Need care? Give us your house!

In the UK a person is entitled to free NHS medical care. Should a person then require 'long term care' at home, in sheltered housing or in a nursing home a person must pay for their care (often between £600-£1000 a week for those needing nursing care) until their assets fall below £23000, when the council will help pay, (they won't actually pay for everything until you own less than £14000). In short you must sell all your assets (i.e your house unless a dependent is living in it) to pay for your long term care until nearly bankrupt. The local council will 'help' by only assessing you based on assets excluding home for the first 12 weeks of your care. After that, you had better have your house sold because they will charge you like you own it's value in ready cash. 12 weeks to sell a house. 12 weeks - would anyone get a good price for it? Of course if you were clever you'd have split your assets, changed the deeds to your house or moved your elderly sister in to avoid your full assets being assessed and allowing you to keep your home.

24 hr care costs about £600-£1000 a week (in a council supported residence). So with £103 nursing allowance, £70.35 attendance allowance and £95 pension a week, that leaves a pensioner with about £300-£700 to pay a week. How many private pensions cover that? And that's not accounting for if the pensioner should maybe want some *nice* food, to go out, a birthday present for the grandkids, new clothes or anything to make their lives more fun. The joint savings of couples can be decimated by paying for the long-term care of just one. leaving two victims of circumstance and unexpected disability. Pensioners who paid taxes all their working lives expect to be cared for. And they are, until that care takes longer than a month or so.

I understand why this is happening. The population is aging and the younger generations cannot carry the tax burden of caring for the older ones. Part of me thinks this is fair, if you can pay...you should, put the money back into the economy now and forget leaving a tidy nest egg for the kids. But the other part of me can't make the leap between paying for NHS care and not paying for long term care. Dementia or disability are not certainities or life-style choices, why should caring for them be any different to caring for people who have traffic accidents, diseases or cancer? Why should the taxpayer pay for people who have sufficient money to merely get old naturally? Probably for the same reason that the taxpayer pays for these same people with sufficient money to have midwives and ante-natal care.

At the moment the system essentially penalises people who have saved or bought their house (that's the middle classes then); so nearly all political parties have sat up and taken notice offering a variety of options to the country. The main problem revolves around the problem that there is no money for care *now*. The government's suggestions (which completely forgot about accomodation costs) are below.

1. A partnership approach, which proposes that the government and the individual who needs care share the costs, with the government paying between a quarter and a third or more for people on a low income.

Seems a lot like what they're doing already except with local authorities

2. An optional insurance-based model, which would also see the government paying between a quarter and a third of the costs, but would allow individuals to pay £20,000 to £25,000 to cover themselves against the remaining costs of care.

So that would be private health insurance then?

3. A compulsory state insurance scheme under which everyone who can afford it pays between £17,000 and £20,000 – and receives free care in return.

Hmm. Just peachy if you're rich. Destruction of your hard earned retirement nest egg in an unexpected tax if you're not.

Personally I don't like any of them, but I suspect there is no easy way out of this mess. I think perhaps the money should come from an income tax, hence the risk of paying for long term care is spread out amongst the entire population at an affordable cost. Where have I heard it before though? Oh yes, funding the NHS - who should have been paying for long term care all along. But hindsight is a wonderful thing and an answer needs to be found for the situation now. And that is why I rage. I rage at the lack of an easy answer.

Penguin political correctness goes AWOL

(Picture from Spiegel online)

From the Spiegel weekly news quiz:

Yes Sandy the penguin became smitten with her keeper Peter Vollbracht. But the fickle creature lost interest when Vollbracht was off sick and hunted out another lover. Once Tom, a real penguin, died the slippery little trollop made a beeline again for the keeper.

Slippery little trollop! Some lonely, recently widowed penguin who after a long period of loving monogamy has returned her affections to the man she used to do charity work with is a 'slippery little trollop' for flirting with something she can never mate with? Would Der Spiegel have used such language for a male penguin? I think not. Maybe she should have thrown herself onto her penguin husband's burial pyre or lived as an outcast like Nepali widows?

Most likely this is one of Der Spiegel's very rare, yet quite funny little cultural mistranslations. Still, I'm appalled.

The mosquito must go!

Technically, as a nearly 30 year old I shouldn't have been able to hear the 17.7 Hz noise outside a corner shop in Timperley, but I could. It was like a knife through my brain, I actually felt nauseous and my hearing an head felt odd for at least an hour afterwards. I had heard of the Mosquito device, but had never come across one until yesterday. Designed to continuously emit a noise at a level only the under 25s can hear, it supposedly causes enough discomfort and annoyance that they will go elsewhere. The Mosquito is considered one of the most effective methods of preventing teenagers from gathering in a certain place.

This device is a form of ageist assault. I appreciate the horrors and intimidation of ASBO worthy youth in pack form and the right of ordinary shop owners and citizens to carry on with their normal lives. But this device doesn't segregate according to behaviour it segregates according to age. It says in one loud, painful tone that *everyone* under the age of 25 is a thug. Treat them like that and that is exactly what the vast majority of law abiding decent children will become. The device doesn't even make that much sense as a teenager deterrent - sure, they'll move on... to where? Another place that needs a mosquito and then another, soon teenagers and children won't be able to shamble or skip along a single street without being in discomfort.

The Mosquito and it's use is unregulated. It can be used whenever the owner likes and as it doesn't bother *them* it can be left on permanently. The one in Timperley was on at 10am on a weekday - surely not a prime time for teenage intimidation. The Mosquito can be boosted to levels unacceptable under health and safety laws and most adults are none the wiser. There is NO evidence of the effect of exposure on children's ears, all tests relating to adults only, which seems like an insane omission. However, this oversight is deemed to be acceptable as teenagers can surely walk away from the horrible noise. But small children with their parents can't 'walk away' and young people must still walk on pavements and cycle on roads near Mosquitos on a regular basis. These Mosquitos aren't limited to the privately owned shop forecourt, they can stretch up to 25m into public areas and yet no warning signs are required; so adults can wheel their baby/toddler right beneath it and stand and chat for 30 minutes in complete ignorance of the discomfort of their child. How are young people with learning disabilities supposed to cope with this unexpected onslaught?

The Mosquito device, it's installation and usage should be regulated. If there was a device that caused discomfort to everyone over the age of 50, it would be instantly banned. If someone played music at a deeply disturbing volume outside your local post office, so that anyone passing was caused discomfort, the police would be around. The only reason the mosquito is legal and unregulated is because the majority of its victims can't vote.

If you want to find out if you can hear the device, go here. You need good speakers for it to work properly, although the ringbearer says it might damage them.

Pritt stick decides to enforce a stereotype - my first rant post!

I love pritt sticks. They, more than any doll, car, lego set or teddy bear made me a very happy child. Which is why I was so disgusted to spy the above item on WHSmiths' shelves. It appears pritt stick is no longer unisex, no longer a simple tool to aid the creativity of developing children. No, we now have pink pritt stick: 'Just 4 girls'. Pink is a colour that is thrust upon young girls as 'their' colour by marketing and old fashioned idiots from a very early age. I know some researchers come up with notions to say otherwise [1], but I refuse to believe that it is healthy to declare one colour suitable for 'girls only' and then market it to them and their parents indiscriminatingly. It is as unfair to little boys as to the little girls to declare them separate entities who can have little in common.

Why do we need a pink pritt stick? I doubt girls need encouraging into the arena of 'sticking things'. Why don't boys have a pritt stick 'Just 4 boys'? Why can't boys use pink? Is it in any way correct to tell boys to use the grown up pritt stick whilst telling the girls -that as they are girls- they should use something childish and frivolous?

So thank you pritt stick, for removing another unisex activity from those available to children, you were once my dear dear friend. I expected this rubbish from Mattel and Toys R Us but not from you. If you had just marketed coloured pritt sticks, I would have totally bought a purple one.

[1] Disputed here