WEEKENDER: Kamila Valieva - a Pawn in the Game? by Wiggia

The young Russian figure skater caught out in the Olympics for drug use is currently getting a soft ride from both the IOC and the press. It cannot be a coincidence that her age is a factor in all this and the fact she is currently the world's Number One in her sport.

Should we care? Sport in general has not covered itself with glory when it comes to tackling difficult issues, such as footballers who insist taking the knee is a worthwhile practice, when the BLM is being exposed as an organisation that not only has ulterior motives away from race but is also a launching pad for the founders to fleece the public funds coming their way... millionaire row beckons.

Yet the players in our PL carry on as if this totally misguided gesture is actually having an effect on perceived racism, when in fact telling everyone every week they are racist just creates resentment for something that has been in decline for years; now, thanks to their agitation, it is headline news again.

It is and has been said that sport and politics do not mix, though the truth is politicians have used sport to their advantage for decades, and the fundamental principles of the Olympics as laid out by Pierre de Coubertin in 1898 have been jettisoned in favour of a flag-waving exercise. The Olympic movement is all about money and more of it, the amount poured into the IOC coffers to seal an Olympic bid are proof of that.

Nations and politicians all want to bask in the glory of having spent more than the last Games or World Cup to seal their place in history. The coming World Cup in Qatar  has to be one of the most ridiculous decisions by a sporting body in history: a country that has no interest in any sport other than importing a few Africans to boost their non-existent medal tally has only political reasons to bid for a major sporting event.  

The truth about how the stadiums have been built with the equivalent of slave labour with a death rate that has been deliberately hidden away was revealed very early on but ignored by FIFA and all the countries competing including our own kneeling team; the manager who believes kneeling sends the ‘right message’ is very quiet about competing in Qatar - why could that possibly be?

When one looks back to the fuss about touring cricket teams during the apartheid years in South Africa and the banning of players who competed there, today's attitude reveals a gap in moral fortitude the width of the Grand Canyon. The difference is money: no money for a breakaway cricket tour in real terms, but huge amounts gained in Qatar.

It was ever thus.

Back to Valieva. The sympathy being shown to the young Russian who is competing with a faux Russian team with the name ROC - a pseudonym for loophole - is being seen in a very different light to those young east Germans years ago, part of the regime's systematic doping program. Russia along with China has been doing the same thing in recent times, not that the USA or others have clean hands in all this during the same period.

Having failed a drug test she should have been automatically excluded from competing. It matters not if she was coerced, though the route to fame and fortune often does not need much coercion; she failed a test and that should have been that. If she wins now, we will now have the sight of other athletes being denied their rightful place on the podium and another sport being forever tainted.

This is the IOCs wording on anyone caught doping in competition at Beijing:

'An anti-doping rule violation in Individual Sports in connection with an In-Competition test automatically leads to Disqualification of the result obtained in that Competition with all resulting Consequences, including forfeiture of any medals, diplomas, points and prizes.'

You would think from that it is pretty cut and dried, but apparently not. They do themselves no favours in using weasel words to allow Valieva to continue.

Coming from a cycling background, I am more than aware of how doping ruins sport, and have written on the subject in a different context before. There is little doubt all sports have indulged in forms of doping. Lax testing and a reluctance to match other sports' doping regimes has allowed hitherto ‘clean’ sports to prosper whereas under the surface it has been going on for years.

Allowing this young girl to compete, along with some decisions deserving of derision in the USA regarding endless numbers of sprinters being found to fail drugs tests yet re-appearing months later in competition, has resulted in empty stadiums. When all sports become tainted with the belief that ‘everyone is at it’ sport loses its value in society. Fraudulent behaviour in sport should never be seen as different from fraud in the wider world, and whether the fifteen-year-old girl was used or was aware of being doped is of no consequence, she should not be there; it perpetuates the whole ‘winning at all costs' mentality that pervades sport these days when money is king.

Also, we must never forget the long term effects that doping has on competitors in many cases, including deaths. During the EPO (Armstrong) era many cyclists died after blood clotting events caused by the drug; again, the real numbers were not issued officially as far as I know, but it was not merely one or two, and again athletes as young as fifteen / fourteen were testing positive. Somehow though, I cannot see it ever being eradicated. Gene therapy is already being touted as the next challenge and we cannot be sure it is not already being trialled; this is very complicated to test for and prove though no doubt in the future it will be possible, but yet again it continues the drug era into the foreseeable future. Money and drugs will always triumph over morals in sport, it seems; a sad indictment of our times.

An article in the Times shows the hypocrisy among national sporting bodies. This runner has just retired:

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/3e0da814-8f43-11ec-9569-fea923928840?shareToken=2232a4d7cd091518051881a6143f9661

As this article is normally behind a paywall and I read it as part of my ‘free’ sampler I offer you this passage, which sets the tone:

'The US Olympic Committee was understandably disgruntled with the outcome of Kamila Valieva’s case at the Winter Olympics in Beijing. She is only 15, a “protected person” according to the World Anti-Doping Agency, and the latest chapter in Russia’s flagrant abuse of sporting ethics. However, that US Track & Field saw fit to post an image of Justin Gatlin alongside a starry-eyed emoji and the words: “Happy retirement to one of the greatest!” highlighted Olympic levels of hypocrisy as we sank further in the murk.'

FRIDAY MUSIC: Bert Jansch, by JD

"Bert Jansch (3 November 1943 – 5 October 2011) was born in Glasgow and came to prominence in London in the 1960s as an acoustic guitarist and singer-songwriter. He recorded at least 25 albums and toured extensively from the 1960s to the 21st century.

"Jansch was a leading figure in the 1960s British folk revival, touring folk clubs and recording several solo albums, as well as collaborating with other musicians such as John Renbourn and Anne Briggs. In 1968, he co-founded the band Pentangle, touring and recording with them until their break-up in 1972." 

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bert_Jansch
• https://www.bertjansch.com/history

ACOUSTIC ROUTES - Film trailer with Bert Jansch Billy Connolly Davey Graham Wizz Jones

CHASING LOVE - Jacqui McShee and Bert Jansch from the music film Acoustic Routes

Communism's victims, the great country of the dead

 According to the estimates of the 1997 French historical survey Le Livre noir du communisme, Communism has claimed the lives of some 94,360,000 people.

To illustrate this statistic, we can compare it to Worldometer's list of countries by size of population. If all the victims formed a nation of their own, they would be the 16th most populous country on Earth:

Alternatively, we could say that the size of the toll is equivalent to everyone in the globe's smaller 106 States and dependencies (from the Vatican right up to and including Croatia); every living soul in 45% of the world's nations... plus more than half of Kuwait; .

Communism is, of course, not the only ideology that kills in the name of peace, justice, equality etc; but its professed love of Man and pity for his condition seem to have involved an awful lot of destroying him.

I still wonder why the USA continued to back the Chinese Communist Party after Soviet Communism collapsed. It must have been a very sophisticated calculation.

Five fine things found on Facebook (3)

 

A deliveryman for the Home Ice Company hauls
a 25-pound ice block cleaved from a 100-pound block
Houston, Texas, 1928 Source

This Is How Sand Looks Magnified Up To 300 Times
Source

Portrait of a Pacific woman, New Zealand, circa 1870 - 1900
Source

Frozen Lighthouses On Lake Michigan Shore Source

                   The nine different ethnic groups of Bukovina region, (Austria-Hungary), 1902

From top left:
Hutsul, Hungarian, Rom (Romani or Gypsy), Lipovan, Jew, Pole, Schwab, Romanian, Rusyn

Source

Ukraine, the wrong elephant, by Sackerson

George Orwell wrote that as a policeman in 1930s Burma he was called on to shoot an elephant that had gone ‘must’ and killed its keeper. By the time he was armed and there, the animal had become calm and harmless; but the crowd expected him to destroy it, and so he did, cruelly and pointlessly. Let the people’s will be done.

Today, Russia is that Jumbo. Seven years after the Minsk-2 Agreement to regionalise Ukraine, an agreement which the ruling regime has failed to implement, suddenly we are to believe in an imminent assault by the Russians, one that will justify military intervention (possibly indirect) by the West including Britain. The consequences are unpredictable but potentially utterly disastrous.

Where is the public outcry like the one that in 2013 stopped the Cameron government in its tracks over Syria? It has been forestalled by orchestrated drum-banging; thanks to advances in mass communication, the people’s will can be given to them ready-made. For quite some time, we have been regaled with details of Russia’s build-up of forces on the border with Ukraine; though we are told much less of the Ukrainian forces massed since 2014 at the border, not of the country but of the Donbass, that largely ethnically and linguistically Russian eastern part of their cobbled-together nation. The UK’s new Chief of Defence Staff, a Navy man, thrilled the Daily Mail’s readers with details of how the evil Putin could cut vital undersea data cables. The US has prepared us for an attack on the Russians by suggesting that the latter might be planning a false flag attack on themselves.

It feels like the build-up to Iraq Two – the military preparations and jingoistic hoo-ha are getting to the point where it becomes impossible to turn back, even when the justifying pretext has failed to show itself. If the groom doesn’t appear soon we’ll have to do with the best man. What might that be? A local uprising? An assassination?

The hysterical groupthink is such that when Stephen Glover expresses concerns https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-10495851/STEPHEN-GLOVER-Putin-nasty-piece-work-comes-Ukraine-hes-got-point.html he has to preface them with ‘Vladimir Putin is a nasty piece of work. But…’ as though one has to apologise for widening the lens to consider context.

Now before I too have to fend off accusations of loving the obviously subhuman Slavs who can’t wait to spit babies on their bayonets (sorry, that was the WWI Huns wasn’t it?) I should say that the raping and murdering Red Army chased my mother’s family out of East Prussia in 1945 and their farm is still sitting in Russian Federation territory; a return of our property would be most welcome, thank you.

However, it seems to have escaped the US State Department’s notice that the Soviet Union collapsed thirty years ago and Russia is no longer the homeland of godless Commies. After over seventy years of State persecution three-quarters of the population is still Christian. Also, despite the outrageous depredations of the post-collapse oligarchs only one-eighth of the seats in the Duma and regional parliaments are in the re-formed Communist party and none of the 31-strong national cabinet is a Communist; if anyone has a reason to hate and fear Red oppression it is the Russians themselves.

Conversely, it might be thought that if anyone misses the wicked Soviets it is the American political establishment. When the Nazis had been defeated the Marshall Plan saved Europe from falling apart and becoming a prey to revolution, yet when the USSR died there was no such reconciliation and assistance with reconstruction. The bogeyman’s role was too important to be written out. So it was that when Hillary Clinton addressed the voters of Nevada during the 2016 Presidential election campaign, she repainted the former slavering socialists as the core of a worldwide right-wing conspiracy; Putin was ‘the grand godfather of this global brand of extreme nationalism.’ Her chaotic logic could have implied that she herself was an internationalist left-winger; thank goodness that her party had Bernie Sanders to help position her centrally in her triangulation.

If our American friends are so set on the hunt for godless Commies they might look further east, to the country to which they have almost suicidally ceded key US economic resources for decades. Vladimir Putin may possibly have designs on Ukraine, though it beats me why he should wish to venture further into Western continental Europe, historically a pit of mutually antagonistic serpents two of which launched vast raids on Russia in the 19th and 20th centuries; but China, now…

Twelve months after Mao’s 1949 establishment of the People’s Republic of China came the annexation of Tibet, referencing events in 1793. Far from defending the Tibetans, the British Foreign Office at last formally recognised the Chinese claim in 2008 https://hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2010/01/we-fight-to-save-drugrunners-yet-sell-a-nation-down-the-river.html . The country is rich in much-needed minerals, woods and water; as is the north Indian province of Arunachal Pradesh, which the Chinese consider to be part of the ‘Tibet Autonomous Region’; plus the Aksai Chin region of Kashmir, to which the Chinese also claim entitlement. 

Looking north, in the early 1950s Mao offered Stalin help with developing Siberia’s mineral resources; ‘Koba’ said thanks but no thanks. In the wake of the Soviet collapse Chinese began crossing the Amur river in Eastern Siberia, heading for the city of Blagoveshchensk just across the water. France24 reported https://www.france24.com/fr/20120928-reporters-siberie-terre-chinoise-russie-chine-immigration-blagovechtchensk-agriculture-ouvriers-entrepreneurs-tensions on the growing ‘sinicisation’ of Siberia as long ago as 2012. Russia’s richly-resourced yet sparsely populated east must be a standing temptation to the Chinese, who outnumber the Russian people by nine to one.

Nor have China and Russia have always seen eye to eye ideologically, even before the fall of the USSR. When Khrushchev began his ‘thaw’ with the West, seeking a modus vivendi between the two political philosophies and spheres of influence, it led to the Sino-Soviet Split, China condemning Russia as ‘revisionists’ who had abandoned the principle that all those resisting global Communism should be converted or killed – rather like the extremists of another great proselytising faith who currently threaten world peace. It seems odd that when trying to widen the split, America chose to invest in the country that espoused the purer, more uncompromising version of Marxist-Leninism.

It’s taken the crass macho diplomacy of Joe Biden (or his advisers) to push Putin and Xi together; now, the two eastern nations have (sort of) united in declaring a ‘new era’ in their mutual relations. https://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/russia-and-china-unveil-a-pact-against-america-and-the-west Yet if the West has the wisdom to pull back, we shall see how deep the new Sino-Russian understanding goes. I would suggest the basis is a wary pragmatism, wise in a world where more than one nation is capable of obliterating human civilisation with nuclear weapons.

As to their plans for the rest of the world, we could take the view that it is not the Russians who are on the march – it seems Putin sees his line of development through a sort of Eurasian EU, negotiating for closer links with countries to his south while seeking to keep religious fanaticism under control. 

China, on the other hand, is more clearly expansionist and although its army is a million strong the tools currently employed are both more subtle and more powerful than mere sword-waving. About the Belt and Road Initiative we read often, but also of the Chinese government’s use of purchases, loans and possibly financial incentives to foreign politicos in the Pacific and Africa; my query is why America has not taken a leaf out of China’s book and love-bombed the same countries. Surely it would be much easier to contain the expansion of the Chinese hegemon with money rather than armies and missiles.

This is especially topical now that China is siding with Argentina in the latter’s claim that her $44 billion loan from the IMF is ‘odious debt’ and ‘China reaffirmed its support for Argentina’s demand to fully exercise sovereignty on the Malvinas Islands.’ https://kawsachunnews.com/argentina-joins-china-in-belt-road-initiative Doubtless the vast Chinese fishing fleets would love to help Argentina exploit the Exclusive Economic Zones around the Falklands, South Georgia and the Sandwich Islands; and then there might just be further implications for control (legal and/or military) of some of the potential mineral resources both there and in British Antarctic Territory.

In the midst of this we are supposed to focus on Ukraine, the wrong elephant. I hope that at least the British will not be so easily swayed and that our politicians can ‘get it’, as David Cameron did.

Jeeves and the slipping Truss, by Sackerson

You’ll have seen that photo of me in a tank, the snappy radio helmet wrapped round the old Truss bean: Maggie, thou shouldst be living at this hour, was the gist of the message. https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/liz-truss-takes-after-margaret-thatcher-in-a-tank-as-she-criticises-russia-mlbdbvhzt I wanted to show my framed copy to somebody the other day but Jeeves told me he had sent it away for cleaning months ago. He’s a marvel, keeps everything spick and s. By the by, if you’re wondering why I have a valet rather than a maid, it’s because men are much easier to control, as Carrie will tell you. In any case, Jeeves is a bit of an old maid himself, what with anno domini; and he doubles as an aide in my department; so convenient.

But I digress. My visit to Moscow gave me the excuse to buy a new hat, one of those pillbox fur jobs. https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2022/feb/09/liz-truss-moscow-toughest-russia-sanctions-plan-doubt Jeeves raised an eyebrow a quarter inch and said something about Lara, but I replied haughtily that cricket had nothing to do with it and the decision was unalterable. One has to stand one’s ground.

Thus it was with a certain air of triumph, a first battle won already, that I sported the new tile as the Ambassador and I headed for the Kremlin, ready to make my mark with the Russian Foreign Minister.  Once inside I lost no time in launching the attack and was doing very well, I thought, giving him what for on Ukraine and the need to withdraw his troops from the border, all that sort of thing.

But then Lavrov bowled me a googly, saying it was their own border and didn’t I recognize the sovereignty of Russia over the Rostov and Voronezh regions. Naturally I thought he was referring to parts of Ukraine, this being the res under discussion, and so I told him in no uncertain terms that ‘Great Britain will never recognize Russian sovereignty over these regions.’

There followed one of those silences heavy with the unspoken. Lavrov was quaking, with fear as I imagined, but when I glanced at the Ambassador her face was sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought, as I have heard Jeeves say. I bent the noggin towards her and she whispered that Rostov is a Russian oblast, which I must say is what I felt like ejaculating. I was in the mulligatawny good and proper. https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/kremlin-cites-truss-error-evidence-west-doesnt-understand-ukraine-conflict-2022-02-11/

I’ve never been any use at geography, as you will know from my confusing the Baltic and the Black Sea the other day https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/vladimirputin/video-2604297/Video-Liz-Truss-confuses-Baltic-Black-Sea-700-miles-apart.html , and I have to admit that my own map was starting to turn as pink as a chart of the old British Empire. I was just looking towards the window and wondering whether there was a sturdy drainpipe within diving distance when I heard a soft cough behind me.

It was Jeeves, who had accompanied us as minute-taker and interpreter. At that moment I was as desirous of his help as the hart that panteth for the water, and he did not fail.

‘Mister Lavrov will see that as a mark of respect for Russian ways our Minister is wearing vernacular winter headgear, despite the unseasonable heat in the capital. Clearly it has interfered with her auditory acuity and caused her to misinterpret what you said. As she and the Ambassador will doubtless be eager to confirm, the British Government fully accepts the right of Russia to dispose its forces within its sovereign territory as it sees fit.’

All was well again and looking back, I think I can see this moment as merely a stumble on my upward path. https://www.conservativewoman.co.uk/should-we-mistrust-the-malleable-ms-truss/

Once back in the hotel and bathing the tonsils with a much-needed stiffener, I turned to Jeeves. ‘That hat, Jeeves,’ I said.

‘Madam?’

‘One has to keep refreshing one’s wardrobe. I think we can dispense with it now. Perhaps one of those pre-loved premium fashion sites?’

‘Thank you, Madam.’

With apologies to P.G. Wodehouse

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.