space program) and Pakistan (nuclear power) if they can do those, they don't need help!
Yet we have this going on at home.
Mail.

Cuts to social care services mean that Britain’s elderly are facing an ‘absolute crisis’, according to the head of a leading charity.
Age UK’s director Michelle Mitchell said increasing numbers of older people with considerable care needs were ‘getting absolutely no support at all, or poor quality and limited support’ as a result of cuts to local authority provision.
She said research by the King’s Fund health charity showed that the number of older people who need significant care support but receive no assistance will reach almost 900,000 in 2012, rising to one million by 2015.

I think it's about time UK cash was spent on UK people, then (and only then) if there's any left over we can throw it at countries with real problems and Brazil does not seem to have a real problem.
How we treat the elderly in this country is an absolute disgrace, we let them freeze to death, starve, pile them into out of sight out of mind care homes and generally treat them with contempt or as an afterthought. They're generally people who have spent their whole lives paying into a system only to be slighted and shorted when they actually need it, many of them would actually be better off in prison.
Yet the overseas aid budget continues to rise above the rate of inflation and is ringfenced to protect it from cuts. Money that could well be spent on our people giving our pensioners a deserved happy retirement in comfort if that's what they desire.
Too many politicians are obsessed with the wrong things, perhaps an obsession to protect the weak vulnerable and elderly in this country would be no bad thing, rather than foreign aid and subsidising bird mincers by additional tariffs on fuel.
The priorities of our political classes are inhuman, selfish and an abomination in a supposed civilised society, yet there are fools out there who would still vote for them.

Pensions

State pensions look as if they are heading towards being withheld at least until we reach 70. I can see the point, people are living longer and originally the pensionable age was set at 65 for a very good reason, as that was the average lifespan.

Telegraph.

Millions of employees who are not saving for their retirement will be enrolled in company schemes under a radical shake-up of pensions which eventually could see most people working into their seventies.

In a landmark announcement intended to herald a new era of shorter but wealthier retirements, the Government will encourage people to work for longer by making it illegal for companies to force staff to give up work at 65.

At the same time, the age at which employees can claim the state pension will rise to 66 as soon as 2016 for men — 10 years earlier than the last government had decreed. 

The Coalition is to consult on the most appropriate pace at which to increase the retirement age even higher in line with rising life expectancy.

The outcome is likely to be that, by the second half of the century, most people will work into their seventies.

In return, workers would receive more generous state pensions boosted by membership of company schemes, into which employees will be enrolled unless they opt out. Those reliant on state pensions will benefit from the restored link between pensions and earnings announced in this week’s Budget.

Life expectancy is currently 77.4 for men and 81.6 for women. At present rates, there will be three people in their nineties for every newborn by 2050.

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, told The Daily Telegraph that the radical pension reform he will oversee was designed to “reinvigorate retirement”. 

 Now this is an area in which I'd like to see the pen pushers of the public services lead the way, not those involved so much with the physical stuff, (though if they are still fit and able why not) but the desk jockeys who inhabit the bureaucratic world that makes ordinary life such a joy. No longer getting a 2/3rds of earnings at retirement at 55, but being required to go to 70 till they get any money off the state (yes we pay their pensions as they do not contribute anything like the amount they take out) like everyone else. Naturally if you have a private pension you can go earlier if you want, but the public service pension will not be available to you till you reach 70.
To be honest I can't see any downside here.