“What happened to Hilversham”

Posted on August 26, 2012 by john graham

In the golden days when I still understood technology, I could always tune my radio into Hilversham just by turning the dial and moving the little line up to the word “Hilversham” and there it was.  Of course I never did, I assumed it was some foreign station, but at least I knew how to avoid it.  What I could do was tune to Radio 1 or 2 for music, Radio 4 for the news and Radio Luxembourg or Radio Caroline for pop records.

In my continuing theme of the widening technology gap leaving the elderly behind, I now turn my blogging attention to digital radios.  (For earlier blogs on this subject, click on “TECHNOLOGY GAP” in the TAG CLOUD).

The radio in my car is one of the very latest digital thing-a-me-jigs.  When I bought the car, the garage had pre-set it for me to the few simple stations I had asked for.  You know how it goes – button 1 for Radio 1 for music; button 2 for Radio 2 for talk; button 4 for Radio 4 for news and OOPS – Radio Luxembourg must have joined the European Union and Radio Caroline sank years ago.  So buttons 3, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9 I don’t need.  The good news continues.  Along with the volume control dial I also have balance, treble and bass adjustments for the four surround sound speakers.  I am driving around in my own mobile ghetto blaster.  On a good day they can hear me in Edinburgh and my neighbours won’t even need to buy a radio :-).  Of course I have to leave the car windows down otherwise everyone won’t get the full benefit of surround sound, they will just hear the thump, thump, thump of the 40 watt bass speakers as I drive by.

All was going well until one day I was driving along concentrating on the road, when I remembered there was a test match on.  So not taking my eyes off the road, I reached down and turned the radio on and pressed button 4 for Test Match Special.  Sadly nothing is that simple anymore :-(.  That institution of cricket fans the world over has been moved by the BBC from Radio 4 to Five Live or Talk Sport or somewhere lost in the ether.  Why didn’t they switch it to “Hilversham”?  I could always find that!

In the middle of winter when there was no cricket, it somehow slipped my mind to tell the garage to tune the radio to Test Match Special.  So it must be my fault :-(.

I pull into a service station, park up and look for the manual.  This radio is so special I have a 200-page user guide all of its own.  None of it is particularly helpful or even comprehensible – there is not even a mention of Test Match Special in the fifteen page index.  I make a note to do an evening class in radio engineering when I get home so that I can tune in my radio all by myself.

Meanwhile I resort to the usual male answer to instruction manuals.  I put it back in the glove compartment and start fiddling with the radio buttons and dials.  Eventually after only half an hour of scanning 50 local radio stations and listening to 50 Mrs Smith’s ringing in for advice about her bunions, I miraculously catch the instantly recognisable voice of Geoffrey Boycott 😦 Unfortunately by this time England are already three wickets down :-(.

Successfully tuned in I am able to restart my journey.  Everything is going fine.  The talk of cricket and cake has a calming influence even if England are off to a bad start.  Then five overs later the station switches automatically to the shipping forecast :-(.  I am puzzled because I am nowhere near the sea.  Five minutes later this truculent radio switches back to TMS only for me to learn that England have lost another wicket.  Maybe the fog on Dogger Bank obscured the batsman’s vision.

10 miles further up the road and England have steadied the ship and the opening batsman is approaching a century.  The fielders are closing in around the bat, the crowd are hushed, the fast bowler runs up and ——my radio switches to “traffic information”.  I certainly need to know there is an accident on the M4 at this critical moment.  By the time it switches back, the applause has died down from which I deduce either the batsman has scored his hundred or he is out to a spectacular catch.

And they say technology is moving into the information age.

What happened to Radio Hilversham?

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“Where is the Grindle?”

Posted on August 23, 2012 by john graham

I started a blog about how technology, instead of assisting elderly people and opening up their lives, is in many cases only serving to isolate them even further.  (To see the blog click on “TECHNOLOGY GAP” in the TAG CLOUD).

The Kindle is a classic example of the blind spot the young 20/20 vision techie savi have about older people.  Yet the grey market is huge and the older generation are avid readers of books.

I bought my wife a kindle for Christmas and ever since she has been glued to it.  It goes with her everywhere.  Indeed, she sees more of it than she does of me :-).  The good news is that I no longer have to build shelves I am not tripping up over piles of books everywhere I go.  No cables either; the battery lasts forever.  When we go on holiday, we can take one less suitcase – only 3 or 4 now :-(.  The Kindle’s small size means it can be taken anywhere – and there is the grumble.

Small may be beautiful and it’s one of the key selling points of the Kindle but need it be quite so small?  The Kindle makes small print look like the bottom line of an optician’s eye chart.  I know you can enlarge the print size, but who wants to read a book half a line at a time?

If you overcome these obstacles and finish your first book, you come to the next big hurdle – ordering your next book.  Apart from a degree in computer literacy, you also need a microscope to see the keyboard on your kindle as well as baby sized fingers to type on it.  If you are lucky enough to succeed you can save yourself a fortune in the cost of buying new books as well as the convenience of sitting in bed to do it.

The Kindle has been a great commercial success from Amazon and there is no question it is a fantastic innovation in the book market.  It’s lightness and portability and the cheap access to a world of books would be of colossal benefit to housebound older people.  The barrier is the age unfriendly technology.  We need a bigger grannie size Kindle.

A Grindle!

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“Flowers are Friends”

Posted on August 16, 2012 by john graham

In this wettest of summers, the garden has kept growing at a furious pace, weeds and all.  Everywhere is endlessly green.  Perhaps this is the real green party :-).

The trouble is that the rain and the green get relentlessly boring after three months when the sun should have been shining at least for some of the time.  Constant clouds depress the spirit and in the garden they depress the flowers.  My lovely roses refuse to open and rot on the bud in the rain.  Nature’s two fingers to heaven.

A few brave souls have battled on and broken through.  The blue and the lilac lobelia tumble over the walls and window boxes, unaccompanied by their floriferous friends.  Honeysuckle still sends its scent all through the garden, especially after a rain shower, as if to say “I’m still here”.

The foxgloves have revelled in the rain saying “we are wild flowers, rain doesn’t bother us”.  The white foxgloves – a gift from Jenny – pleased that they stand out in the lush green.

Then near the end of July the sun finally breaks through and in only a few days the flowers are out and about.  The roses first – saying “look what you have missed”.  A red rose for my wife – a Valentine every year.  A pink rose for Zara, a little girl who blessed our lives for too short a moment.  A peace rose, big blossomed, bold and scented – full of my Grandfather’s gardening confidence.

The geraniums are at long last lifting their heads, battered but ultimately unbowed.  A lesson for everyone.  The sweet peas too, having weathered the storm, are quickly into bloom and delicately dancing on the raindrops.

Elderly people now surrounded by the green shoots of youth, can still show the colours of their childhood and earlier lives.  They just need a little sunshine to allow them to bloom.

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“Raise the Praise”

Posted on August 14, 2012 by john graham

For the last two weeks I have been lying in bed, lounging on a sofa or sitting in a pub glued to the London 2012 Olympics on TV.  This retirement lark has real advantages.

The joy of the Olympics is in the winning.  Gold is in the eyes of all the competitors in the four years of effort before the games begin.  It’s still there on finals day, at the starting line, when you are a champion for even getting there.  Even though there is only one gold, everyone – competitors, coaches and spectators all stand proud in the reflected glory of the achievement.  The disappointment of the losers on the day, is quickly lost in the lasting glow of taking part and being there on the day.

That Olympic flame still shines in the eyes of the elderly.  Some who have won their Olympic medal years ago and some who are still waiting for the moment of glory.  That is why prize-winning is such a strong motivator and why just taking part is a valuable end in itself.

The challenge in the ExtraCare Charitable Trust was to keep that flame shining and to give everyone the opportunity of taking part and becoming winners again.  As age catches up with you, there are fewer opportunities for sporting achievements, but talent and desire for recognition don’t fade with age.  So we tried to create as many chances as we could for the value of older people to be recognised.

I probably started with the Buzzwords Suggestion Scheme, which symbolically said we were interested in the ideas people had and prepared to act on what they had to say.  This began in a small way with token prizes for each suggestion and eventually led to over 3,500 suggestions being made every year.  The prizes for the best suggestions were “David Winter Ceramic Cottages” mounted on wooden pedestals forever labeled with the name of the suggester.  This sent out a powerful message that residents’ views counted.

The prizes idea later extended to gardening, where awards were given out annually at a “Garden in Bloom” ceremony.  This became so popular that medals, cups and certificates were and still are avidly competed for, but it is the taking part that gives so much joy to so many people.

The narrow focus of the gardening idea was later broadened out to include many more talents in “Residents in Bloom”.  Crafts and skills of every description – painting, photography, crochet, knitting, writing, poetry, baking, flower arranging, pottery, woodwork.  The medals and gongs abounded to Olympian levels.

The years make the elderly all champions in their own way.  All their talents should be recognised and rewarded.  They all take part in life and they can all be winners at something.

My medals were won for me by other people and just like the Olympics, we can all share in the reflected glory of medal winners.

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“Technology Gap”

Posted on August 12, 2012 by john graham

This blog is the beginning of a grumble, but it should be a smile.  It is about the elderly market, and the number of new products that arrive almost every day that should make our lives easier and therefore make us smile.  Sadly too many new products leave people behind.  Amazed by what new gadgets can do but bewildered about how to make them do it.  That is the grumble.

New technology should make our lives easier, safer, faster and fun.  Too often for many people, but particularly the elderly, it can be more complicated, incomprehensible and frustrating.

I am driving around in my car at the moment with the digital clock set on the winter time even though it’s July, because I can’t figure out how to set it to British summer time.  That’s not the end of the world but it is a daily reminder of how stupid I am and I could do without that.

Yesterday my computer ‘broke’ or at least the screen went blank and I couldn’t reboot it.  After several tries, I was thinking about really BOOTING it.  When I switched it off and on again it kept coming up with a message about “autosave” and then some more instructions which disappeared before I could read them.  I would have used “help” to see what “autosave” meant but of course my computer wasn’t working.  I thought about finding the user guide which is gathering dust somewhere.  But no doubt if I could find the 5,000 page book and my magnifying glass, I would have to learn one of the many foreign languages it is written in.  Eventually my wife unplugged the computer at the mains and when it was plugged back in, it worked!

As someone who likes to understand things, I am none the wiser, and now my wife is better at mending things than I am.  Is that frustrating or what?

Grrrrrrrrr

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First GrumbleSmiles Trust Applications

Posted on August 9, 2012 by john graham

The Trust was launched in February and at the time of writing we have received 20 applications for funds.  The purpose of this blog is to give some general feedback to the people who have applied to us, although they have all been written to individually.

Most of the applications were unsolicited and made no doubt as a result of the GrumbleSmiles Trust Charity being registered on the Charity Commission website.  The sharpest of fundraisers will have picked up this information and made a prompt application in the hope of attracting our early attention.  The disappointing thing is that so many of these early bird applicants haven’t even taken the time to read the information on the website.  Hence at least half of the initial applications were for projects which had no relation to our aims.  This scattergun approach to fundraising is time-wasting, not only for the Trustees, but also for the applicants.  I’m sure they are all doing very good work and it must be disappointing to receive rejection of their applications and therefore in a positive spirit I would like to suggest they would get better results by tailoring their applications to donors with the same aims as themselves.

A number of the other applications were related to elderly people so they do fit in to our broad area of interest.  However our limited resources mean that we are not in a position to provide core funding for projects.  We are also looking for evidence of innovatory approaches and ideas which can be repeated on a larger scale.

We don’t wish to discourage any applications which fit our criteria.  You can find these by clicking on “GRUMBLESMILES TRUST” in the TOPICS list.

Posted in GRUMBLESMILES TRUST | 1 Comment

“Compensation not Care”

Posted on August 5, 2012 by john graham

There’s been much talk in the press recently about the legal profession playing a more active role in policing the quality of care delivered in the NHS.  No doubt the “no win, no fee” lawyers will have a field day with this.  (This follows on from my previous posts entitled “COLD COMFORT” dated 31 July 2012, “CARE NOT COMPENSATION” dated 2 August 2012 and “LEGAL EAGLES NOT VULTURES” dated 26 February 2012 which can be found in the ARCHIVE).

Now here is a possible future article in the Daily Mail :-

The legal profession will soon be doing more operations in the NHS than doctors.  Examination of patients will routinely be done by lawyers immediately after any treatment is given.  Government Ministers have declared that in a new spirit of openness and transparency in the NHS, all doctors and nurses will be required to give witness statements under oath about any treatment provided free at the point of need.  Private health care will of course remain exempt from these regulations to protect commercial sensitivity.

Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow, always ready with a bag of off-the-shelf quotes about “dignity and respect”, will no doubt wish to say:- “This represents a great step forward for elderly care in the NHS.  It is good to know that after all the reports of poor care of older people in the NHS, at least now I have been able to do something.  My Government will be able to rest easy in the knowledge that where treatment is not provided properly, the compensation should restore some dignity, even if sadly on some occasions has to be posthumous.”

I doubt this is an election winning strategy Mr Burstow !

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“Care Not Compensation”

Posted on August 2, 2012 by john graham

I recently wrote about all the extra attention hospital wards are receiving from lawyers in their new-found passionate concern about fees…….oops!  I mean health care.  (See “COLD COMFORT” by clicking in the ARCHIVE dated 31 July 2012).

Now I read that a patient deprived of a drink of water in an NHS hospital in London, was so desperate he rang 999 and called a policeman.  When the PC arrived, he found the patient had no water in his room, but was assured by the staff that the gentleman’s aggressive behaviour was due to his medical condition.  Sadly a day after the PC’s visit, the gentleman dies and the coroner had such serious concerns about the lack of proper care, that the case was referred back to the police.  The inquest continues.

This is no doubt an extreme case but it graphically illustrates how failures in basic nursing services can have fatal consequences.  Unfortunately, the PC was unable to help and subsequently any legal involvement by lawyers would only serve to apportion blame and line the pockets of the legal team.

The Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow, will probably call for police constables to be stationed on every ward in future and in the fullness of time McDonald’s will be contracted to provide catering and beverage services managers to offer hydration services to patients.

Or just give patients a drink!

Posted in HEALTH, N.H.S. | 1 Comment

“Cold Comfort”

Posted on July 31, 2012 by john graham

Some time ago, I wrote in a tongue-in-cheek way about there needing to be a lawyer on every hospital ward to help improve patient care. (Click on February 2012 in the ARCHIVE and see “Untold Pressure” and then “Legal Eagles or Vultures”).

Now it seems lawyers are beginning to take me seriously. Figures from the NHS Litigation Authority show that the NHS paid out a staggering £1.325 BILLION COMPENSATION to patient for medical mistakes and legal fees.  This is 46% up on the previous year spurred on by “no win – no fee” lawyers.

This is a poor state of affairs for patients and good business for lawyers. In the period from 2004 to 2009, there were 5,500 legal cases which resulted in an average compensation per patient of £15,000.  The lawyers took home £36,000 per case.

By 2010 there were 14,000 cases settled.  So at least something is growing in our economy.

Become a lawyer, not a doctor!

P.s. In an article in The Times’ legal section on 5th July 2012, there was a report that Dragons Den entrepreneur James Caan was investing in three solicitors firms.  He must have been reading my blog :-).

P.p.s. On 29th June 2012, the Care Quality Commission reported that 22% of hospitals are failing to meet standards required by law – mainly in relation to low staffing levels and failure to provide basic care.

A lawyer’s paradise!

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“Uplifting Experience ? ” 5

Posted on July 26, 2012 by john graham

This is a continuation of a series of blogs about stairlifts.  For earlier blogs click on “UPLIFTING EXPERIENCE” in the TAG CLOUD.

My first enquiries through comparison websites and directly to manufacturers and suppliers like Age UK, turned up a distinct lack of purchasing information, particularly about costs.  My conversations with call centre staff were equally unforthcoming about costs and also made reference to dubious practices in the industry.  None of this was particularly reassuring.

When I looked down the Google list I saw an interesting reference to the Office of Fair Trading (OFT).  I thought this might be a good place to point me in the right direction.

In 2010, the OFT was concerned about the increasing number of complaints Trading Standards officers were receiving about the sale of mobility aids including stairlifts.  The total had reached 4,000 at that time.  The OFT commissioned a market study to assess the scale of the problem and this was carried out in the early part of 2011.  The study was produced by SPA Future Thinking and published in August 2011.  It’s 98 pages long and I doubt would be read by many elderly people in their search for any mobility equipment, nonetheless, it raises some very disturbing questions.

  • 22% of purchasers had no previous experience of buying
  • 70% had no expert advice
  • 30% of purchasers are over 75 years old
  • Half had no comparison advice before purchasing:-

“If an in-home salesperson (surveyor) convinced them that mobility aids would meet their needs, they simply bought without investigation of other suppliers.”

  • There was evidence that some suppliers had a policy of not giving any indication of costs over the phone (which makes comparison of prices difficult).  It also leaves sales reps (surveyors) to claim they are giving a discount.

In September 2011, the OFT issued a press release warning that people may be paying too much for mobility aids and secondly that there was evidence of high pressure and misleading sales practices when buying this equipment at home.  They were concerned that half of the customers were not shopping around and so could be paying too much.  They also called for businesses to supply actual prices.

It’s evident from my own earlier experiences that by June 2012 nothing has changed.  In spite of this, the OFT concluded that it was not appropriate to make a market investigation referral to the Competition Commission.

This all suggests that elderly people can be very vulnerable to the sharp practices of some suppliers and manufacturers of mobility equipment.  Stairlifts are not an inexpensive item and therefore it is difficult to see how elderly people can be reassured they are receiving value for money.

Posted in ELDERLY MARKET | Tagged , | 5 Comments