It was getting tough in 2006 and the workhouse still threatens us in 2011

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ceridwen

Austin Allegro

I've just noticed your avatar -:rotfl::rotfl::rotfl:

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Kittie
The thing is that many people need their savings to "subsidise their income". Certainly if one's only income is State Pension and perhaps a small works pension. All the more so - if the retirement income is ONLY State Pension. Then one needs those savings there to cover things like:

- house upkeep

- health upkeep

- in case one needs to pay someone else to come in and do the housework, etc (ie because one is no longer fit enough to do it oneself)

- in case one needs to pay for taxis to go a "walking distance" because of not being fit enough to walk it as usual

- the extra money for heating because of having to stay at home more (eg because of not being well enough to get out as much as normal) and certainly an older body needs higher home temperatures than younger ones do

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Younger people need savings by them as well:
- in case of home maintenance costs
- in case of job loss without any redundancy pay being received for it
- etc

We all need savings to prevent the risk of getting in debt when unexpected expenses arise and its worrying to find that ones money is being taken out of the savings account even if you're not spending it yourself.

GreyQueen

Good morning campers; grey and rainy start to the day here in Provincial City. The recent heatwave already seems an impossible dream, athough my toes still hurt from the flipflops so I guess it really happened.

((((((((((Hugs to everyone who is going thru the mill))))))))))

Smileyt, your love for your chooks and your good sense and compassion in donating their equipment to where it will do the most good are beacons of love and sense- and not sentimental at all.

Becky2 great news about the job.

Yesterday, I decided to do something different; stay home of an evening and alternate a bit of reading with chatting on the phone. I even caught up with my chores and the kitchen sink is sooooo shiny I could hold up my head if Flylady herself breezed in from the States.

All in all, I was feeling pretty chilled until Mum told me some news from the Hometown that sent me orbital with rage then into despair.

A neighbour, a lifelong but intermittant sleepwalker, pitched headfirst down her stairs in the small hours of Monday. Her OH woke at the crash and shot down after her; she'd been asleep and was in a heap at the bottom, not knowing what had happened and with a head wound pouring blood.

He rang the GP and the out-of-hours service picked up and told him to call 999 for an ambulance. He did, explained the situation inc her age (nearer 80 than 70 btw) and they told him it would be EASIER if he brought her into the hospital himself in their car.

:mad: EASIER!?! This is a 15 mile trip with a very elderly lady who has a serious head injury fer crying out loud. When I did my first aid training we had it dinned into us that your didn't move a casualty who might have a neck/ back injury without paramedics putting a collar on as a precaution. I'd say someone who'd fallen headfirst downstairs might just possibly fall into that category, wouldn't you?

He took her to the hospital in his car and, when they arrived, there were 4 ambulances parked outside doing burger-all. That poor lady had to be admitted and is still there for observations with a shadow on her brain (don't like the sound of that at all).

I suppose if they hadn't had a car the ambulance trust would have suggested that they call a cab?

"It's like they don't care about the old people at all," Mum observed when she told me all this. She sounded scared. I'm scared; for the neighbour, for my aging parents, for friends like SuperGran (same age as Mum) and for all of us. This is one of the richest countries in the world and we all pay over a big chunk of our incomes for services and we can't get help when in desperate need?

I'm feeling very sad for the neighbour and her OH. Their children married Americans and live over there with the grandkids and it isn't easy to support your elderly parents from the other side of the planet. Gawd, if the ambulance trust every tries anything like that with my family there will be a multi-media bloodbath of bad publicity.

SuperGran (retired nurse) rang a few mins after I talked to Mum. She was grim but unsurprised - she's read stuff recently that makes her think she's hearing the death-knells of the NHS. Round here, they have announced that they'll be closing outpatient clinics and concentrating on things like smoking-cessation and other preventatives. I guess someone presenting with advanced lung disease will be shoved into a time machine and sent back 40 years so they could stop smoking before it caused damage.

Now, I'm all for prevention being better than cure and taking a responsible attitude to your own health but this will do very little for someone like me; never smoked, always exercised, neglible consumption of alcohol, eats her greens and gets to bed of a night and still develops life-threatening illnesses. An awful lot of stuff is wired into your DNA and you can't choose your parents.:(

:mad::mad:Arrrrrgggggggggggg!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! So help me, should a Tory canvasser come to Shoebox Towers (never been known yet btw) they'll get the first degree. We have enough vermin around here already.....but at least the rats are only animals.:mad::mad:

TudorRose

Thanks Ceridwen for your link to the savings site. I have signed the petition asking the government to stop taxing savings.
I have a bit of savings but they are being erroded all the time by lack of interest & the need to buy things for the house etc such as repairs.
I'll be reliant on the state when it runs out & that's not something to look forward to as I was always brought up to work hard & pay my way.

On a happier note I have been sent a free bottle of Bold gel from Supersavvyme, printed off a coupon for a free Goodfella's pizza & on Monday I got free fish & chips for a friend & myself at BHS using coupons I found on here. So not everything is bad & in the words of Mr T 'every little helps'.

Have had some rain this morning. Hope it gets better as want to go for a walk - need the exercise.

Hope evrybody has a good day.

VJsmum

I'm all for preventatives as well but we have a health service to help people who are ill - don't we? None of us know what is going to happen to us in the future, do we? I don't smoke, (tho did briefly about 25 years ago), drink moderately, I am not overweight and i eat pretty healthily. But i am aware that my father had his first stroke at 39 followed by 4 more until he died of a heart attack at 52, my mother contracted Rheumatoid Arthritis at 39 which crippled her tho she eventually died of Emphysema at 74. Alll of which means that I have crap genes (I am a poet and i didn't know it )

Mum was a smoker although she had given it up for over 20 years when she got emphysema. She was told that after 20 years the effects of smoking should have gone - clearly not true. SHe said to me that if she had known it killed people when she started, then she wouldn't have. Although, of course, there is no way of knowing if that is true, it is true that there wasn't the awareness of the effects of smoking back in the 50's.

My stepfather, however, is nearly 80 he has been obese - even morbidly obese - for 40+ years, he smoked (tho doesn't now) and drank excessively, no exercise and eats pretty much what he likes. His cholesterol was much lower than mum's who was like a tiny bird and tried to look after her diet etc. She was right p**sed off about that :rotfl:

So, Greyqueen is right, you can't choose your genes. Mum had great service from the NHS tho, i don't think i can really fault anything regarding her care - right up to the end. It is sad to think that, to a certain extent, it is a victim of its own success.

Anyhoo, the sun is shining and i have to drive down the M6. Have a good day all.

katieowl_2

@ Grey Queen...I agree with you totally. Once you hit a 'certain age' there seems to be an across the board sub-text that you're in God's waiting room anyway, and it would be better all round if you quietly dropped of your twig. :mad:

Anyway...I have a question for you guys of appropriate response?
I was chatting to someone yesterday, I haven't known for very long, but he's a nice guy and disabled with MS which as you will know comes and goes in it's severity for a lot of people. He told me that he went into hospital earlier in the year, and his DLA was reviewed. (I'm sure he said ELA? But I can't find that anywhere) He said he had a conversation with the review people that went like this....Q Can you sit for two hours? R I'm in a wheelchair Q so you CAN sit for two hours? R Yes....I'm IN A WHEELCHAIR! Result -2 points of the scoring and they cancelled his benefit!!!

Now I know he's got by with an overdraft, and he said he was trying to get some kind of emergency payment through, while the whole thing goes to appeal, but he said something to me that really made me sad "The hardest thing of all when I feed the dog and he looks at me and it feels like he's saying to me 'Only biscuits again?'

OK, so I want to take him some dog food. Do I stick six tins in a bag, and hand it to him and say 'this is from my girls (ie my dogs) for your dog' Or 12 tins?

Do I buy 12 tins from the Farm shop and take one out and lie and say I bought this but my fuss pots won't eat it?

I don't know where he actually lives, but I could find out and do an anonymous drop?

Do you think he will be terribly offended? I can't bear the thought of his dog going hungry I was lying awake worrrying about it last night, as I probably won't bump into him until the weekend.


Kate

Hobsons_Choice

Grey Queen, another excellent post and I (at 70 years young) agree totally.
Katieowl, that's a bit of a dilemma. I'd go with the 'lying' solution, it may not offend. Or...next time you see him, you could mention about the surplus tins - as an aside - and ask if they'd be any good to him? Hopefully, he wouldn't have probs opening tins?

Austin_Allegro

The problem is that you can only get high interest rates on savings if the banks are lending out lots of money to people and charging them high interest rates to borrow.

The less they do that, the less money they have coming in to give to savers...

...and the BOE dursen't raise the interest rates because they know that we will be well and truly up a certain creek without a paddle.

So sorry folks, it looks like effectively zero interest is here to stay, like in Japan. The only thing you can do is try to protect your savings being eroded from inflation.

Oh and has anyone else noticed that HMG is raising the speed limit on motorways to 80mph (which uses more fuel) just as fuel tax revenues have fallen? Coincidence, or something less bleedin' obvious? :rotfl:

jamanda

katieowl wrote: »

@ Grey Queen...I agree with you totally. Once you hit a 'certain age' there seems to be an across the board sub-text that you're in God's waiting room anyway, and it would be better all round if you quietly dropped of your twig. :mad:

Anyway...I have a question for you guys of appropriate response?
I was chatting to someone yesterday, I haven't known for very long, but he's a nice guy and disabled with MS which as you will know comes and goes in it's severity for a lot of people. He told me that he went into hospital earlier in the year, and his DLA was reviewed. (I'm sure he said ELA? But I can't find that anywhere) He said he had a conversation with the review people that went like this....Q Can you sit for two hours? R I'm in a wheelchair Q so you CAN sit for two hours? R Yes....I'm IN A WHEELCHAIR! Result -2 points of the scoring and they cancelled his benefit!!!

Now I know he's got by with an overdraft, and he said he was trying to get some kind of emergency payment through, while the whole thing goes to appeal, but he said something to me that really made me sad "The hardest thing of all when I feed the dog and he looks at me and it feels like he's saying to me 'Only biscuits again?'

OK, so I want to take him some dog food. Do I stick six tins in a bag, and hand it to him and say 'this is from my girls (ie my dogs) for your dog' Or 12 tins?

Do I buy 12 tins from the Farm shop and take one out and lie and say I bought this but my fuss pots won't eat it?

I don't know where he actually lives, but I could find out and do an anonymous drop?

Do you think he will be terribly offended? I can't bear the thought of his dog going hungry I was lying awake worrrying about it last night, as I probably won't bump into him until the weekend.


Kate

I'd get the 12 - 1 and lie through my teeth. And quickly, or I wouldn't be able to sleep either.

the_cat

I'd tell him the truth and hope I could word it in a way that didn't offend.

Otherwise in 12 days (or however long it takes for the dog to finish the first batch of tins) you will be back to worrying and the dog will be back to being hungry