NHS ~ Failing to Treat Elderly with Care & Respect

John Allerton 1927 ~ 2009

For nearly two years I have been trying to pretend that the things that happened to my dad when he died were a tragic one-off but now I realise the sad truth. I can barely stand to hear the terrible things in the news about neglect of the elderly in hospitals, the removal of all their dignity and total disregard for their human rights.

My father died in hospital. He had dementia which had advanced very quickly and after a short time in a care home was admitted to hospital after a fall, just a fall. Within the first few days he had another fall but it was not noticed that he had broken his shoulder. When it was noticed, he was bandaged with a pillowcase because they "didn't have the right dressing".

There followed a catalogue of neglect bordering on abuse and he wasn't the only patient I saw left to their own devices, without drinks, without help eating, without any caring attention. My dad was nil by mouth and so slowly, over a month starved to death.
We made an official complaint to the hospital and were fobbed off with excuses which we accepted because at that time it was too painful to pursue it. I wish now that we had been stronger, louder and more determined.

My father was in the Royal Navy during the 2nd World War, so he survived Hitler. He had T.B. and diabetes which he survived. He survived the death of my mother from lung cancer, only to die scared, confused and neglected.

Sorry Daddy x

The Banking Debacle & Quaker Capitalism

I have been puzzled by something for what must be at least a year now, and it concerns this economic mess, in the midst of which we find ourselves currently. At first when things started looking a bit dodgy (remember the queues of people outside branches of Northern Rock bank demanding their savings, 1930's German style?) I think none of us really had any idea of what had been going on inside the banking business. I certainly hadn't. Things seem to have moved on apace since then. We've been through a change of government and you and I [tax payers] are now propping up major high street banks. Whole nations (Eire, Greece, Portugal etc.) are almost bankrupt.

I think that the most galling thing for me about this situation is that it seems that running a bank, being a bank, looking after the money, however you choose to define it, is not exactly operating in a competitive market, being dominated by just five big banks. With that in mind it really ought to be a most profitable business, although particularly disadvantageous to the consumer. How have these banks failed us so badly and continue to do so despite being propped up with billions of pounds of taxpayer's money? O.k. this is of course a bit of a rant, but not without good reason. In January our rate of Value Added Tax rose to 20% in the U.K. in order to mitigate the effects of the huge debt foisted upon us by the banking sector's misadventure. This will affect us all, rich and poor significantly as V.A.T. is pretty much an unavoidable tax (unless of course you run your car on custard and choose to wear children's clothes!). The central question I suppose I have is why on earth are we not aiming to recoup the billions of pounds lost from those who are responsible for the loss in the first place? After all they seem to me to be the very highest earners in society and therefore most able to put back into the system as it were.

What I think could in part be going wrong is, at some fundamental level, and over several generations the very nature of our capitalism has changed. It has to be said that what I truly think is we need some seismic shift back to the kind of principles central to those Quaker capitalists like Joseph Rowntree and George Cadbury. These men were brilliant entrepreneurs by any standards but unlike today's business leaders and bankers (who see no harm in pocketing huge personal profits while their companies collapse) were disciplined and far sighted, guided by their Quaker principles. For these men I'm sure the idea of wealth creation for personal gain would have seemed offensive and to whom the very catalyst of our current financial crisis (i.e. reckless & irresponsible debt) would have been shameful. It's easy to dismiss such principles as antiquated isn't it, when today's measure of one's success is purely projected by material objects. It would be hard to imagine the CEO of one of the afore mentioned banks building a huge financial empire whilst writing ground breaking papers on poverty, or campaigning against a multitude of human rights abuses, but, that's just what the likes of George Cadbury did.

I was amazed to learn that in the nineteenth century Quaker families in Britain ran seventy-four banks, and I'll bet they were not for the benefit of shareholder dividends or bosses bonuses! I guess what I feel really strongly is once again we need this kind of leadership to replace the rampant greed at the centre of our banking industry we have today. It may seem naive, but tweaking taxes ever upward is not going to solve a great deal for the debts of our wider society, it's high time the bankers started putting something back into the system that, like it or not, they are now indebted to themselves.

The Robin Hood Tax

Bill Nighy, who portrays slippery characters to perfection, in a short film in support of Robin Hood Taxes.

Those Tricky Little Particles

"At the minute, it would appear that more people are damaged by sunbeds than by nuclear power in the UK," A thought provoking article here, that I read yesterday, which nicely ties in with Sunday's post. There are some controversial claims surrounding the dangers of low level radiation it would seem, but there's an awful amount of rather paranoid scare mongering by the anti-nuclear lobby taking place too. I for my part think we can't un-invent the technology and we owe an awful lot to it, I'm more concerned about the storage of nuclear waste than the safety of the power plants themselves so, I guess I'm once again comfortable sitting on the fence for the time being.

2010...A New Decade

Well friends, here we all are on the threshold of a brand year, 'twenty-ten' and once again the snow and ice has returned to our island, in fact the temperature has struggled to get above freezing for about a week. It really has only just dawned upon me that we've not only started a new year, but also just entered a new decade and with it comes the irresistible urge to reflect upon the ramifications of events of the previous one. From this rare vantage point on the cusp of another decade it seems the 'naughties' were to a large extent either sadly dominated by the threat of terrorism or the threat of celebrity. I think it's also true to say that the reality of climate change and its potential effect upon our way of life has become apparent to all of us in the last decade. The irony of this last statement is that the current very cold weather seems set to continue for some time to come.

From a family perspective, particularly sad for the tartist has been the loss of both her parents in the last ten years and we all miss them loads. At the risk of using a cliche the past decade seems not much more than the blink of an eye, with a fair measure of both sadness and joy. On a positive note, in April 2003 we started The Artcafé, our business in West Mersea and then in 2007 we opened our second Artcafé in Colchester and despite the extremely hard work and various problems that jump up and bite us from time to time, we're looking forward to developing further what we do in 2010 with a third strand to our business.

It seems to me a curious human trait, to 'decimalise' our lives into decades but I guess in some way it helps make sense of it all. So here we are looking both forward and back, but mostly forward into 2010! Happy new year, oh, and by the way I insist we all pronounce it 'twenty-ten'

'Barbeque' Summer

Summer At The Strood

The tartist and I have decided to hang a piece of seaweed up outside our back door in order to more accurately ascertain what the weather has in store for us over the next few weeks. We were going to buy a multi-million pound satellite and study the available weather data and statistics that span the centuries but decided to leave nothing to chance!

A Watercolour & Independence Day

Sunshine Over The Huts ~ Watercolour

I was trying to find something appropriately 'warm' for this current heatwave we've been having and was rummaging in my painting archives when I stumbled upon this, painted in July 2007, it has rather too much blue to feel really hot but it will have to do for now. Oh, I nearly forgot to give a little nod to our neighbors across the water (no, not Tollesbury, stupid).



Happy Independence Day.

Sociology On The Seawall

I've just returned from an evening walk around the seawall equipped with 'artist jnr.' and his sociology revision cards and Mabel our black lab. As we strolled he revised for his A-level tomorrow, I helped as best I could and Mabel padded around and sniffed a lot, as she does. We were treated with a fabulous Mersea evening as the sun set below Wigborough hill and the tide slid silently up the Strood channel, as it does.



Tomorrow is not only artist jnr's sociology a-level exam but it is also his first opportunity to exercise his democratic right to vote for the very first time which I'm proud to say he's thinking about very seriously. Rather ironically many of the topics on his revision cards reflected current affairs to the letter. For example Sutherland's work on 'White Collar Crime' cropped up and we talked about recent scandals involving M.P's trousering tax payer's money. Strange times are these where relatively modest expenses fiddles look more likely to put an end to this government's reign than the highly unpopular Iraq war.









As the sun sank lower over Strood channel the light and shadows became very dramatic and the three of us made our way off the seawall, between the fields of ripening rapeseed towards home and the end of a very agreeable stroll.

East Mersea ~ Pastel on paper
Something to ponder next time you find yourself in a giant tailback on the M25.

Cleanest & Greenest?...I Don't Think So.

As a business the tartist and I (unlike domestic households) have to pay for our refuse collection in addition to our already substantial business rates. Now, we have an 1,100 litre wheelie bin at both of our cafés these cost us £10.90 per week to empty plus £3.30 hire charge. This equates to £738.40 per café, per annum. In addition to this we are required to sign a 'duty of care certificate' (usually just an A4 photocopy) and for this we get charged £30.90 per premises. A total cost of £1,538.60 per year... I guess what we're doing in effect is purchasing 1,100 litres of landfill per week for each café.

Until recently (approx. 18 months ago) all our cardboard was collected along with the other businesses in Church Road from the kerbside each Tuesday morning. As for all our glass bottles, I was dutifully carrying several boxes of these to our local re-cycling point each week until we opened our second café and it became too much for me to handle.

Now, around this time (Jan. 2007) we were informed with a letter from Colchester Borough Council that our cardboard would be an 'additional' collection at £556.20 per year, completely knocking our cardboard re-cycling on the head so to speak. When we enquired about glass bottle/can re-cycling we were simply astounded by the reply...there is no facility for re-cycling bottles and cans from businesses by Colchester Borough Council. Even if we wanted to pay handsomely for this service they simply wont do it! We are are relatively small business in the scheme of things so, imagine all the pubs, clubs, cafés etc. around the Colchester Borough having paid for their 1.100 ltrs and having nowhere to put their bottles and cans. What would you do? My guess is like us, having paid such a premium for the wheelie bin, you'd stick the bottles and cans in with the rest.
In the end when it comes to running a business it simply makes economic sense to fill up the bin doesn't it?

As a householder I've been an enthusiastic re-cycler for years and I suspect like me, most other householders who do their bit each week at the kerbside will be horrified to learn that Colchester Borough Council's setup for re-cycling is so lamentably inadequate at present. We could all be forgiven for thinking 'where is the point?'

It seems ironic to me that on many of the lorries the slogan reads 'cleanest and greenest' and I suppose what I would like to see is adequate collection of re-cyclable materials from Colchester's businesses by the Borough Council because the present setup is causing tonnes and tonnes to go unecessarily to land-fill, which according to 'The draft joint municipal waste management strategy for Essex 2007 - 2032' will be full up by 2017!

Waste management is an enormous business and it seems strange to me that our council simply can't or won't do what the private firms do quite profitably.

Cunning Plans Are Here Again

After reading Juliet's musing this morning I was prompted to a little musing of my own concerning the current state of affairs surrounding the banking débâcle. I may have missed a trick somewhere along the line, but as I understand it, the current state we find ourselves in is almost entirely due to the banks lending far too much money, far too easily, to far too many people. Now we are bieng told that the plan to solve the problem of the stealthily rising river of fiscal poo we find ourselves in is to get the banks to start lending lots of money again. That's a very cunning plan Baldrick!!

Autumn Leaves & The Economy

View from the Artcafe this morning.

Sweeping the leaves from the cafe forecourt this most glorious of Mersea Island Autumn mornings my mind wandered to the current banking crisis, which at times has seemed very far removed from our little marshy island. Now, I'm not exactly 'up to speed' or even remotely interested in the machinations of the global banking system as a rule but the sheer scale of this monumental cock-up has me intrigued. You see, for most of my adult life I've been led to believe that banks were safe places to put one's [business] hard earned cash and they in turn would charge a commission for being so clever and prudent with such deposits. Now it seems that this is less true than ever, in fact it was announced yesterday that sales of safes are up 25% and I'll bet that as I write this many people are ferreting away wads of cash into 'slumberland' and 'sleepeasy' accounts at home!

So often in recent times I've heard these financial [I use the term loosely this morning]... giants bemoaning the 'nanny state' for over regulation etc. Now it transpires that what most of them desperately require is not simply a nanny but something more akin to supergran with a spare £50 billion in her trolley. I may be wide of the mark here, correct me if I am, but this will equate to about £1,000 for every tax payer in Britain. I do hope they spend it wisely.

On a different tack, I (theartist) subscribe to a splendid e-mail twice a week from the Canadian painter Robert Genn on 'arty-farty' matters. It's usually pithy and interesting and last Tuesday's was no exception and particularly pertinent.

Particles

Well, so far we've not yet been sucked down into the much hyped vortex that the Large Hadron Collider may or may not create. We've not actually noticed any perceptible movement towards Switzerland here at artistandtartist H.Q., this maybe because they've not actually crashed any particles into one another as yet or perhaps the probability of them creating a real black hole inside the 'gizmo' has been greatly exaggerated. We read somewhere that someone actually has a lawsuit pending in the event of all life as we know it being wiped out, that certainly would infringe quite a few human's rights. From my limited knowledge of black holes the gravitational pull would be far to great for even the most tenacious solicitor.



They might be giants, crikey this takes me back.