I’ve always been a bit confused about the difference between social care and healthcare. Because if you’re old, you tend not to be ill, just old. All your ailments – a couple of paralysed limbs, incontinence, pain and nausea, open sores, aphasia, dementia and crippling constipation – are not health problems if you’re over 70, they’re just a social problem. This means you have to pay for, or deal with, most of it yourself, saving the government a fortune.
Then it can all go a bit King Lear, if you’re one of those families that aren’t particularly harmonious. I feel I should explain to the care minister, David Mowat, that looking after elderly parents is not at all like looking after your children. I know because I’ve done it, and can assure the minister that elderly mothers don’t go to school every day. If mine went anywhere, I had to drive her, and although I worked from home, wasn’t Goneril, had room for her, she wasn’t doubly incontinent or demented and we got on well, it was rather hard work.
Has Mowat has ever had to wipe a grownup’s bum, or wake up at 3am, fit his terrified mother into the slippery straps of a hoist, haul her, screaming, up into the air and down on to to a commode? Imagine getting up next morning and going to work after that. And don’t forget the old person’s wishes. They may not want to burden their children with such tasks.
In the old days, we used to have long-stay NHS beds for older people who were incurably ill, but Mrs Thatcher let that slide, and we’ve lost more than 100,000 of them. Where did all the poorly old people go? Probably to where the residents of huge psychiatric hospitals went – nowhere in particular. Home, to ill-equipped relatives, or to hugely expensive care homes, or to moulder, mostly alone, in their rooms.
Please, government, stop pretending we can’t afford proper care. This country is awash with money. I know it’s a corny idea, but why not stop unnecessary, grandiose schemes, close tax loopholes and tax the rich efficiently? Make Britain happier again.
