GrumbleSmiles

“Bungalow Brandon”

Posted on October 2, 2014 by john graham

Raised in 2013 in a think tank paper by the Policy Exchange, bungalows have now resurfaced as a new Government policy.

The title of this blog is my nickname for the recently appointed Minister of Housing and Planning – Mr Brandon Lewis. Few Housing Ministers last in post very long, because few Governments of any political complexion manage to develop a serious long-term housing policy. Certainly not one which will address the country’s housing shortage.

A consequence of this is that each new Housing Minister feels obliged to come up with a comprehensive strategy within weeks of their appointment. This is especially true if there is an election less than 12 months away. Of course, in these circumstances, the need is to grab headlines and capture votes rather than build anything at all.

Mr Lewis’s new gimmick is good old bungalows. What a unique idea? Drawn from the 1950’s and 60’s, so not exactly new.

The problem is that Bungalow Brandon has not been reading my blog (see “Bungalow Mindset” and “Bungalow Metaphors” in the Archive dated September 2013).

If he had been he would know that bungalows take up rather a lot of land, which the planning half of his department will oppose till their dying day. That is why only 2% of homes in England are bungalows. In 2009 only 300 were built.

At least Mr Brandon Lewis sees the need for more retirement housing to free up homes for families. Estimates suggest 2.2 million more homes will be needed by 2021 of which the over 65’s will make up 1.2 million. It is a mammoth task that deserves much more than sound bite political answers.

Take the shackles off the planning system; speed up development; seed fund retirement housing and promote new forms of equity release financial models that allow wider access to retirement housing. These are strategic ways forward though I doubt Mr Brandon will have had time to consider them in the short time since he has been appointed. Neither are they quick fix issues since they probably require changes in legislation, all of which takes time.

Older people and housing developers could tell Bungalow Brandon what to do, but I doubt that he will listen.

Posted in RETIREMENT HOUSING | 1 Comment

Blogging around the World

Posted on September 30, 2014 by john graham

I noticed on GrumbleSmiles today I had a visitor from the Dominican Republic and it prompted me to look at the statistics you get from WordPress. This is one of the nice things about blogging, you get very rapid analysis on what you write about, even if visitors to the site don’t make a comment you can see roughly where they are from. This is the first visitor I have ever had from the Dominican Republic. Thank you and I hope you will come back sometime.

Naturally, the UK is by far my most popular audience, with over 14,000 blog visitors since 2012. The next highest groups of viewers in order are from USA, Brazil, Canada and India. In all I have had visits from 104 different countries, including single visitors from as far afield as Swaziland, Nigeria, Guyana, Georgia, Iceland and the Faroe Islands.

When I was young I used to collect stamps and I still remember the excitement of getting a stamp from a new location. Most of my geographic quiz knowledge comes from that happy childhood era. In future I will look more closely at my viewers and see if I can widen my appeal to even more locations. Just like collecting stamps again 🙂

My most popular topics are Health , Research and Pills. Individual blogs about “Happiness”, “Pensions” and “Assisted Suicide” have been the most visited, which is a rather strange mixture, but I guess it represents the issues that are most on older peoples minds. My most popular blogs in terms of visits have been “The £140 Pension” and “New Vision of Later Life “, which obviously reflect peoples hopes for the future.

The above figures do not include the 64,00 spam visitors who have landed on the site. I my childhood Spam was wonderful cooked in batter. Spam fritters were a favourite then, spam posts ought to go the same way.

I am not trying to court popularity for the sake of it. Rather I hope to learn and influence the way people think about the older generation.

I will update this next, when I hopefully get some other visitors from far away places.

Posted in ABOUT GRUMBLESMILES, SMILES | 1 Comment

“Wonder Nut”

Posted on September 28, 2014 by john graham

Here is another step towards 7-a-day. (See earlier posts by clicking on “EMFV” in the TAG CLOUD).

According to six recent studies from the American Society of Nutrition in San Diego – there is a snack with wonder properties. So many in fact that you wonder why they have not been discovered before —- unless of course you are spaced out in California.

ALMONDS

 High in protein
 Nutrient rich
 Supresses apetite
 Staves off disease
 High in monounsaturated fats
 High in magnesium and manganese
 High in Vitamin E
 Protects against UV light damage
 And Alzheimer’s

A wonder cure in a handful of nuts! What’s not to like?

There again San Diego is in California and they are a bit prone to wonder.

Posted in HEALTH | Tagged "EMFV" | 2 Comments

“Residential Care not Healed”

Posted on September 25, 2014 by john graham

The private residential care sector grew rapidly in the 1980’s and 1990’s as the elderly population expanded. The construction of new homes was funded by expensive venture capital on the promise of high financial returns, underpinned by Government support for publicly funded residents.

Companies like Takecare, Westminster Healthcare, Ashbourne Homes, Care First, Southern Cross, Craigmore and Four Seasons, all emerged from nowhere. They now look after many thousands of vulnerable elderly people. Albeit many of the companies have gone bust along the way, changed their names and merged with others.

In the last decade, Government funds have remained at a standstill while the elderly population continues to grow. The consequence of which is that the once profitable residential care sector is much more financially constrained as Social Services and the NHS hold down residential care fees.

Now the venture capitalists are less happy with the market outlook for their investments. Anonymously named finance companies like KKR, CINVEN, APAX, TERRAFIRMA, BLACKSTONE, TOWERBROOK, BAIN CAPITAL and WAUD CAPITAL PARTNERS; none of them are exactly household names in terms of care of the elderly. They are there to make money not to make elderly people happy.

Now a small group of care workers striking for better wages have got these multi-million pound vultures worried. The prospect of improved pay for care workers will put their returns under even more pressure.

The catch 22 is that the Government does not have more money to pay higher fees and even if they did, they fear increased fees would only result in better returns for vulture / venture capitalists. It is highly unlikely to result in either higher pay for care staff or improved quality of service to residents.

Private sector residential care was built by cowboy builders on foundations of sand and the sector continues to be in trouble.

You can find the history of Southern Cross’s demise by clicking in the TAG CLOUD on Southern Cross.

Posted in Residential Care | Tagged "Southern Cross" | 1 Comment

“We don’t care”

Posted on September 23, 2014 by john graham

My old friend Mr Paul Burstow, is back in the news. (See an earlier blog where he is mentioned by clicking on “Confusion still Reigns” in the ARCHIVE dated November 2011).

Mr Burstow was the Care Minister from 2010 to 2012 and in that time little progress was made in improving care quality in residential homes. Since his re-shuffled demise, Mr Burstow has led a year long commission into residential care for the Demos think tank. It proposes to licence care workers as a way of improving standards of training. Perhaps Mr Burstow doesn’t know that the Registration Authorities have long asked for all care staff to have at least NVQ Level 2. Needless to say that has never been enforced, therefore little has changed.

All that licensing is likely to do is create another level of bureaucracy.

The report also calls for care workers to be paid the living wage of £7.65 an hour, (£8.80 in London). Currently around 80% of basic care staff earn £6.45 an hour, which is a key part of the problem. Low wages leads to high staff turnover and lack of continuity of care. This is an endemic problem in the residential care sector.

We, as a society, don’t care about care staff enough to pay them a decent wage, yet we expect them to do jobs that we would not wish to do ourselves for minimum wages.

Social Services and the NHS, who set and pay many of the fees for residential care, are not prepared to advocate higher fees to enable home owners to pay their care staff the level of pay paid to Local Authorities and NHS care workers.

Neither do I remember Mr Burstow recommending higher fees for residential care when he was Care Minister.

Posted in Residential Care | 1 Comment

“Take More Pills”

Posted on September 21, 2014 by john graham

This blog follows “Take Less Pills” and many other posts on pills which can be found by clicking on “PILLS” in the TAG CLOUD.

Only one page after a report on taking less pills, The Daily Mail on 4^th July 2014, followed it with an article on Statins. The Health Editor obviously failed to make any connection between the two articles.

Although it has been contentious in the medical world in the recent past, the latest advice on Statins is that most older people would benefit from taking them. 7 million people already do!

The latest advice is that they should be offered to all people who have a 10% chance of a heart attack or stroke, which is probably most older people. My friends at N.I.C.E. are about to issue this advice so it must be true because usually they take years to consider any decision. (N.I.C.E. is either The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence / Economics / Exclusion dependent on which day of the week it is).

Seems like N.I.C.E. is finally catching up with advice I commented on over two years ago. (Click on “PILLS” in the TAG CLOUD and “START TAKING THE PILLS”).

Posted in HEALTH | Tagged "Pills" | 4 Comments

“Speed up, slow down”

Posted on September 18, 2014 by john graham

Only a few days ago I was blogging about the virtues of High Intensity Training. (See “Bolt from the Blue” by clicking on “EXERCISE” in the TAG CLOUD).

It was based on research from Aberdeen University which suggested just two one minute all–out bursts of energy were all you needed to do to dramatically improve your health.

I have to say, getting this keep fit all over in just two minutes a week, sounds like a great idea. But it seemed to me that a short burst of energy was more likely to bring on a heart attack than prevent one, so I am going to pass on High Intensity Training.

There is maybe a better idea coming recently from America’s Iowa State University. They studied 55,000 adults over 15 years and found that the runners among them had a 45% lower risk of dying from a heart attack or stroke than the non-runners. They also lived on average for 3 years longer. Their study suggested that running for less than seven minutes a day at a slow pace still reduced the risk of dying.

Now that sounds betters than all that sweaty and exhausting High Intensity Training stuff. Still, that’s an hour a week of exercise, plus all the warming up, plus the time it takes squeezing in and out of the Lycra running shorts.

Perhaps I will wait a while till some more researchers come along who suggest leaning on a gate for an hour a day is all the exercise you need.

Posted in HEALTH | Tagged research | 1 Comment

“Bolt from the Blue”

Posted on September 16, 2014 by john graham

I do hope Scotland does not go independent, otherwise we may be deprived of some of the pearls of wisdom being released at the moment about the virtues of exercise, which no doubt were timed to coincide with the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow.

Researchers at the University of Dundee did high intensity training (HIT) with older people – six second sprints on an exercise bike only twice a week. With this short burst of exercise they found that pensioners significantly improved their physical fitness and lowered their blood pressure.

Helpfully, one of the researchers explained that “you do not have to go at the speed of Usain Bolt”. I guess that is just as well, since running 100 yards in less than 10 seconds is probably quite challenging for someone over 70.

The Catch 22 in this new advice is that they recommend that you consult your doctor before HIT training. Perhaps you could run on the spot while waiting to queue for an appointment.

Posted in HEALTH | Tagged research | 1 Comment

“Take Less Pills”

Posted on September 14, 2014 by john graham

Another presentation at the Age UK Later Life Conference this year was a senior doctor giving some surprising, unusual and rather contradictory advice.

Dr Charles Alessi is Public Health England’s Lead Advisor for preventable diseases and also Chairman of the National Association of Primary Care. Here is the gist of his argument:-

Modern medicine treats patients as conditions rather than people;
Doctors should stop practicing medicine by body part which leads to over-prescribing of many drugs;
Older patients need to be more resilient and take control of their illnesses by leading more active lives;

I would agree strongly with all of this but there is a big BUT:-

It is surprising when you think that all his colleagues spend all their time giving out millions of go-away pills in ten minute consultations every day (except weekends and nights and some afternoons, that is);
It is unusual to suggest that patients should take control when you should be able to trust your doctor to know best and not prescribe you things you do not need;
It is contradictory to tell doctors not to treat body parts individually when they tell you in prominent notices in their surgeries “only one condition per consultation”.

The lady pictured in the cartoon is my friend “Pilly Galore” who I first commented on in a blog with that title on the 19 December 2010. Click in the Archive on that date to see the blog or click “PILLS” in the TAG CLOUD to see other blogs on this subject.

Dr Alessi is a rare voice of sanity in a health system of mixed messages but will anybody have time to listen?

Without more focus in the NHS on prevention rather than cure, patients will continue to live their ill-healthy lives.

Posted in HEALTH | Tagged "Pills" | 1 Comment

“Fruitless Effort”

Posted on September 11, 2014 by john graham

I have spent a lot of blogging time over the summer extolling the virtues of eating more fruit and vegetables. (See all these blogs by clicking on “EMFV” in the TAG CLOUD).

All of my efforts were based on Government advice given out in April this year that five a day was just not enough and you needed to eat seven portions of fruit and vegetables every day to stay at peak dietary health levels.

Goodness knows five was hard enough but seven took a lot of eating. Plus the persistence to find all those choke berries that no-one had ever heard of in the village corner shop. Then there was all the miles walking up and down the aisles at Tesco and Sainbury’s and Morrisons and Asda and Waitrose and Aldi and Lidl. Thank goodness for the wife – she’s a treasure and two stone lighter after all that exercise.

What a pity then that a researcher studying all the other researchers studying fruit and veg has now concluded that seven a day may be going a bit too far because the benefits of extra fruit and veg level off with higher consumption.

Mind you this later study was based on data from 833,000 people and was collected over 26 years. So those people probably explain why so many supermarket shelves are empty of all but the bruised fruit at the end of the day.

The study of studies was done by the nutty Professor Hu of Harvard School of Public Health. He still recommends eating lots of nuts. So as I will not be eating so much fruit and veg in future, I have asked the wife to stock up on family size bars of Cadbury’s whole nut chocolate which as the jingle goes ……………..

“Nuts, whole hazelnuts, Cadbury make them and they cover them with chocolate”

So now I’m totally confused with all this Government advice and have no idea whether I will be more or less healthy without all the rabbit food. But I am fairly confident that I will be happier with all the chocolate.

Posted in HEALTH | Tagged "EMFV" | 3 Comments