Political football? More like a gift horse
The issue being knocked back and forth in the press, PMQs, and in a flurry of letters to the Times for the past week has been social care for older people. Allegations of “betrayal” of a secret all-party consensus, scary “death tax” posters and rumours of stand-up rows in the corridors of the Commons have suddenly made long term care – the duller cousin of the NHS which has never been a vote winner – the top slot on Sunday morning politics shows.
A group of heavy-weight charities and Joan Bakewell, no less, have scalded the ministers involved for turning what should be a carefully considered debate about long term reform into a “shameful political circus”. They have a point. Everyone even remotely involved in care policy or delivery can recite the statistics; an ageing society, funding shortages, and postcode lotteries. Everyone knows the system, created when people barely lived beyond retirement age, is grinding to a halt now we're reaching our 80s as a matter of course. Now isn't a time to be point scoring, it's a time to come up with some serious, sustainable reforms.
But then again - everyone also knows we’re exactly in this situation because no one has ever cared about care. The public just don't want to think about getting old and dying, and the politicians have been complicit - no one wants to be the party to tell people that they are going to have to pay a lot more for a service some still believe is free.
The result? No one prepares for their old age, and the state doesn't make them. And the system slowly crumbles under the weight of larger numbers of people needing council-funded care.
So I think the recent furore is actually a gift. Yes it may have descended into a political circus, but at least people are noticing. Just one week of drama and a sniff of scandal has done more for the public profile of long term care than months of the DH’s best efforts and money thrown into the "Big Care Debate" - a travelling road show of public meetings last year.
So even if the death tax posters seem a bit, well, tacky - if it means people start thinking about preparing for their old age more seriously, then all the better.
Robert
yes but look at pension i saved and i saved and i put away a good pension my company went bust and we found out our pension had gone with it.
Now we have care for the elderly and deaths taxes, look we pay NI the government should put this up, nope cannot do that because well governments not good at investing, so people have to pay for care, ok how do we do it, OK we stop DLA for the over sixty fives and AA. this way we will not only pay for this, but we will have money left over to pay off bits of the debt.
Biggest problem in the UK we do not have a single political party which has a leader able to lead, we do not have many MP's worthy of running the country.
It's sad to see people in such a mess, but how is £ 600 million going to pay for the care, when it now cost billions, well what we do is give people a type of care which is cheap, a carer will call dress you, give you a plate of cornflakes and race off to another elderly person. The fact is we can spend £100 billion on missiles to kill people, but we cannot pay for the care of people who in the most have fought wars for us.
The sooner we get a decent government into power the better sadly Labour Tory liberals are this time look and sound the same bloody useless.