Nothing new about neglecting old folk

 by Brian Bamford

ON the 28th, April, Milton Pena placed the following comment on this NV Blog:

'It’s Gerineglicide Derek, it has been happening for more than a decade and it has worsened by the Pandemic.

'I read that the life span of the elderly have been shortened by TWELVE years as a result of becoming ill with this virus and dying of it.'

On the 29th, April, Blanco Posnet posted:  

'I'm no conspiracy theorist, but I'm beginning to wonder if that Bunteresque Johnson, and his sidekick, Dom Cummings, aren't exploiting this national emergency to kill off the elderly and the baby-boomer generation in order to cut the social security/pension bill. It may be a kind of “Shock Therapy”, disaster capitalism, approach to cutting public expenditure.'

Social Care is a poor relation! 

YET, what is happening in the social care sector is not new.  For donkey's years under different governments social care has been the poor relation of the welfare sector. You can call it 'Gerineglicide' if you like.  Or as I would prefer 'constructive manslaughter'.  
It is 'constructive manslaughter' and not murder, since the intent is not to kill the victim, the mens rea required for murder does not exist because the act is not aimed at any one person.  Rather it is systemic in that it is built into the procedure for looking after the people at the end of their lives.
Most government including the current one under Boris have promised to resolve the problems of tackling social care, but have yet to come up with a satisfactory plan.  The public have allowed this to happen partly because they are confused and think that their end of life care will be tackled by the NHS.

Clean plate club & one step nearer the grave!

People are closing their eyes to what's happening, and have been for ages.

Alan Bennett in his diary entry in 1995 describes events at a care home his mother was in, in Somerset:

'The turnover of residents is quite rapid since whoever is quartered in this room is generally in the late staged of dementia.  But that is not what they die of.  None of theses women can feed herself and to feed them properly, to spoon in sufficient mince and mashed carrot topped off with rhubarb and custard to keep them going, demands personal attention of a helper per person.  Lacking such one-to-one care, these helpless creatures slowly and respectably starve to death.'

A neighbour of Mr. Bennett's mother has some difficulty:

'Joined the clean plate club, Lily,' says the girl who is feeding Hilda, her neighbour.    'Aren't you a good girl?'

Mr. Bennett says Hilda doesn't want her sweet and 'it is left congealing on her the tray while tea in lidded plastic beakers is taken round, which goes untouched also.'  And he adds:  'So another mealtime passes and Hilda is quite caring and with no malice or cruelty at all pushed one step nearer the grave.'

Whose fault is it?

Not the government's surely?

 Alan Bennett says:  'Her own a little.  Her relatives, if she has relatives.  And the staff's of course.  But whereas a newspaper might make a horror story out of it, I can't.'

What would Milton Pena or Blanco Posnet do?  Or, come to think of it, Charles Charalambous and those who signed his Woke Manifesto for trade unionists and other lefties, do about this?**

Alan Bennett concludes:  'Demented or not, if Hilda were a child there would be a story to tell and blame attaching.  But Hilda is at the end of her life not the beginning.  Even so, were she a Nobel Prize winner, or not a widow from Darwen but the last survivor of Bloomsbury, yes, then an effort might be made.  As it is she is gradually slipping away, which is what this place is for.'

We need something better than slogans, rhetoric and virtue signalling to tackle these complicated questions.  Essentially the problem in this country with regard to elderly people is a largely cultural one, as Alan Bennett's considerations suggest.*  Milton Pena is a Chilean-born surgeon who arrived in Britain with his family in 1974 after being forced to flee General Pinochet’s brutal regime.  Being Chilean he will probably have found it hard to understand the English attitude to old people as expressed by Alan Bennett and all too deeply embedded in our Anglo-saxon attitudes.

* 'Untold Stories' [2005] by Alan Bennett 

** www.northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com Virtue Signalling & Petitioning Governments?

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What’s in the news in the internet in Venezuela.

 by Milton Pena

Editor:  The report below was sent by 

the author to John Wilkins of BOLD 

(Building Our Local Democracy}

YOUR request prompt me to look into the internet regarding what’s making the news in the internet in Venezuela.

Operación Gedeon.

I found it on google and didn’t know about it till 30 min ago! 

 

Guaido denies it. But apparently yesterday a group of anti Maduro Venezuelan military men from Colombia tried to enter the country via the Coast.  They came from Colombia, country that denied any involvement.  A gun battle took place and some were killed and other captured. 

 

An American mercenary went public to say that it was part of 17 similar groups already in Venezuela and their aim is to turn the arm forces against the government. 

 

No one on my household or in the neighborhood or in the media is talking about it. It’s only the internet and I suspect Main Stream media abroad!

Food and petrol

There is no shortage of food and people are not dying of hunger.  But it’s true that the prices have increased three fold since I arrived.  The government distributes a bag of food every month that helps a lot. 

 

Mangos are begining  to ripen and are plentiful.  They grow every where and generally not sold in shops but given free.  Speculation is ripe and difficult to control.  The petrol situation I don’t understand,  but there is enough for movement of goods and people.  Lately corrupted police  in charge at the pumps are charging in dollars for every litre, to those trying to avoid queues 

Covid 19

The statistics speak by themselves, only ten deaths till now, and only around 360 have contracted it.

 

This has been possible because very strict limitation of interstate movement, closing airports, quarantine and compulsory use of masks.  Also tracking every one suspected with the virus, known here as “pesquisaje”. 

Education 

University, secondary education continues via de internet.  This is a fact as I have witnessed myself by helping my nephews with their work.  I had to refresh my physiology and pathology and even maths (irrational numbers!)

Hope this account helps 

Report from Venezuela

by Milton Pena April 6 2020

THE situation in Acarigua/Azaure #1 is that of the whole country; calm and acceptance of the quarantine.

EVERYONE uses a mask and takes precautions. There is no shortage of food or essentials.

There have been few deaths and only a few cases diagnosed of Covid – 19. #2

As the country has been under an economic blockade for four years it has created means of distribution of food, neighbourhood by neighbourhood, house by house.This has helped tremendously.

There are Centres of Diagnostic Integrals everywhere which has alowed control 0of the pandemic. They have been (largely) run by Cuban doctors who are doing a great job.' #3

#1 Two cities under 200 miles west and inland of the capital Caracus'

#2 Latest figures 7 deaths out of 166 recorded cases.

#3 It has been reported that Cuban medical staff are currently helping in 14 countries world wide.

Comment: They (Cubans) generally work in poorer countries, but the world woke up in admiration when they sent out a team of 52 medics to help in Italy and allowed the British cruise ship MS Braemar to dock when it had been turned away from the US and other countries.

It prompted Dominic Raab, the British Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, to thank the Cuban government for its assistance. In a ministerial statement in Parliament stating that he had spoken to Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez and that “we are very grateful to the Cuban government for swiftly enabling this operation and for their close co-operation to make sure it could be successful.”

The Cuban Ministry of Foreign Affairs said of its decision: “These are times of solidarity, of understanding health as a human right, of reinforcing international co-operation to face our common challenges, values that are inherent in the humanistic practice of the Revolution and of our people.”

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