Without the power of kindness, our society will fall apart | George Monbiot

If there is an irrepressible human trait it’s the determination, against all odds, to reconnect. Though governments seek to atomise and rule, we will keep finding ways to come together. Our social brains forbid any other outcome. They urge us to reach out, even when the world seems hostile.

This is the conclusion I draw from touring England over the past few weeks, talking about loneliness and mental health. Everywhere I have been so far, I’ve come across the same, double-sided story: stark failures of government offset in part by the extraordinary force of human kindness.

First the bad news: reminders of the shocking state of our mental health services. I met people who had waited a year for treatment, only to be given the wrong therapy. I heard how the thresholds for treatment are repeatedly being raised, to ration services. I met one practitioner who had been told, as a result of the cuts, to recommend computerised cognitive behaviour therapy to her patients. In other words, instead of working with a therapist, people must sit at a screen, using a programme to try to address disorders likely to have been caused or exacerbated by social isolation. Why not just write these patients a prescription instructing them to bog off and die?At least then they wouldn’t have to wait a year to be told to consult their laptops. I heard of children profoundly damaged by abuse and neglect being sent to secure accommodation – imprisoned in other words – not for their own safety, or other people’s, but because there is nowhere else for them to go.

These are not isolated cases. It is a systemic problem. There has been no child and adolescent mental health survey in this country since 2004 (though one is now planned). Snapshot studies suggest something is going badly wrong: figures published last week, for example, suggest a near quadrupling in the past 10 years of girls admitted to hospital after cutting themselves. But there are no comprehensive figures. Imagine the outcry if the government had published no national figures on childhood cancer for 12 years, and was unable to tell you whether it was rising or falling.

Of children referred for treatment for mental health disorders, 60% do not receive it. The Guardian recently published a mother’s account of how her child had been treated. Despite a severe mental health disorder, it was only after the child attempted suicide that she received the care she needed. The treatment consisted of sending her to the other end of the country: the only available bed was 300 miles from home. You don’t need to be a psychotherapist to imagine what that might do to a distressed and vulnerable child. But when the beds don’t exist, the health service has no choice. Embarrassed into a semblance of action, the coalition government promised another £250m a year for children’s mental health. It will scarcely touch the sides.

But amid the rubble of a collapsing state, I kept stumbling into something wonderful. Performing with the musician Ewan McLennan, using music and the spoken word to explore these subjects, has brought me into contact with groups that restore my faith in the human spirit.

In Leeds we ate in a cafe run by the Real Junk Food Project, whose meals are made from waste or donated food. Seeing people of all ages, from all stations of life, who had never come together before, yakking away over dinner like old friends, I realised that the project is addressing not only the waste of food but also the waste of social opportunity. Breaking bread together: this is still the best and simplest way of reconnecting.

In Sheffield I met a man creating safe spaces for people experiencing manic or psychotic episodes: using woods, allotments and – if his project gets planning permission – cobb houses like hobbit holes to create a place of comfort for those whose minds are reeling. In Durham I saw how people whose poor mental health and isolation exclude them from work are being gently introduced to the social skills and creativity that might allow them to re-engage. In Bristol I met someone from the Happy City initiative, which is finding ways to measure wellbeing and discovering the best means of enhancing it.

Across the country, groups such as the Campaign to End Loneliness, Age UK, Independent Age, Community Network, Young Minds, the Transition Network, the Network of Wellbeing and the forthcoming Jo Cox Commisssion on Loneliness are trying to provide a coherent response to the troubled times that lead to troubled minds. Everywhere I look, I see the kind of enterprise and innovation with which business is credited, but which seems to be found most often in the voluntary sector.

But what has struck me with greatest force is this. At the end of every gig, we ask people in the audience to turn to someone they don’t know and say hello. I tell them they needn’t do any more than that, but they can keep talking if they wish. On the first night I made the mistake of mentioning the idea before we had wrapped up the show. That was all it took – the conversation flared up immediately, and it was a long time before I could direct people’s attention back to the stage. After every concert the talking has continued long into the night, in the venue’s bar or the nearest pub. It’s as if people have simply been waiting for permission to speak to the strangers who surround them.

Britain, according to government figures, is the loneliness capital of Europe, but even – or perhaps especially – here, the urge to connect is overwhelming. This reattachment, I believe, holds the key to both our psychological and political transformation. Connected, engaged and happy people do not allow themselves to be trampled into the dirt. It is when we are estranged both from each other and from our political environment that we are easiest to manipulate, as the rise of demagoguery in Europe and the US seems to attest.

Neither state provision nor community action is a substitute for the other: we need both. But the more effective community groups and voluntary initiatives become, the harder it is for governments to disregard their duties. By talking together, we find our voice.

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Without the power of kindness, our society will fall apart | George Monbiot

Our precious allotments are being destroyed – it’s time to get our hands dirty | Rose George

In 2014, there was a protest outside the Royal Courts of Justice. The protesters were colourful: with flowery dresses, a bee costume and balloons. They had clever signs such as: “Give Peas a Chance” and “Don’t Lose the Plot”. The protest was described as a “turf war” by newspaper headline writers, because they love a pun, and because it was about allotments. Last Friday, the protesters were back, this time with wheelbarrows, pumpkins and produce, because once again Watford council had applied to close Farm Terrace allotments, and once again some of the people of Watford refused and fought back.

On paper, Watford council’s rationale for closing Farm Terrace may sound reasonable, even though the plots have been there since 1896 and have statutory protection. The council wants to build a “health campus”, an Orwellian-sounding scheme that incorporates a new hospital, green spaces and that dreaded phrase beloved of planners, a “community hub”. Watford’s elected mayor, Dorothy Thornhill, interviewed the last time the turf war got to court, said that it would bring “up to 1,300 new jobs, much-needed homes, green open spaces which can be enjoyed by all and community facilities, including a community hub with shops”. She also said Farm Terrace plots were “a really hideous, derelict site”.

‘The Farm Terrace case matters because it is a fight about what is of value.’ The campaigners in 2014. Photograph: Cathy Gordon/PA Archive/PA Images

It’s difficult to object to a new hospital or 1,300 new jobs. But anything that uses the expression “green spaces” raises my hackles, because it means that the rest of the project is hard spaces and concrete. The council’s “master plan” is actually unclear: even the hospital doesn’t know what it will use the site for yet (Sara Jane Trebar, a Farm Terrace campaigner, thinks it will become 68 houses and a car park for Watford football club). But if it were to be built without allotments, as the mayor’s comments imply, it would be an own goal. Gardening, as a Social Care Institute for Excellence review of evidence showed in 2013, reaps “a range of benefits across emotional, social, vocational, physical and spiritual domains”. Allotments are as good for the people of Watford as that community hub with shops (which Watford presumably already has plenty of).

‘Five minutes at my allotment, kneeling to weed, putting my hands into soil, and my spirit lifts.’ Photograph: Sam Frost for the Guardian

I support the Farm Terrace fighters because I’d fight for my plot, even though I’m a haphazard gardener. Slugs have eaten more this year than I’ve managed to grow. But when I’ve struggled with depression, when even getting out of the house seemed like the hardest thing in the world, I still sometimes walked five minutes to my plot, past the neat and flourishing allotments that shame me; past the scruffy ones that comfort me, to my higgledy-piggledy plot with its rose bed, sturdy greenhouse and pathetic tomato plants, my glorious collard greens and magnificent roses.

Five minutes there, kneeling to weed, putting my hands into soil, and my spirits lift. There are other riches there too: the businessman who arrives stressed and leaves less so; the young families who leave with children clutching sweetcorn or potatoes, now knowing that not all fruit and vegetables come wrapped in plastic; the old boys who offer advice, wanted or unwanted. Growing your own isn’t always cheaper, but it’s always better. It is one of the best counter-balances that remains to our cult of lonely, commerce-driven individualism.

In law, allotments are apparently well protected, from the 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act that instructed councils to supply allotments to meet demand, to further strengthened legislation in 1925. Allotments on statutory land, such as Farm Terrace, can’t be disposed of without ministerial consent. But pressure groups such as Save All Allotments and Don’t Lose the Plot think the Localism Act of 2011 and recent 2014 guidelines that supposedly simplified the law only made it simpler for plot land to be turned into building sites. In a freedom of information request, Save All Allotments found that between 2007 and 2014, 194 of 198 applications to close allotments were granted by the secretary of state. The National Allotment Society is more sanguine, pointing out that of the 65 of 87 applications for disposal that were granted between 2010 and 2013, most were for small bits of land for access or flood alleviation, or land that had long been disused.

But Farm Terrace isn’t disused, nor derelict, nor hideous. The case matters because it is a fight about what is of value. Of course hospitals and houses are needed. The problem with Farm Terrace is that Watford council can’t see the worth of the plots, nor that a proper health scheme can be more than a community hub, shops and a bit of green space. The judicial review adjourned on Friday with no decision reached, but my grubby allotmenting fingers are crossed that peas will be given a chance. I hope that there is room, still, in our era of cat-calling, spite and profound uncertainty, for the simple, humble act that is putting your fingers into the earth, and reaping what you sow.

Our precious allotments are being destroyed – it’s time to get our hands dirty | Rose George

Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart | George Monbiot

What greater indictment of a system could there be than an epidemic of mental illness? Yet plagues of anxiety, stress, depression, social phobia, eating disorders, self-harm and loneliness now strike people down all over the world. The latest, catastrophic figures for children’s mental health in England reflect a global crisis.

There are plenty of secondary reasons for this distress, but it seems to me that the underlying cause is everywhere the same: human beings, the ultrasocial mammals, whose brains are wired to respond to other people, are being peeled apart. Economic and technological change play a major role, but so does ideology. Though our wellbeing is inextricably linked to the lives of others, everywhere we are told that we will prosper through competitive self-interest and extreme individualism.

In Britain, men who have spent their entire lives in quadrangles – at school, at college, at the bar, in parliament – instruct us to stand on our own two feet. The education system becomes more brutally competitive by the year. Employment is a fight to the near-death with a multitude of other desperate people chasing ever fewer jobs. The modern overseers of the poor ascribe individual blame to economic circumstance. Endless competitions on television feed impossible aspirations as real opportunities contract.

Consumerism fills the social void. But far from curing the disease of isolation, it intensifies social comparison to the point at which, having consumed all else, we start to prey upon ourselves. Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing, and to see that other people have more friends and followers than we do.

As Rhiannon Lucy Cosslett has brilliantly documented, girls and young women routinely alter the photos they post to make themselves look smoother and slimmer. Some phones, using their “beauty” settings, do it for you without asking; now you can become your own thinspiration. Welcome to the post-Hobbesian dystopia: a war of everyone against themselves.

Social media brings us together and drives us apart, allowing us precisely to quantify our social standing

Is it any wonder, in these lonely inner worlds, in which touching has been replaced by retouching, that young women are drowning in mental distress? A recent survey in England suggests that one in four women between 16 and 24 have harmed themselves, and one in eight now suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. Anxiety, depression, phobias or obsessive compulsive disorder affect 26% of women in this age group. This is what a public health crisis looks like.

If social rupture is not treated as seriously as broken limbs, it is because we cannot see it. But neuroscientists can. A series of fascinating papers suggest that social pain and physical pain are processed by the same neural circuits. This might explain why, in many languages, it is hard to describe the impact of breaking social bonds without the words we use to denote physical pain and injury. In both humans and other social mammals, social contact reduces physical pain. This is why we hug our children when they hurt themselves: affection is a powerful analgesic. Opioids relieve both physical agony and the distress of separation. Perhaps this explains the link between social isolation and drug addiction.

Experiments summarised in the journal Physiology & Behaviour last month suggest that, given a choice of physical pain or isolation, social mammals will choose the former. Capuchin monkeys starved of both food and contact for 22 hours will rejoin their companions before eating. Children who experience emotional neglect, according to some findings, suffer worse mental health consequences than children suffering both emotional neglect and physical abuse: hideous as it is, violence involves attention and contact. Self-harm is often used as an attempt to alleviate distress: another indication that physical pain is not as bad as emotional pain. As the prison system knows only too well, one of the most effective forms of torture is solitary confinement.

It is not hard to see what the evolutionary reasons for social pain might be. Survival among social mammals is greatly enhanced when they are strongly bonded with the rest of the pack. It is the isolated and marginalised animals that are most likely to be picked off by predators, or to starve. Just as physical pain protects us from physical injury, emotional pain protects us from social injury. It drives us to reconnect. But many people find this almost impossible.

It’s unsurprising that social isolation is strongly associated with depression, suicide, anxiety, insomnia, fear and the perception of threat. It’s more surprising to discover the range of physical illnesses it causes or exacerbates. Dementia, high blood pressure, heart disease, strokes, lowered resistance to viruses, even accidents are more common among chronically lonely people. Loneliness has a comparable impact on physical health to smoking 15 cigarettes a day: it appears to raise the risk of early death by 26%. This is partly because it enhances production of the stress hormone cortisol, which suppresses the immune system.

Studies in both animals and humans suggest a reason for comfort eating: isolation reduces impulse control, leading to obesity. As those at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder are the most likely to suffer from loneliness, might this provide one of the explanations for the strong link between low economic status and obesity?

Anyone can see that something far more important than most of the issues we fret about has gone wrong. So why are we engaging in this world-eating, self-consuming frenzy of environmental destruction and social dislocation, if all it produces is unbearable pain? Should this question not burn the lips of everyone in public life?

There are some wonderful charities doing what they can to fight this tide, some of which I am going to be working with as part of my loneliness project. But for every person they reach, several others are swept past.

This does not require a policy response. It requires something much bigger: the reappraisal of an entire worldview. Of all the fantasies human beings entertain, the idea that we can go it alone is the most absurd and perhaps the most dangerous. We stand together or we fall apart.

Neoliberalism is creating loneliness. That’s what’s wrenching society apart | George Monbiot

George Osborne to give elderly greater access to pension savings

George Osborne: sweeping liberalisation of principles on pensions and annuities. Photograph: Amer Ghazzal/Barcroft Media

Individuals will be permitted to get lump sums out of their pension pots effectively right after they have retired to pay out for the value of care in old age and other needs under a further sweeping liberalisation of business rules to be unveiled by chancellor George Osborne on Monday.

At existing pensioners have to decide at the time of retirement no matter whether to consider a tax-totally free lump sum of up to 25% of the value of a pension pot. If savers want to take out a lot more they face punitive amounts of tax.

But below modifications to tax rules getting planned in the Treasury, offers will be available in potential making it possible for income sums to be taken out later in daily life to meet sudden wants that could arise, for illustration substantial expenses for lengthy-term care.

Ministers are also anticipated to announce a reform of annuities so that they can proceed to shell out out properly after death, to stay away from all revenue out of the blue becoming misplaced to the family members of a deceased policyholder. At the moment income from annuities is guaranteed for a highest of only 10 years from the time they are taken out – if an individual dies 9 many years following retiring, his or her family members will receive absolutely nothing following a further yr.

Under the Treasury strategy, the ten-12 months cap will be dropped and the annuity provider will be in a position to spend out far longer, even though income charges would depend on the length of the promise. A even more alter will introduce deals that fluctuate the ranges of earnings paid out, possibly providing much more in the early years of retirement and less later on, or vice-versa.

The new tax principles and resulting wider choices follow a public consultation launched this 12 months, after Osborne had outlined ideas for a dramatic shake-up of the market to let a lot more versatility for shoppers.

The chancellor mentioned in his March budget that, from April 2015, savers will be ready to entry and use their pension pots in any way they want after the age of 55. They will be able to take a quarter of their pot tax-cost-free and will then shell out earnings tax at the highest fee they at present pay (the marginal fee) on any a lot more they wish to take out. Osborne shocked the pensions market by saying that no one would be obliged to purchase an annuity, and that people would, instead, be in a position to get all the income as income.

Treasury insiders explained the newest ideas developed on concepts introduced in the spending budget. A Treasury source said: “The reforms to the tax guidelines are about encouraging innovation and making sure buyers have the widest attainable option in how they secure their economic potential.

“The government would like [monetary]companies to tailor goods for folks, and our reforms will empower people to pick those goods that are right for them.”

With the expansion of the elderly population, and a developing amount needing costly care, ministers are established to enable pension funds to be utilised as and when men and women need them. Some experts concern the ideas will backfire and that these who income in all their cost savings at once will be left far more dependent on the state later in lifestyle. But ministers argue that the huge majority will get wise choices according to their own needs, and say that the industry has extended been in require of a shake-up.

The attraction of cashing in all or some of a pension pot is that individuals can then deal with their personal money which can be handed down to their loved ones following their death, rather than going to the pension provider. In his March spending budget, Osborne said: “People who saved their whole lives, saved for a pension, these are accountable individuals … it is their money. They can do what they want.”

George Osborne to give elderly greater access to pension savings

This is thrilling life-extension news for dictators and the ultra-rich | George Monbiot

‘It’s not not possible to see how a thousand-year life could lead to a thousand-12 months reich.’ Illustration by Daniel Pudles

Once it was a myth. Now it’s a dream. And soon it will be an expectation. Suddenly the science of existence extension is generating exceptional outcomes. New papers hint at the possibility of treatment options that could radically enhance human longevity.

So much is taking place that it truly is tough to know in which to start. But I will select just two of the gathering developments. The very first considerations a class of enzymes named sirtuins. This month’s Trends in Genetics states that the question of whether these enzymes could enhance longevity in mammals “has now been settled decidedly in the affirmative”.

Final month a new paper in the journal Aging Cell showed how synthetic small molecules (in other words, likely medication) can stimulate the manufacturing of sirtuins in mice, extending their existence span and bettering their health. The outcomes demonstrate, the paper says, that it is “achievable to design a tiny molecule that can slow aging and delay several age-relevant diseases in mammals, supporting the therapeutic prospective … in humans”.

The 2nd development I’ve plucked from the tumult of extraordinary new science concerns an external hormone (a pheromone) secreted by nematode worms, referred to as daumone. A new paper reviews that when daumone is fed to elderly mice, it reduced the risk of death by 48% across 5 months. “Daumone could be produced as an anti-aging compound.”

There are even now loads of missing measures, not least clinical trials and drug improvement, but there is a powerful sense that we stand at an extraordinary minute. Who would not want this – to cheat the gods and mock the reaper? The positive aspects are so apparent that 1 current report insists that political leaders who fail to give adequate funding for existence-extension science should be charged with manslaughter. It’s thrilling, dazzling, awe-inspiring. And rather alarming.

The most visible champion of lifestyle-extension science, Aubrey de Grey, contends that “a great deal of men and women alive nowadays are going to live to one,000 or far more”. He lists 4 frequent considerations, that he rejects as “unbelievable excuses … for aging”, “ridiculous” and “entirely crazy, when you truly bear in mind your sense of proportion.” On the 1st count – “wouldn’t it be crushingly boring?” – he’s proper. Existence, if you have a degree of financial selection, is as thrilling as we pick to make it. If it gets to be also dull, nicely, you can just quit taking your medicine.

The other worries are not so easily dismissed. “How would we pay the pensions?” is the second question he ridicules. I would rephrase it: “How would the really old assistance themselves without having crushing the young?” Even these days there are major distributional troubles in nations like Britain. Wealthy elderly individuals, enjoying the compound curiosity from investments accumulated across decades, preside more than a rentier economic system that is devastating to the young and poor, as residence prices and rents turn into unaffordable. The inequality and the prospective for exploitation that would emerge if folks lived twice, not to mention ten occasions, as long can only be boggled at.

This takes us to one more concern he dismisses: “Dictators would rule for ever.” Is this proposition (if not taken virtually) ridiculous? They hang on prolonged sufficient previously, with the help of the very best healthcare their stolen billions can purchase. Match the political power longevity offers with the economic electrical power, and it really is not unattainable to see how a thousand-year existence could lead to a thousand-12 months reich.

De Grey’s mockery turns into most offensive at his fourth rhetorical query: “What about starving Africans?” Yes, what about them? What if, beyond a certain stage, longevity gets to be a zero-sum game? What if each year of daily life extension for people who can afford the treatment gets to be a year or far more of existence reduction for these who can not?

Previously, on this planet of finite sources, wealthy and poor are locked into unacknowledged conflict, as hyperconsumption lowers the planet’s capability to sustain existence. Grain is used to create meat rather than feed people directly the secure operating room for humanity is narrowed by greenhouse gases, industrial pollutants, freshwater depletion and soil erosion. It is hard, after a whilst, to see how this could create any outcome other than a direct competition for the signifies of existence, which some should win and other individuals should shed. Perhaps the wealthy should die so that the poor can dwell.

It truly is true that the value of feasible longevity remedies, which will be astronomical at first, would soon start to plummet. But this is a world in which several cannot afford even antiseptic ointment a planet in which, even in the wealthy nations, universal accessibility to healthcare is becoming gradually throttled by a selfish elite in which a new era of personalised medication coincides, by unhappy accident, with a new era of crushing inequality. The thought that every person would soon have accessibility to these therapies seems to be unfeasible. It is achievable, as an post in Aeon magazine speculates, that two courses of men and women – the treated and the untreated – could pull inexorably apart, the very first residing ever longer, the second dying even younger than they do nowadays.

I don’t know the solutions to these questions, and I’m far from being capable to propose solutions. It really is all unknown from now on. But I do know that it is foolish to dismiss them.

Lifestyle-extension science could invoke a sunlit, miraculous planet of freedom from dread and long-term thinking. Or a gerontocratic tyranny. If it really is the latter, I hope I never reside long adequate to see it.

Twitter: @georgemonbiot. A entirely referenced version of this article can be discovered at Monbiot.com

This is thrilling life-extension news for dictators and the ultra-rich | George Monbiot

BBC presenter George Alagiah diagnosed with bowel cancer

“Until this kind of time as George is well sufficient to return to function the BBC News at Six and GMT on BBC Globe News will be presented as typical by familiar faces from BBC News.”

Alagiah has been married to his wife, Frances, for 30 years and they have two grown-up sons.

The Sri-Lankan born presenter has spoken previously about his admiration for health-related care in Britain, saying: “The NHS is the civilising and defining institution of British life.

“I enjoy it as a former foreign correspondent, possessing come from the bad globe to the wealthy planet, and obtaining spent most of my working lifestyle in nations the place individuals want they had some thing like the NHS.”

Bowel cancer is the third most common sort of cancer. If diagnosed in its earliest phases, the opportunity of surviving a additional five years is 90 per cent and a total remedy is usually attainable, according to NHS statistics.

BBC presenter George Alagiah diagnosed with bowel cancer

Is £90m sufficient to support Alzheimer"s sufferers? In your dreams | Rose George

‘We have found far better and kinder approaches of dealing with dementia sufferers than sectioning them under the Psychological Overall health Act.’ Photograph: Alamy

Often I have a dream. It is eight many years ago and there is my mom, Sheila, and my stepfather, John, sitting in front of a neurologist. They have been referred by their GP as my mom is anxious that my father can’t place a cup on a saucer any much more.

In my dream, the neurologist, alternatively of saying what he really stated – “Excellent information, it is not a brain tumour, it really is Alzheimer’s” – says “I’m so sorry. You have Alzheimer’s, but will not fret. I will quickly assign you a specialist nurse, anything equivalent to what Macmillan nurses do for those with cancer.”

This nurse will be obtainable to you each at all hrs. He or she will guidebook you by way of the incredibly complex social care method, even though it appears created to make you as puzzled as possible, no matter how educated or confident you are. He or she will aid you fill in forms that are a dozen pages prolonged, which you are supposed to complete while struggling with the terror and fear of your diagnosis, and questioning what type of hell your lifestyle will become, but even your worst imaginings cannot see this beloved husband right here snarling at you with hate, or pooing in the shower, when he was an immaculate guy. This professional helper will advise you on drugs, and as the study into dementia is finally funded at the right ranges to deal with an illness that influences one.seven million people, we no longer want to experiment with drug combinations almost blindly, so that your husband will be rushed to A&ampE with angina from a single blend, or he will fall and slice his head open because another mixture has stolen his stability. The new medicines will calm his rages and terror with out dulling his brain additional.

Whereas the preceding policy was to get in touch with dementia “mental sickness”, which meant it was not classed as a primary care require and so residential care wasn’t funded by the state: we’ve now noticed that this is nonsense, and we get in touch with dementia what it is: brain injury. And we fund it accordingly. Of program it started when Jeremy Hunt announced he would give £90m to early diagnosis and better care. He was not genuinely talking about the individuals who care for dementia sufferers, which is their wives, husbands, children, cousins, in-laws, buddies, most struggling in isolation. But it was a commence. And of program we have discovered far better and kinder techniques of dealing with aggressive dementia sufferers than sectioning them beneath the Psychological Wellness Act and locking them up for years in assessment centres, in which employees can be inadequate in variety and potential, and exactly where most sufferers deteriorate swiftly in 6 months or so, ending up with sepsis, then in hospital on the Liverpool Care Pathway and their family will watch, befuddled by stress and grief, as their relative dies without ever becoming officially terminally sick.

The neurologist continues: “Since we recognise it as a primary care need, your husband will be confined but in a risk-free and calm environment with satisfactory staffing and professional health care care, with appropriate stimulation rather than a Television and a corridor to wander all around. He will die of Alzheimer’s – we haven’t yet located a cure – but his death will be dignified.”

I wake up then. In the light of day, I do my calculations. I welcome the £90m, however I don’t much see the benefit of early diagnosis when the care program that follows the diagnosis is so shambolic and inadequate and frequently a disgrace, although Alzheimer’s associations disagree. They believe early diagnosis is “empowering”. I wonder how that £90m can compensate from the £2.7bn slashed from council care budgets. I wonder why Wakefield CCG, in whose “care” my stepdad died with out dignity, still refuses to countenance Admiral Nurses, individuals Macmillan nurse equivalents who do exist in real lifestyle, when up coming-door Kirklees council has eight and keeps receiving a lot more. I wonder if I am getting churlish to be cynical when dementia is finally in the headlines. Then I re-study the dozens of emails I acquired when I wrote about how my stepfather died, all from folks suffering and coping in isolation as we did, in excellent distress, and I know that can not be fixed by £90m or only in dreams.

Is £90m sufficient to support Alzheimer"s sufferers? In your dreams | Rose George

Campaigners urge George Osborne to stand firm on alcohol tax rises

Bottles of wine in a supermarket. Photograph: Sean Spencer/Alamy

Medical professionals and alcohol campaigners have written to the chancellor, George Osborne, urging him not to give in to industry stress to scrap yearly tax increases on alcohol in the up coming price range.

Sir Ian Gilmore, chair of the Alcohol Health Alliance and the Royal University of Physicians’ particular adviser on alcohol, stated he was concerned that Osborne had frozen the duty escalator on beer – “showing indicators that he is weakening on this resolve” – – and that the industry was campaigning to scrap it altogether.

“The government’s record has not been good on alcohol,” he mentioned. “The minimal unit pricing U-turn was a choice instance of failing to comply with in which the evidence lies. We know that value is the most important determinant of how significantly society drinks. In the absence of setting a sensible floor price, duty is the traditional way of doing it.”

The alliance lobbied for minimum unit pricing since it would boost the price of the strongest drinks above weaker drinks. “The way that cider is preferentially taken care of indicates that you can nevertheless buy a litre of white cider with 7.5% tax for next to nothing – virtually pocket money charges,” he mentioned.

David Cameron 1st backed minimum unit pricing and then transformed his thoughts. The alliance fears the government may cave in to business stress in excess of the duty escalator too.

The letter is signed by 24 members of the alliance, urging the chancellor to stand firm in the encounter of a campaign from the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, the Scotch Whisky Association and the TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Katherine Brown, director of the Institute of Alcohol Scientific studies, mentioned it would be madness for the government to give in to stress. “Scrapping the duty escalator would be going towards nevertheless another government dedication to tackle the low-cost alcohol that is creating mayhem on our streets and bringing our well being support to its knees.

“Moreover, creating alcohol more cost-effective poses a genuine danger to vulnerable groups such as young women. With nearly a third of female drinkers aged sixteen-24 consuming the equivalent of nine shots of vodka in a session each week, we want to be doing almost everything in our powers to curb excessive alcohol consumption, not encouraging it by decreasing the cost.”

The alliance says alcohol harm in the United kingdom expenses much more than £21bn every single yr, which is far more than double the total income collected from alcohol duties (£10bn). Alcohol bought in supermarkets and off-licences is 61% a lot more cost-effective than it was in 1980, it says.

Miles Beale, chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, explained: “Most responsible customers would be outraged to find out that because the alcohol duty escalator was launched in 2008, tax on wine has improved by 50% and on spirits by 44%. Independent investigation from Ernst and Youthful has located that if the chancellor scraps the escalator in his approaching price range, this would improve public finances by £230m in 2014 alone and generate much more than 6,000 jobs.”

Campaigners urge George Osborne to stand firm on alcohol tax rises

George Wilson obituary

When George Wilson joined the Colonial Office soon after the second globe war his northern accent contributed to colleagues viewing him as a ‘rough diamond’

My father, George Wilson, who has died aged 92, had humble beginnings in a small village in north Cumbria but went on to play critical roles in the planning of British colonies for independence and in the advancement of the NHS and the social protection technique.

He was born in Wetheral, Cumbria, moving soon right after to Blaydon close to Newcastle. He excelled at school and in 1939 won a state scholarship to Durham University. His father was a railwayman and to help alleviate poverty at property George turned down this opportunity, preferring to earn an earnings with the civil support.

During the second planet war he served with the Signals, doing work on the tall masts more than the Manchester ship canal soon after the Liverpool blitz, and setting up communications for the decoy “towns” of the Peak District meant to divert bombers from Sheffield. Right after support in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), he moved to the Colonial Workplace (CO). Having a broad northern accent he was a bit of an oddity there, his senior colleagues taking into consideration him a “rough diamond”.

In 1951 he was CO adviser at the UN general assembly, and then financial secretary in Mauritius, reorganising its infrastructure just before independence. Appointed OBE on return to the Uk, he went to Singapore, Sarawak, North Borneo and each and every of the Caribbean colonies to advise on arrangements major to independence.

During the 1960s George moved to the Ministry of Health to consider charge of the hospital developing programme for England and Wales. Headhunted by the architect John Poulson in 1969, he grew to become his basic manager, operating alongside political associates of the business this kind of as Reginald Maudling. Concerned by the company’s organization techniques, he returned to what had then grow to be the Department of Health and Social Protection in 1971, a year ahead of the scandal of Poulson’s corrupt practices broke.

As undersecretary from 1972 to 1981, he oversaw the 1974 reorganisation of the NHS, then became controller at DHSS Central Workplace at Longbenton in Newcastle in 1980, meanwhile implementing the child benefit allowance scheme, and upgrading the most comprehensive and complicated laptop installation in Europe. On retirement, he set up an international hospital development enterprise with Paul James. His function finished in 1992 at the age of 71, after the reduction of an eye that had brought on him lifelong impaired vision.

In the 1980s and 90s he struggled to sustain Clarghyll Hall, north of Alston, in Cumbria, a rambling historic creating primarily based close to a bastle (a fortified farmhouse), which quickly caused fantastic monetary fret.

His wife Freda (nee Huddleston) died in 2010 and he is survived by me and my brothers, Richard and Edward, and by his grandsons, Daniel and Kit.

George Wilson obituary

Cold reality: humans aren"t as resilient as Exmoor ponies | George Monbiot

‘I believed of Exmoor ponies and the way they stand with their backs to the rain until it passes. If they could do it, so could I.’ Photograph: Alamy

It was a gorgeous morning, a Saturday in October, and I was obtaining tea with my subsequent-door neighbour. We started speaking – for this was almost 20 many years ago – about the street the government meant to create all around the town of Newbury, some thirty miles away. When the machinery moved in we planned to join the protests. Men and women had been presently starting up to create platforms in the trees. “Let us go down and consider a search.”

A train was due to depart in half an hour. We threw sleeping bags and warm outfits into our pannier bags, jumped on our bikes and sprinted to the station. We arrived just as the train was leaving. “Why do not we just cycle there?”

We had missed our breakfast and had no foods or water, but there have been bound to be stores or pubs along the way. We would maintain off the roads as considerably as attainable, following bridleways and footpaths.

At initial we sailed along, feeling buoyant and free of charge. It was one of those autumn days in which the sky appeared cleaner and brighter than at any time for the duration of the summer season. Then the paths started cutting across fields which had recently been ploughed, and our urban bikes grew to become snarled up with mud. A pregnant grey cloud blotted out the sun and hail started pelting down. This was the stage at which my pal discovered that his raincoat, which had been clipped to the prime of his bike rack, had fallen off. He went back to search for it. I made the decision to wait in the discipline.

The hail soon turned to rain. I was even now steamed up, so it felt refreshing as it soaked into my T-shirt. Soon after a while I began to come to feel a tiny cold. But – and this is the nail of idiocy on which the story hangs – I imagined of Exmoor ponies and the way they stand with their backs to the rain until it passes. If they could do it, so could I.

By the time my friend returned I was shivering. But I was reluctant to alter my outfits, as I knew we would quickly get sizzling again crossing the fields. The rain had ceased, but now our bikes slithered across the moist path. By the time we hit firmer ground I was extremely hungry. I was stunned to discover that I was nevertheless shivering.

We rode more than the downs to a village in which, we have been sure, there would be a shop. There wasn’t. The pub was shut. No matter, we would eat in Newbury. By the time we reached a prolonged slope major up to the Ridgeway – the neolithic path that traverses southern England – I had ceased to really feel both cold or hungry. Thoughts over matter, I informed myself I had triumphed more than discomfort.

But there was something incorrect with my bicycle. The wheels would not go round. I turned the bike in excess of and identified to my surprise that they spun freely. I started out pushing it up the hill, but once more it seemed to be snagged. My friend gallantly provided to swap. But there was anything incorrect with his bicycle as well. It felt absurdly hefty, and the wheels also seemed to be jammed.

We remounted when we reached the Ridgeway. Even on the level track I could scarcely force the pedals round. We reached the metalled street, and I sat like a pudding as we freewheeled down a shallow slope. Then I gradually toppled off the bike. I stumbled backwards into the hedge beside the road, where I lay spreadeagled.

“Are you all right?” “I’ve in no way felt far better. But I cannot truly move,” I stated. I felt as if I were lying in a warm bath. I could move my mouth and eyes but little else. I had never experienced this kind of deep peace.

“Um, I believe we need to get some help,” my good friend ventured. “No actually, I am fine.” My friend, who is not renowned for his assertiveness, stood by the street, half raising a hand to the passing site visitors: “Um, excuse me … Would you mind …” I watched with amusement as the cars whizzed previous. Then a big black point stopped and a blond giant stepped out. He was dressed in black, he had a crewcut and muscle tissue everywhere. He brushed past my pal and seized me by the shoulders.

“What is your name?” “George.” “What is your name?” “I just informed you – George.” “What is your title?!” Who was this rude guy, I wondered, and why could not he just depart me alone? He turned to my pal. “What have you got in your bags?” “Um, sleeping bags, coats.” “You happen to be carrying sleeping bags and he’s – fuck, I have witnessed it all now.”

He pulled out a sleeping bag, lifted me up as if I had been a cat and dropped me into it. “What’s your name?” “I just advised you.” “Shut up! What’s your identify?” He walked into the street, his great hands raised to the visitors. The first auto stopped. “Chocolate, sweets, what ever you’ve acquired.” Terrified, the girl in the car scrabbled in her bag, then handed him a bar of chocolate.

He returned to me. “This is very variety of you, but I am really all proper actually.” “Shut up! What is your title?” He started feeding me the chocolate. It was plainly safer to obey than to resist this madman, so I ate it. He named the ambulance. “Truly, there is no need to have …” He stopped far more autos, forcing them to disgorge a pile of sweets and chocolates. “I never have a lot of a sweet tooth to be honest…” “Shut up! What is your identify?”

The ambulance arrived. They wrapped me in a room blanket and took my temperature. They appeared to be creating a terrible fuss about practically nothing. The black vehicle drove away. They place the sirens on and stored making use of the thermometer: my temperature had fallen, I was later on told, to half a degree above the level at which they would have misplaced me.

In hospital the nurse told me I would need to have “the total treatment method”. “No. What?” “Sizzling chocolate and toast and honey.” Half an hour following I had arrived, I sat up and swung my legs off the bed: out of the blue fit and well and buzzing with sugar. It took me a number of hours to realise that the blond giant (we guessed he was an army paramedic) had saved my lifestyle.

Cold reality: humans aren"t as resilient as Exmoor ponies | George Monbiot