Hi all

Having experience of a close elderly friend of the family who, 5 years ago, had an operation on the gall bladder and who has not been right ever since, plus all the other never-ending stories about the appalling, disgusting and downright inhumane treatment of elderly people, I felt compelled to highlight this huge problem in this country.

Now the friend of the family could have been a younger chap but the stories I keep hearing is that they are just being shoved around from pillar to post and it has created a lot of anxiety and stress. Not the kind of thing that should be happening to you in your old age.

I have read and heard NHS insiders state that old people are treated like old cars when it comes time to repair, if it aint worth the money just scrap it. How on earth can we sit back and accept that OAPs are being treated like this every day, up and down the country, especially after paying so much into the tax system, and for a lot of them going through a war for our freedom?

What a bloody way to repay them eh?

Also remember the dispatches documentaries, how the elderly patients in care were left soaked in piss for days on end, and some were left in busy open wards to die in agony of cancer or other diseases, and then just left there. Absolutely disgraceful and I feel ashamed that our society knows this is going on but most people just turn a blind eye to it.

Here's some links to ponder over:

http://www.channel4.com/news/articles/society/health/poll+doctors+believe+nhs+is+ageist/2911702

http://news.scotsman.com/carefortheelderly/Lack-of-NHS-chiropodists-leaves.2771919.jp

I don't know about you but I think this is something that needs addressing urgently and heads NEED to roll.

Andrew

I for one am with you one hundred percent on this one as I have first-hand experience of this with my wife's father and mother. They both died in nursing homes after a long, miserable and painful wait for blessed release.

As you might have expected I made a complete nuisance of myself when I saw the treatment that these two people received at the hands of the PRIVATISED nursing homes they were stuck in in their last few years. All of my pleading and arguing and bleating to my MP never did anything to improve the care that they should have been getting.

I blame the lack of money being spent on the number and quality of the carers that were doing the job as the companies that was running the homes were more concerned with their profit margins than with the actual standard of care being given. The watchdogs that are supposed to ensure that these place are run properly are a total waste of time too.

As an athiest I often think that it might be much better if I was able to say that I had had enough and that I did NOT want to suffer the indignity of such places when it is my turn. Under any circumstances, when it is my turn I will not wait to be mistreated in such places as I have already made provision for my demise at my own hand when the time comes. I only wish that they could change the law to make this much more easy to do under some form of voluntary euthanasia law.

Another reason why I have no time for religion as it is the religious lobby in Britain that stops such legislation in it's tracks.

An excellent posting Andrew and thanks for that !

And what about the state pension ?

Did you know that the British state pension is the worst and the lowest in the whole of modern Europe !

I cannot understand why pensioners are charged tax on their pension at all as what is the point in giving people a pension and then taking it off them again ?

The government should be bloody-well ashamed of the way that they treat their old folk.