Lasting Power of Attorney

It seems a touch morbid to be doing this, but I am. I got all the guidance & forms from the Office of the Public Guardian & very helpful they are too. The process is thought provoking & probably not something a lot of people want to do. Discussing the issues with your nearest & dearest can also be difficult - I've found black humour helps!

The process is safe because I stipulate that my LPA can't be used until I lack mental capacity - In other words I'm more bonkers than I am now. So once it's all done in ink & signed & witnessed I shall register it and forget about it. Hopefully it may never be used, I would like to pop off quickly & painlessly - wouldn't we all? But I believe in covering all the bases & I haven't been a particularly lucky person so far. Ideally I fancy Euthanasia if things get really tough.

I would rather do this now, and not be worried about what will happen to me if I become physically or mentally incapable, which in an ageing population seems quite likely. I'm probably still a bit of a control freak & I want to make the decisions about what medical treatments I do or don't want - (DNR tick). Quality of life matters, & just because medics can prolong life in circumstances they weren't able to before doesn't make it right. I want to be cared for in my own home if I am reasonably compos mentis & capable. But if I'm not, I would like to be in a nursing home near to my daughter so she can easily visit if she wants to. Basically just being kept alive isn't enough, there has to be "a life" too.

Once I'm gone I'm gone. I don't believe there is anything afterwards. So if any of my bits can be used as spare parts then I'm fine about that. I'm a registered donor so my loved ones don't have to make that choice. Medical science is welcome to my body - good luck to them.

What's left can be disposed of in any way, so long as it's not done with a religious service. I'm more a Bhuddist / Humanist than anything else. Maryon declined the idea of a cardboard coffin she had decorated & I can understand why. Something simple & eco like willow will be fine if there is anything left to dispose of. I'd like to feel that I've done enough in my life to celebrate it. Mourning is more a private thing, & I definitely don't want sad faces, tears & black clothes like crows pecking at roadkill.

My property & money is covered by my will. I don't have any problem with paying the taxes due, so won't make any effort to avoid them. Wealth should be spread around & help the less fortunate, there are more than enough of them. So I don't believe in inherited wealth. Why should the children of wealthy people be given money they haven't earned? A lot of money changes lives, and not necessarily for the better. Everything I have, apart from a relatively small amount from our parents, was earned by David & me. We came from working class parents, so we appreciated the value of money. Maryon gets the IHT free sum which isn't a measure of how much I've loved her. I couldn't be more proud of her, she's the best thing I've done with my life.  Apart from a couple of bequests everything else goes to charities. The Government has just caught up with me because they have introduced a scheme whereby if you give 10% of your money to charity your IHT is reduced. I'm more generous than them

It isn't things or wealth that matters in this life. It's what you do with the life you have. I'm infinitesimal in the grand scheme of things, really unimportant. I just hope I have changed something for the better and I hope someone will miss me & think kindly of me occasionally. 

Bare Necessities of Life

My parents generation lived through a world war. I was born the year it ended. The experience shaped our attitudes & for years afterwards we lived our lives based on those hard learned lessons. "Waste not want not" "A stitch in time saves nine" You can dismiss it as a world of cliches or you can compare the values then, to those pertaining now & learn from the comparison.

It was a much simpler & less affluent world. It was a world of hard work & fewer choices. There was Hire Purchase, but people didn't tend to get into debt & live on credit. If you wanted something you saved up for it & maybe valued it more because of that. Instant gratification simply didn't exist. Women were tied to the home as housewives & mothers.

Children weren't spoiled materially because neither the money or the "stuff" was there. But they did amuse themselves & play with eachother. There certainly wern't paid clubs & groups apart from Girl Guides, Boy Scouts & Youth Clubs. I remember a lot of freedom & numerous games which we could play on our own or in groups in the street. I think we became independent early because the life of adults was too busy with work to amuse us all the time. So I walked about a mile to Primary school as a 5 year old, and crossed Birmingham by 2 buses as an 11 year old.

The change has been inexorable & exponential & not necessarily for the good. I imagine it was ever thus, that the older generation shake their heads in bemusement at the lives the younger generation live. My parents would be amazed at the affluence & comfort of my life. I'm certain they would think that I waste money on things they would never have considered buying or doing.

Now I look at the world around me, which I know so much about from books, TV & travel, & find myself despairing at the sheer unfairness & inequality of it. The Rich world steamrollers onwards, while the Poor world continues to live in poverty & dies young. And we have the cheek to complain about the austerity brought on by our own greed.

At the end of the day I am truly blessed to have been born here in the UK, with not only 3 good meals a day, but all sorts of treats on top of that. I have a warm and comfortable bed at night, every night. I have a health service to keep me as fit as possible. I have access to all sorts of possibilities for entertainment & can afford any I chose.

We have lost sight of how fortunate we are. I doubt that we are capable of returning to the bare necessities unless something catastrophic happens. Maybe it already has & maybe now we should be making more effort to share out the blessings more evenly. 

Conference

I was privileged to go the National Conference of the Independent Monitoring Boards last week. Boards of volunteers "do what it says on the tin" in Prisons & Immigration Detention Centres. The conference, aptly called "Shifting Sands & Changing Times" was stimulating, thought provoking & deeply worrying.

Crispin Blunt the Under Secretary for Justice outlined the Government's plan for prisoners doing paid work. The Government envisage a full working week, with the possibility of 24 hour shift work, as a viable alternative to current offshore outsourcing. The business partners in the privately run operation will be "paid by results" in reducing re-offending. One good idea is that prisoners would learn skills which would help them into work upon release. It is difficult to see how short term prisoners will benefit though. 

This will of necessity, radically change the way prisons are run, with the possibility of prisoners working to sustain the prison system. It wasn't clear whether they will be paid the minimum wage & how much of their wages they would keep. Money could go into the Victim Compensation Scheme for instance. It also wasn't clear how security would be maintained & what the Prison officers think of the scheme. One also wonders what the Unions think of the scheme at a time when unemployment is growing & highly experienced & skilled people are finding it impossible to get jobs.

Brian Pollett - Deputy Director of Contracted Prisons also spoke about the Governments plans for private prisons. There are 12 with 2 more being built, run by 3 different companies, who now have 16% of the prison population. Eventually it is envisaged that all prisons will be contracted. Again "payment by results" in reducing re-offending is the mantra. Other contracted services within prisons include Prison Escorts, Education, Healthcare, Substance Misuse, Buildings Maintenance & Community Penalties.

80% of prison costs are in staff. One wonders how many will be retained by the private prisons. It costs about half a million to set up each competition bid. Competition will, it is hoped, challenge old ways of working & bring in new ideas. I would like to know what the evidence is that privatisation works & where that evidence was obtained from. Or are the Government going to impliment these schemes on a "suck it and see" basis & hope that the evidence supports the changes? If they are wrong we will have "thrown the baby out with the bathwater" & the system will be very difficult to recover.

I can't help feeling that the evidence from contracting out parts of the NHS & Education isn't particularly encouraging. Aren't there just some things that should be run by the State & we taxpayers should "bite the bullet" & pay what it costs for a good service?  

                  

Brung up Proper!

WE WAS BRUNG UP PROPER !! (And we never had a whole Mars bar until 1993!!!)

CONGRATULATIONS TO ALL WHO WERE BORN IN THE 30's 40's, 50's, 60's and 70's

First, we survived being born to mothers who smoked and/or drank while they carried us and lived in houses made of asbestos.

They took aspirin, ate blue cheese, raw egg products, loads of bacon and processed meat, tuna from a can, and didn't get tested for diabetes or cervical cancer.

Then after that trauma, our baby cots were covered with bright coloured lead-based paints.

We had no childproof lids / locks on medicine bottles, doors or cabinets. When we rode our bikes, we had no helmets or shoes, not to mention, the risks we took hitch hiking. As children, we would ride in cars with no seat belts or air bags.

We drank water from the garden hose and NOT from a bottle.

Take away food was limited to fish and chips, no pizza shops, Mc Donalds , KFC, Subway or Nando's.

Even though all the shops closed at 6.00pm and didn't open on the weekends, somehow we didn't starve to death!

We shared one soft drink with four friends, from one bottle and NO ONE actually died from this. We could collect old drink bottles and cash them in at the corner store and buy Toffees, Gob stoppers, Bubble Gum and some bangers to blow up frogs with.

We ate cupcakes, white bread and real butter and drank soft drinks with sugar in it, but we weren't overweight because......

WE WERE ALWAYS OUTSIDE PLAYING!!

We would leave home in the morning and play all day, as long as we were back when the street lights came on. No one was able to reach us all day. And we were O.K.

We would spend hours building our go-carts out of old prams and then ride down the hill, only to find out we forgot the brakes. We built tree houses and dens and played in river beds with matchbox cars.

We did not have Playstations, Nintendo Wii , X-boxes, no video games at all, no 999 channels on SKY. No video/DVD films. No mobile phones, no personal computers, no Internet or Internet chat rooms............

WE HAD FRIENDS and we went outside and found them! We rode bikes or walked to a friend's house and knocked on the door or rang the bell, or just yelled for them!

We fell out of trees, got cut, broke bones and teeth and there were no Lawsuits from these accidents.

Only girls had pierced ears!

We ate worms and mud pies made from dirt, and the worms did not live in us forever.

You could only buy Easter Eggs and Hot Cross Buns at Easter time...

We were given air guns and catapults for our 10th birthdays,

Mum didn't have to go to work to help dad make ends meet!

RUGBY and CRICKET had try outs and not everyone made the team. Those who didn't had to learn to deal with disappointment. Imagine that!! Getting into the team was based on MERIT.

Our teachers used to hit us with canes and gym shoes and bully's always ruled the playground at school.

The idea of a parent bailing us out if we broke the law was unheard of.

They actually sided with the law!

Our parents didn't invent stupid names for their kids like 'Kiora' and 'Blade' and 'Ridge' and 'Vanilla'

We had freedom, failure, success and responsibility, and we learned HOW TO

DEAL WITH IT ALL !

And YOU are one of them!

CONGRATULATIONS!

You might want to share this with others who have had the luck to grow up as kids, before the lawyers and the government regulated our lives for our own good.

And while you are at it, forward it to your kids so they will know how brave their parents were.

PS -The big type is because your eyes are not too good at your age anymore.

Someone sent this to me & I thought it was very funny & very true. 

Drains & Radiators

People apparently fall into these two categories. What am I - what are you? I hope I'm the latter. It's such a simple image - bringing a little warmth into the lives of those we meet. I do make an effort to ask people about their lives & listen when they tell me. I also try to empathise & sympathise if they have problems.

That's where the "drains" come in though. There is a limit to how often I want to hear the same problems, especially if those concerned don't seem to have made any effort to sort them out for themselves. People often just want to "dump" on you & aren't interested in any solutions or advice. So I try not to give any now. The chances are that what would work for me won't for them anyway.

A one sided conversation does drain the listener & actually serves very little useful purpose. I have now realised that my life is too short to be depressed by someone else's problems - I actually have enough of my own to deal with. I also think I have a right not to be bored by perpetual moaners. (Fortunately few of my friends are - that's why they are my friends).

Having said all that, if it's a reciprocal conversation & a friend is interested in me too, that's a completely different thing. That's a supportive friendship, which we all need. The trick is to be able to laugh together at adversity & see the funny side of life - which is a bitch lets face it. Friends make you feel you can cope, you can carry on, you can rely on them to share your life & make it better in some way. So a "radiator" is a good description. People who are warm & caring are a joy to be with. I do hope I am.

A Good Read

I would be lost without a book to read, but I doubt I will live long enough to read all the books I own. Whatever time I go to bed I have to read for a while or I can't sleep. There are very few books I have given up on -"Catch 22" stands out - couldn't get the hang of it & couldn't be bothered to try, although it went against my Calvanist work ethic. I did manage "War & Peace" though.

I have just read 2 books which couldn't be more different, one for our book club which was a complete waste of my time - "The Secret Intensity of Everyday Life". This, by an large, had good reviews - how wrong can they be? Chapter 18 sent a frisson of shock through the middle aged ladies of the club. That apart, it had little to recommend it, it was disjointed, mundane & had little characterisation or description.

On the other hand "A Passage to Africa" by George Alagiah was extremely good. "No other continent on earth has been interfered with as much as Africa. First there was slavery, then there was colonialism, and after that came the disguised and insidious captivity of development"....."In 1980 the average Westerner was 15 times better off than the average African. 20 years later, the ratio had climbed to a staggering 50 to 1"...... Africa is divided by lines - "the rivers - the Congo, the Niger, the Zambeze, the Limpopo, the Nile, the Okavango & many others"...."the other lines, the political ones mark out the borders of 53 countries. Many are meaningless, artificial divisions that reflect the power politics of 19thC Europe, on each side of which live people of the same culture & language". Africa's indigenous kingdoms were completely ignored.

The West has a lot to answer for, & to be fair so do the Africans themselves. However I can't help feeling that it's about time we learnt the lessons of interfereing for political gain or in order to control natural resources & great wealth. It is becoming obvious that the policies of previous governments are coming back to haunt us in ways that no one forsaw. The trouble is that now it isn't simply political involvement, it's also the great multinational corporations which have more wealth & influence than single countries do. That wealth & influence has the potential to make previous political mistakes pale into insignificance.
                             

Guilty till proven Innocent

The news about Chris Huhne & John Terry today has made me think. Both these men, in very different spheres of public life, are charged with quite serious offences. Both have either been pushed or voluntarily resigned.

If you take away the fact that they are very public personalities & apply what has happened, I wonder what our reaction would be if it happened to us mere mortals. I was a headteacher & therefore know about vindictive & groundless accusations against the teaching profession & the lasting harm that does to the people concerned. I don't know whether that applies in either of these high profile cases, maybe time will tell.

The basic principle that matters is that I thought we lived in a society which believes in the "due process" of law. Guilt has to be proved "beyond reasonable doubt". Increasingly we seem to live in a society which prosecutes & sentences through the press & TV. The really worrying thing about that is the speed with which the media reach a judgement. Often without the full facts, sometimes with very few facts at all, occasionally on the basis of lies.

I would want, more than anything, to be treated fairly if I were accused. I would want to be able to put my case & have my evidence heard. I would not want to be hounded & vilified. In fact I think the stress of that would be simply devastating. I certainly would not want to be punished before I had been found guilty.

That, it seems to me, is what we increasingly do now. Some elements of the media & the public are like a pack of wolves hounding individuals. Do we have the right to remove a persons ability to earn a living, especially when you consider how long it takes for a case to come to court? Do we have the right to punish their families too? I imagine that these two individuals aren't short of a bob or two, but the principle should still apply.

As a Magistrate I often thought there was a lot of Law, but sometimes Justice was surprisingly lacking. If we lose our sense of fair play & equal access to justice can we continue to call ourselves a civilised society? I don't know whether these men are guilty, that's for the court to decide. But until the court does decide, they should be given the benefit of the doubt. That principle should apply to everyone.