WEEKENDER: Old People, by Wiggia

Old people have come in for more stick this week as it has been stated youngsters feel that all those house owners who purchased in the ‘good times’ have an unfair advantage in life. What they are really saying is in this greedy give-me world is, 'gimme your house, you don’t need it and I want it!'

Far fetched? I think not. Not a million miles away from me relation-wise a death has meant the remaining partner has been badgered to turn the house over to the siblings and she would be graciously be allowed to live there until she pops off, depending of course if they can’t find a way of putting her in a home earlier.

Fortunately this has not happened so far and I go no further on that one, yet this is not the first time I have come across similar. Some years back when visiting a site where we were working, a private nursing home in London, a lone lady was sitting in the garden. We got talking as she looked very crestfallen. Her husband had died and the children had somehow got her into this home. There was nothing wrong with her but somehow it was for the best. I saw her twice after that and the last time she looked terrible and died of a stroke shortly after; she had been literally abandoned and died almost certainly because she had given up on life, heartbroken, as she hated where she was.

I always remember that; some things stick in one's mind for life and her tearful eyes came back on occasions long after. How can family be so cruel, so dispassionate?

But these stories abound. Family no longer has the meaning of a couple of generations ago. I well recall how when in my teens living in a council flat in east London a Jewish friend in the next block told me how grandma had moved in with them after her husband had died. It was hardly ideal: though the flat had three bedrooms there were the parents of my friend and his 20 year old sister; it meant my friend slept on the couch, but Jewish families, or most at that time would do this as a natural act.

I had another Jewish friend who became my best man when I married who had his mother move in with him when she became incapable of living on her own. He had a big house and was married by then and room-wise it was no problem, but today how many youngsters would even contemplate that?

Another current example with a local friend is the son who rented and worked in London was given the chance to buy his own house by a generous gift from his parents. He declined the property he went after and moved in with his parents for a few months while he carried on searching for a property, only he didn’t; two and half years later he is still there and no attempt has been made to find a home of his own. He is around 45, has been fed and watered for free and now they want to downsize and can’t because of his presence.

When told he said he would be looking in the Autumn or next Spring; how very decent of him! Meanwhile they have made more funds available for him and purchased a car. More fool them you say, but what a selfish git, to put it mildly.

This pattern of treating the older generation as a stumbling block to greater wealth is common place these days. A niece actually said to me, and she has never worked in her pathetic life, that when her parents sold up and came into a tidy sum, couldn’t they give her the entitlement she believed she was going to get when they had gone, now instead, so she could have her own flat? and she meant it, there was no shame, it was a blatant case of gimme now.

This pattern manifests itself partly I believe because many parents today have a strange outlook that their whole life and any wealth accrued should all be directed at the children, deserving or not.

A funny story on that theme came when our neighbours from a couple of moves ago had an ailing father after his wife had passed away. As parents who had made a decent living in life they devoted themselves to helping out the family: two grandchildren were helped very generously onto the housing ladder when they married, plus cars were purchased etc.; both marriages lasted a very short time and the money was wasted.

But he revealed he had to take out an equity release on their home to cover the largesse he had heaped on the all the siblings and grandchildren.

The neighbour was very open about the situation and told me that her father had said the estate would still be worth enough and all would be catered for on his demise. When she asked whether the will had been altered to clarify all this he told her she was not getting anything other than a gesture of sorts. Why, she asked. 'Because you have had a very good divorce, twice,' was the answer; and the two grandchildren would also only get a gesture as they had ‘wasted‘ the original help by being idiots.

She didn’t like this but then informed me that her third marriage to her toy boy was subject to a pre-nuptial agreement. I started laughing at the hypocrisy of what she had said and fully expected her to throw me out but no, she laughed too and opened another bottle of wine, - she did like a drink!

They were as one says ‘an interesting’ family, but for all that very good neighbours, a rarity these days.

The unwanted old and infirm have certainly been in the spotlight during the pandemic, from the initial dumping of elderly hospital patients into nursing homes, when no one at all could see a problem so they repeated the act later on; this must have proved popular because several other countries thought this was a good wheeze - at exactly the same time? - and did the same; it certainly got rid of a good few bed blockers and no doubt has gone into the book of reductions for future use.

Old people are also the biggest users of the health service, for obvious reasons and that creates problems in the winter months every year with our permanently stressed NHS. The recent £12 billion promised for the NHS contains a percentage to go to social care i.e. old people in homes, but already the money will be delayed and the thinking is that once the NHS have spent on hospitals, staff etc. there will be bugger-all left for the social side.

Take into account the loss of forty thousand care workers and there is a serious problem: many homes were not fit for purpose pre-Covid, now?

The health secretary’s backing down over jabs for all in the medical profession pre-empts a disaster, but he has already sacked the care worker. To reverse that decision now would start a flurry of very expensive legal employment cases, so once again incompetence and belligerence  trumps common sense and old people bear the brunt of it.

I am always amazed when certain sections of the public boldly declare that old people are stealing from the young and many backed the decision to halt the pension 'triple lock'; this guarantee was considered to be unaffordable yet billions are found for everything else. Any small gains in the last two or three years are wiped out by this decision and the rise in inflation. Those that believe our old are getting too much help should look at the chart below; for a nation supposedly in the top five economically in the world we should be ashamed, yet somehow we are not.

We are constantly told that these countries can’t afford this largesse on the old yet they pay them still - does anyone understand why we cannot even match Mexico?

Still, bumping off the old will help to solve the problem and they are doing a pretty good job there, and if they are not bumping them off they are depriving them of basic medical attention to an extent that is beyond belief, never mind the Covid excuse blanket. 

We have a man who lives near our old house who desperately needs a knee replacement, he cannot afford to go private and lives on limited means. He recently got his appointment to see the consultant who confirmed the worst about his knee, it is completely buggered. After discussing the state of it he said he was putting the old boy on the list. How long, he asked,. 'Well it is two years now but getting longer, so I cannot say exactly!'

So, longer than two years, yet the government talks of one year to wait: that is a lie as my hip replacement proved; but what is never spoken of is the wait to get to see the consultant in the first place after being diagnosed by your doctor and hospital scans and x rays. This old boy waited sixteen months so taking into account his over two years on the waiting list the likelihood is that four years will have elapsed since the problem was diagnosed to when he gets his op. That is so ridiculous: he will either be dead or totally house bound and in extreme pain by then. This type of wait is not uncommon and not just for the old, but it is never highlighted or discussed; a year is third world status, so what is four years?

There is something very wrong in this country on how old people are perceived, and we should be ashamed of the way they are treated. Never forget, as below: they have been there, done that so they can now be disregarded and abused.