It’s better for people to keep their dignity, rather than live forever as a vegetable
Let us start the day by pondering the emerging campaign to have a Dementia Friend. I am entitled to be scurrilous on this subject, because my brother and I underwent a 3-year nightmare of dealing with our Alzheimered Dad and NICE at one and the same time a few years back. The experience has left me sad, but also incorrigibly cynical about fluffy-nicey-kissy-huggy movements such as the Dementia Friend initiative.
I’m all for the good guys showing initiative, but the problem of dementia in the Western world needs the sort of debate that vote-centric politicians are never, ever going to give us. The idea of 11 year-olds – however well-intentioned – searching out dementia friends for a time 60 years from now (when we will either have imploded as a species or solved the problem completely) is almost tragi-comically pathetic. It is an attempt by those of good heart but muddled head to try and take the place of good governance.
As always, Health Secretary Ezak Hunt plucks at this lachrymose heart-string for all he’s worth – which isn’t much. But the truth is that Hunt’s mates in the private health sector are no more likely to address the root cause of this than either the NHS or Dementia Friends. And outfits like Dementia Friend, while in their motives admirable, simply give slippery Jezzer more leeway to do nothing.
Will there, for example, one day be a Dementia Friends reunited…a website dedicated to forgetting WhoTF our friends were anyway? Will there be a Forgetnance Day, honouring the Unknown Dementia Patient with a shower of Forget-Me-Nots in Westminster Cathedral?
With a proper level of investment in research regarding the destruction of hippo-campus communication between our left and right brain hemispheres, solid and available neuroscience suggests we can lick this problem within the next decade. But we – especially here on this tiny island – do need to rejig priorities in terms of realistic expectations of longevity.
If people can reach ninety and be totally mentally capable then die, this is far better than being an idiot from the age of 70+ who lives to be 105 but has no idea what numbers are.
No satire can be truly valid unless it is constructive….this is the one failing I see in the otherwise excellent Private Eye. The bottom line is that we are by far the most over-populated Nation in the developed European Union. The solutions to the problem are obvious: a blanket, no-exceptions ban on immigration, regardless of race, forthwith; dumping globalism in favour of being independently self-sufficient; leaving the EU insanity…and having an NHS focussed on quality of life, not eternal life. Once you’ve had your innings chum, that’s yer lot. Until politicians can get the birth/death balance right in our country, that’s always going to be the best thing on offer.
We could start by taxing people for having more than two kids, focusing on small business stimulation, and making every remaining acre of land useful for growing stuff….not building on it.
Houses are like motorways and traffic: the population will increase to fill the houses. Bricks can be a filling food, but they are conducive to dangerous levels of constipation.
Ahaa, you think, The Slog’s gone all looney-Ukip at the final bell. No I haven’t. More on this anon: in the meantime, cue lots of emails and threaders saying how nasty I am.
The Slog 