29 December 2011

The welfare wolves close in

As has been pointed out, pensioners are fair game for anything because they constitute a population with an above-average IQ. At the start of their lives, they are exposed to compulsory education, but at the end of it they are free, with whatever assets they have managed to retain after living for so many decades in the oppressive society. This cannot be allowed.

Britain’s army of unpaid carers are to get new rights to protect their health and wellbeing under plans being considered by the Government.

More than six million people care for loved ones, friends and neighbours but many fail to get the recognition and support they need, say campaigners.

For the first time, plans to reform the social care system, due to be published next spring, will make carers’ needs a priority (Daily Mail, 28 December 2011)

But we know what ‘rights’ and ‘needs’ mean. If you are given a ‘right’, society is given the ‘right’ to force you to have what you have a ‘right’ to.

In the spring, Sainsbury’s will pilot a scheme in 14 of its London stores to identify hidden carers who may need support.

I have already commented on the disgusting idea of having supermarket staff trained to ask ‘unobtrusive’ questions without revealing their motive for doing so. Any supermarket that involves itself in persecution of this kind should be boycotted. I hope Sainsbury’s sales will drop significantly on this piece of news.

The Care Services Minister, Paul Burstow, says disarmingly:

Without the support of relatives and friends, many people who aren’t able to look after themselves would not be able to stay at home.

(Unspoken implication: we will be able to close in on them so much better if it is made illegal for them to get unpaid ‘help’.)

The Care Services Minister continued:

Carers should have their needs looked after as much as the person they are caring for. A carer’s health often suffers because they don’t have time to look after themselves. Some often don’t have time to eat properly. So it’s vital we support them to look after their health and wellbeing.

As ever, any amount of coercion and interference is justifiable because it is assumed that the motives of all agents of the collective are benevolent.

The NHS will have to cooperate with carers, and those being cared for, to ensure their needs are assessed in a bid to make their lives easier.

One proposal is for the rights of carers to be put on a firmer footing so that in social care law they have similar rights to the people they care for.

This could entail pledges to facilitate the wishes of carers who want to stay in employment, while young carers could be given help to stay in education.

Carers must, of course, be given help to enable them to stop caring at all, and to subject themselves to socially approved ways of spending their time, especially of course educational incarceration.

Who wants the NHS taking an interest in their health and well-being? I certainly do not. Why should the NHS be regarded as benevolent? Its motivation is a composite of those who run and work in it. I certainly do not regard the motivation towards me of the man in the street or of the average politician as benevolent; and that of qualified medical sadists is even more likely to be malevolent, since they are willing to work for financial reward in an oppressive and immoral capacity.

What would relieve the stress on carers much more effectively than interference, medical or otherwise, would be to restore pensions to something more like what the pensioners who paid into them for forty years or more might have expected.

Suppose the basic (non-means-tested) state pension were raised from about £5K per annum to about £15K per annum – then every pensioner would have an extra £10K per annum to spend on paid help, delivered meals, etc, which would certainly relieve the burden on many carers, at present unpaid.

If carers are given a right to have their needs assessed, will they also have a right to refuse assessment of their needs?