There is still some way to go with John’s Campaign (“Four years after my father died, I feel we’ve reached a milestone in our fight for dignity in dementia care”, Focus).
My mother was admitted to hospital overnight, 200 miles away. I phoned the ward in the morning to inquire how she was before I set off on the journey. I was told they couldn’t talk to me unless I gave them a password. On asking how to get one, I was told I would need to visit with ID. My mother’s dementia meant she would have been totally unable to verify any information herself.
Luckily, I recalled seeing someone from the patient advice and liaison service on a previous visit. They were as baffled as I was but were wonderful. They visited the ward and managed to extract a password so that I could call en route to find out how my mother was. Their understanding of my long-distance carer’s difficulties and the complexities of dementia was heartening and reassuring.
I am so grateful to Nicci Gerrard, Julia Jones and others involved in John’s Campaign for changes already achieved and hope they will continue so that all hospital policies and procedures can fully reflect their careful consideration of the needs of those with dementia and all those caring for them.
Hilary Grime
Oxford
Reading Nicci Gerrard’s absorbing article on John’s Campaign, I feel obliged to ask what happened to Living Well with Dementia, the “national dementia strategy” first published in February 2009 by the then Blair government.
In the summer of 2008, I worked in the HQ of the Alzheimer’s Society and publication of the strategy was hotly anticipated, a holy grail that would hack through the dark, unfeeling undergrowth and create humane, sophisticated policy on dementia. Perhaps it did bring forth desperately needed improvements in the NHS and private care. If I read Nicci correctly, I suspect not.
Mike Abbott
London W4
God bless Americans
Kudos to Eva Wiseman for trumpeting the cold war period drama The Americans in her column (Observer Magazine). For some time, it has arguably been the most relevant and overlooked series on TV. Its final episode was one of the best pieces of television I’ve seen in many a year. Its lack of coverage in the UK is inexplicable.
Will Goble
Rayleigh, Essex
The inhumanity of the EU
Kenan Malik’s commendable piece offers an understanding of something many people do not know or do not want to know (“How we all colluded in Fortress Europe”, Sunday Essay). That the EU has been in the business of creating fears of the “other” has been well documented for years. The EU has been in clear breach of international agreements relating to the treatment of refugees and asylum seekers (born out of the precarious situation of Jews who survived Nazism).
While there is freedom of movement for the citizens of 28 European countries, that freedom was designed, principally, with white Europeans in mind. The converse is that the citizens of some 175 other countries have no freedom of movement in relation to Europe. Xenophobia has long underpinned this “freedom”. As a lifelong socialist and internationalist, I had little choice when participating in the Brexit referendum but to vote leave.
Alec Turner
London N15
Craven Cameron
In your excellent leader column last week, you state that “the prime minister has irresponsibly placated a minority on the Tory right at the expense of Britain’s best interest” (“May offers no leadership or strategy. Parliament must seize the reins on Brexit”, Comment). I would suggest that this happened some time ago when David Cameron did exactly the same thing by cravenly giving in to this same minority backed up by Ukip. A classic example of the tail wagging the dog.
Morris Globe
Droylsden, Manchester
Putting Grenfell in context
Reading the moving testaments in “Grenfell one year on…” (New Review), the key question is Mouna El-Ogbani’s: “We want to know what happened, why we were living in a death trap.”
I would suggest that there is a structural context for this dystopian nightmare, one that is unlikely to be acknowledged by the Grenfell inquiry, which is rooted in ideology and social policy choices of governments. Since the late 19th century, housing policies have favoured the “deserving” classes, mainly white, ski lled working class or middle class. Better quality council housing – houses with gardens in leafy avenues – was built for the “heroes” returning from war after 1918 and 1945. In times of austerity, when council housing was targeted more at the poor, slum dwellers or immigrants, standards fell. What should have forewarned those responsible for the welfare of residents of Grenfell is that such reductions in standards led to the technical errors that caused the collapse of Ronan Point in east London in 1968, killing four people and injuring many others.
Since the late 1970s, the ideology driving social policy in Britain has persevered with measures designed at privileging very narrow notions of “deserving” and “undeserving”. Those capable of succeeding as “effective consumers” gain; those defined as “failed consumers” lose out. This development needs to be resisted; resistance built on new social movements capable of campaigning around collective rights and empowerment, where the wants and needs of people are articulated, controlled and delivered by communities and individuals.
Charlie Cooper
Lincoln
Stigma of forced adoption
Regarding your article about forced adoption (“Sixty years on, unmarried mothers forced to give up babies seek justice”, News, last week), I became an unmarried mother in 1963 in Australia and felt compelled to surrender my child for adoption. However, the Australian government gave an apology to all such women in Australia in 2013.
I signed the papers because I thought it would devastate my parents back home in Scotland if I had an illegitimate child, but also because I thought I would never be able to find “Mr Right”. I later had two more children, but many women were too traumatised and remained childless for the rest of their lives.
We need to shed light on what happened in those days – right up to the 1980s in some cases – because today there is what I call “the second stigma”, which keeps these secrets still unmentionable. Young people today find it incomprehensible that any woman could feel forced to give up her baby just because she was not married.
Jean Robertson-Molloy
London N2
What price philanthropy?
Since Jeff Bezos has announced that he is considering a philanthropic strategy (“The human cost of your Kindle”, special report), perhaps he could make a start by distributing his $103bn among his 566,000 workers, giving them each a nest egg of $181,978.80, while still maintaining a comfortable income stream for himself. What a hope! Now I know why I never, ever buy anything from Amazon.
Susan Martineau
Exmouth, Devon
