Don’t dread old age. I’m 94, and I won’t spend my last years in fear of the Tories | Harry Leslie Smith

I have lived a very long time. Tomorrow, it will be exactly 94 years ago that a midwife with a love of harsh gin and rolled cigarettes delivered me into my mother’s tired, working-class arms. Neither the midwife nor my mother would have expected me to live to almost 100 because my ancestors had lived in poverty for as long as there was recorded history in Yorkshire.

Nowadays, when wealth is considered wisdom, too often old age is derided, disrespected or feared, perhaps because it is the last stage in our human journey before death. But in this era of Trump and Brexit, ignoring the assets of knowledge that are acquired over a long life could be as lethal as disregarding a dead canary in a coal mine.

I have been living on borrowed time since my birth in Barnsley all those years ago: I survived both the depression and the second world war. Even in advanced old age, because I walked free of those two events, I feel like a man who beat all the odds in a high-stakes casino. It’s why I’ve embraced each season of my life with both joy and wonderment because I know our time on Earth is a brief interlude between nonexistence.

Still, many people persist in thinking that old age is the end of one’s usefulness or purpose, which could explain why the news that women in South Korea can expect to live into their 90s has been badly received. Some fear the indignity that old age may bring, or the dependence it may cause because of physical or mental impairment. On occasion I too worry that before death sets in on me that it may rob me of the elements that make me who I am. But ultimately, having experienced the profound indignity of extreme poverty during the 1930s and the sheer terror of war in the 1940s, I know that life must be battled until the bitter end.

Eternity is just around the corner for me but I don’t fear my death. I only regret that death will end my dance to the music of time, no matter how slow the waltz has become to allow me keep up. I know that my physical wellbeing and dignity may yet be affected adversely by the government’s self-created social care crisis but I will not spend either my last years or days living in fear of the Tories. I cannot because I have seen their kind before in the 1930s and 1980s and know that the only way we can beat the tyranny of austerity is through our own personal defiance.

People should not look at their approaching golden years with dread or apprehension but as perhaps one of the most significant stages in their development as a human being, even during these turbulent times. For me, old age has been a renaissance despite the tragedies of losing my beloved wife and son. It’s why the greatest error anyone can make is to assume that, because an elderly person is in a wheelchair or speaks with quiet deliberation, they have nothing important to contribute to society. It is equally important to not say to yourself if you are in the bloom of youth: “I’d rather be dead than live like that.” As long as there is sentience and an ability to be loved and show love, there is purpose to existence.

I learned a long ago time ago that there was wisdom and beauty that could be mined from the memories of those in the sunset of life. It is why as a boy I listened in rapt attention to my granddad as he lay dying from cancer and told me about his life both as soldier and miner during the reign of Queen Victoria.

All of you, when young, will make your own history: you will struggle, you will betray some and others will betray you. You will love and lose love. You will feel profound joy and deep sorrow and during all of this you will grow as an individual. That’s why it is your duty when you get old to tell the young about your odyssey across the vast ocean of your life. It is why when death does come for me – even if it mauls me with decrepitude before it takes me – I will not lament either my old age or my faded youth. They were just different times of the day when I stood in the sun and felt the warmth of life.

Don’t dread old age. I’m 94, and I won’t spend my last years in fear of the Tories | Harry Leslie Smith

If medical professionals concern getting sued, taking away that dread may possibly assist patients | Richard P Grant

You’re sitting in the chair at the GP’s surgical treatment, or perhaps you are lying in a bed in the intensive care unit, and the physician looks into your eyes, or holds your hand, or perhaps even talks in excess of your head to your mum, and says,

“I’m sorry, there’s nothing more we can do.”

Is she talking to you? About you? About your only son? About your dad? Your wife?

Isn’t going to matter.

The phrases ring in your ears.

Absolutely nothing…

Except?

A glimmer, the faintest spark, of uncertainty, of hope.

“Is there absolutely nothing, nothing at all at all?” you (or your mum or your brother) inquire.

“Well,” the medical professional says, “There is this experimental treatment method that appears promising…”

“But?”

“But I will not want to be sued.”

How do you truly feel?

When there is no hope left and you truly feel like your heart has been torn out and crushed in a vice, how do you come to feel about this merest sliver of hope, this a single bright light in a globe of dark, that is currently being refused to you since the 1 person who at this second need to care about nothing at all else is concerned that their malpractice premiums haven’t been paid this month?

Possibly, actually, it truly is not all that negative.

Maybe it’s nothing terminal, not cancer, not that bad, just some niggling factor you have been struggling with for 15 years, mustn’t grumble, worse things come about at sea, nothing at all to complain about really, but by Christ you wish it’d go away and this moist-behind-the-ears mugglehead just out of med college is telling you there’s practically nothing that can be carried out simply because of an infestation of attorneys.

How very likely is this situation?

To be sincere, I have no thought. But a sufficient amount of individuals think it is a widespread ample scenario that there is a draft bill, sponsored by Lord Saatchi as a result of his wife’s death from ovarian cancer, proposing to “handle issues to innovation in bringing forward new health care treatment options”.

Health care treatment these days is driven by tips. You present with a problem and the attending physician employs their judgement and the suggestions to figure out what therapy to give you. The tips are (for the most part) evidence-based mostly they are informed and modified by the final results of trials and new scientific analysis. When proof is not offered they are shaped by expert viewpoint. Adherence to tips improves outcomes – and there is really a literature on strengthening adherence to recommendations.

But what happens when a patient is taken care of by a conscientious attending doctor, treated to the guidelines, and isn’t going to get better? Typically we are left with the dreaded phrase, “There is absolutely nothing far more we can do.” And when doctors do in desperation go off the beaten path – nicely, this is how an acquaintance of mine place it: “Most of my individuals are referred to me possessing repeatedly failed to reply to all acknowledged published guidelines. I get criticised for not sticking to guidelines.”

Would not it be better for individuals if doctors felt they could, in all obligation and with the duty of care of their patient centremost in their ideas, attempt experimental treatment options that look promising but have not however been confirmed in a phase III clinical trial?

The Health-related Innovation Bill aims to make this possible – or at least make it much more most likely by mitigating the threat of litigation. The bill is developed to safeguard against homoeopaths and other quacks by requiring medical doctors to comply with essential transparent and accountable procedures, to responsibly take into account new treatment options and tips, and by exposing the “medical professional who acts alone and in a reckless way”:

The patient’s health-related physician will be obliged to examine the patient’s case with specialists and experts, generally within their very own hospital or clinic, seeking consensus from them about the best course of action for the patient.

It may possibly be made the decision that the normal process is not going to be successful and that giving the patient an innovative treatment method that deviates away from regular procedures is a excellent issue to do.

The choice – and it will only be an choice – need to be explained meticulously to the patient. This includes explaining the hazards. In some instances this may possibly mean explaining that the risks are unknown – especially when the treatment on provide is new.

The [crew of professionals and experts] may not attain a unanimous view. If that happens, the medical professional have to allow the patient know.

The patient will always have the choice to go via with common procedures, or consent to the modern treatment method.

As it transpires, I’m acquainted with some of the named supporters of the bill, and if it carries any weight with you I can vouch for their non-quackness.

The bill has been by means of a public consultation phase and is now with the Department of Health. If you feel it is a very good notion, you could write to your MP, and you can also let the supporters of the bill know.

Richard P Grant is all for experimental science and is interested in far also a lot of things for his very own good. He is on Twitter at rpg7twit

If medical professionals concern getting sued, taking away that dread may possibly assist patients | Richard P Grant

Have no dread, your puppy will enjoy to fly

An airport in Los Angeles has opened a worry of flying program for jet-setting dogs.

The course consists of a trip in a flight simulator aircraft where the pets are exposed to all the sights, sounds, smells and motions connected with flying.

The ‘flight’ even involves turbulence.

Have no dread, your puppy will enjoy to fly

The superbugs we must all dread

WHO officials have warned of a crisis that is threatening to flip these typical infections, which are at the moment effortlessly handled with a quick program of drugs, into key killers once more.

Staphyococcus aureus (MRSA) – skin infections, wound infections, bloodstream infections, arthritis

Streptococcus pneumoniae – skin infections, sore throats, pneumonia, meningitis, bronchitis, conjunctivitis

Nontyphoidal Salmonella - diarrhoea

Shigella species - diarrhoea and dysentry

Neisseria gonorrhoeae – gonorrhoea

The superbugs we must all dread

Graeae"s Threepenny Opera: "it dissipates the dread of disability"

Irreverent and deadly serious … Graeae’s production of The Threepenny Opera. Photograph: Patrick Baldwin

An empty tv studio in Nottingham, presently the rehearsal room for the disability-led theatre company Graeae, consists of a variety of objects you could only find in a Graeae production. A row of saxophones sits up coming to a prosthetic limb. A length of rope replaces the normal floor-tape, for the benefit of cast members who are blind. In one particular corner, the props department is active transforming an electric wheelchair into a polystyrene horse.

1. The Threepenny Opera


2. Nottingham Playhouse


3. NG1 5AF

1. Until finally 8 March then touring



2. Box workplace:
   0115 941 9419


3. Venue web site

“The exceptional point about this space is that absolutely absolutely nothing right here is taboo,” says Graeae’s artistic director, Jenny Sealey. “We have been practising some of the prosthetic arm gags in the pub final evening. It gave some of the city types in there really a flip.”

This is Sealey all in excess of – humorous, irreverent, nevertheless deadly severe in her mission to carry mainstream acceptance to disabled performers. Sealey, who misplaced her hearing in a classroom accident at the age of 7, was awarded an MBE in 2009 and acquired national prominence as co-director of the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Paralympic Games. Her recent undertaking – a manufacturing of Bertold Brecht and Kurt Weill’s Threepenny Opera – is Graeae’s most ambitious to date: a shared initiative in between the New Wolsey theatre in Ipswich, Nottingham Playhouse, West Yorkshire Playhouse and Birmingham Rep.

Graeae previously has a shut romantic relationship with the New Wolsey, possessing collaborated on productions of Richard Cameron’s Flower Ladies and the Ian Dury musical Motives to be Cheerful. The theatre’s artistic chief, Peter Rowe, is co-directing the operate and explains how the collaboration came about. “We had been looking for a piece that would take exposure for disabled actors to yet another degree,” Rowe says. “The Threepenny Opera is a satire of the gross inequalities in society, and our inspiration came from the Occupy movement. Our beggars are a group of contemporary activists who consider more than the theatre and put on a edition of The Threepenny Opera that reflects their own diversity.”

In Brecht’s opera the beggar-master, Peachum, problems his workforce with artificial limbs in order to elicit extra sympathy. However Graeae’s version contains a more twist. “In this manufacturing, the character who complains that he has been offered a defective stump is played by a non-disabled actor,” Sealey says, “even though Peachum himself is in a wheelchair. And Mrs Peachum is played by a blind opera singer, even though she is the 1 character in the piece who sees every little thing.”

Just never phone it the alienation impact. “Men and women regularly inform me that I have a Brechtian directing style, but I never pretend to know what that signifies,” Sealey says. “I am no great Brecht professional – I just adhere to my instincts. But anytime you put a group of talented and empowered disabled actors on stage it demands that an audience feel twice about what they are seeing. Some people can’t cope and disconnect. But the all round impact is not alienating – really the opposite in reality. It dissipates the fear of disability and big difference.”

Even so, The Threepenny Opera was written to be provocative, and Graeae’s version is made up of components that are bound to prove controversial. The setting has been up to date from Victorian London to a stage in the near potential in which the homeless foment programs to disrupt the coronation of Charles III. Jeremy Sams has revised his lyrics, originally written for the 1994 Donmar Warehouse production, to incorporate references to sex-pest priests and paedophiles inside of the BBC.

“Jeremy has come up with very an ingenious new rhyme for ‘fix it’,” Rowe says.

“Which turns into even much more graphic when you see it in British Signal Language,” Sealey adds.

The participation of four significant regional theatres marks what Sealey perceives as “an attitudinal shift” towards disabled performers. The Nationwide Theatres of Scotland and Wales have employed disabled actors and imaginative teams and in January this year the Royal Shakespeare Business and Nationwide Theatre held the very first joint round of open auditions for disabled actors. But there’s a prolonged way to go ahead of the taking part in field becomes level. “It is still regarded as properly acceptable to see non-disabled actors ‘crippling up’,” Sealey says. “I know a performer who was not too long ago told by a drama school to come back when she was cured. As if anybody would dare to say ‘come back when you’re white’.”

Then, of program, there is the Paralympic impact. Sealey recalls the day of the opening ceremony as the proudest of her existence. “It was pure euphoria,” she says. “It was a massive statement: ‘We’re here, we did it, and we’re not going away.’ And yet, when it was more than, there was a horrible, horrible silence. We went back to currently being advantage scroungers and undesirables. I had to be assessed for how a lot of hours I could have an interpreter.”

Sealey is notably proud that many cast members of The Threepenny Opera took element in the Paralympic ceremony. “I had a as soon as-in-a-lifetime possibility to construct up a organization of world-class deaf and disabled artists in the greatest circus-coaching initiative ever. However there had been times above the previous year when I genuinely felt it could all go to waste. So thank God for The Threepenny Opera. It truly is restored my faith.”

Graeae"s Threepenny Opera: "it dissipates the dread of disability"

Dry January: I felt great final time but I still dread it

We now come on to the topic of lunch. When I am on my personal, drink is not an problem. I can cope with water, and have a glass of ginger beer if I am feeling adventurous. With buddies or company contacts, it is a different matter. In a restaurant, I am quite incapable of getting by without opening a bottle of wine.

There is a very odd point about giving up alcohol. If I take place to be in a spot exactly where there isn’t any drink, I do not miss it at all. I can travel for several weeks or even months and exist perfectly happily on water.

However, the minute I know there is alcohol to be had, it grow to be a necessity. This obviously displays weakness of character. I suspect a lot of of my buddies suffer from the identical dilemma.

On the one particular hand, we are probably not alcoholics. Then again, we’re absolutely not teetotalers either. We belong to an uncertain intermediate class. Alcohol is our drug, our way of dulling the pain of day-to-day existence.

On the whole, I feel it does much more very good than harm. It tends to make one somewhat far more generous in spirit and I think a lot more disposed to be variety to other people. Alcohol helps make daily life much a lot more entertaining when you are with friends. Even far more crucially it makes bores tolerable.

On balance, I think that consuming too much is most likely far better than drinking as well little. Franklin D Roosevelt, the best US president of the final century, who is explained to have been a heavy drinker, is a situation in point. At the other end of the spectrum, you have the catastrophic George W Bush, who would have been a significantly better president had he taken the occasional drink.

Contemplate the information. In 1823, when the American republic was at its most vigorous and manly, the consumption of pure alcohol per capita was 28 litres, the equivalent of 318 bottles per head.

In 2011, with America in galloping decline, that figure has sunk to a miserable to 9.four litres, the equivalent of a paltry 104 bottles of wine.

This is also accurate of Britain. In the 18th century, most British people were drunk for most of the time, largely on beer and gin. Nowadays, by contrast, we hardly drink at all. Nevertheless the 18th century was an age of prodigious cultural achievement and expansion. There is a direct, demonstrable correlation amongst consuming less and nationwide decadence.

Bear in mind that Charles Kennedy was by far the greatest Lib Dem leader they have had given that their formation. I was a political correspondent during Mr Kennedy’s leadership and never ever did I find out any proof at all that his drinking (which I suspect was exaggerated) did him the slightest harm. It was a device utilized by his political enemies (who were possibly spiteful teetotalers) with an eye for the primary chance to destroy his leadership.

But historians will judge Charles Kennedy a key figure in the Lib Dem revival of the last quarter century. William Rees-Mogg, former editor of The Times, wrote that “George Brown drunk is a greater man than Harold Wilson sober”. This comparison also applies to Charles Kennedy and Paddy Ashdown, or FDR and George W Bush. Donald Trump is an additional teetotaler, as is Robert Mugabe, and so as well was Hitler.

Present day lifestyle has been drastically diminished by the campaign towards alcohol, waged by physicians and valetudinarian lobby groups. Go back 50 many years. Men and women drank far a lot more and thrived. The thought of a lunch with no alcohol was unthinkable. The eminent literary critic Edmund Wilson used to purchase several dry martinis all in one particular go and it never seems to have impacted the high quality of his work.

James Bond is an additional crucial situation in stage. 007 was capable of drinking prodigious quantities all day prolonged although single-handedly conserving the planet and seducing numerous gorgeous girls. Not too long ago, a group of doctors have claimed that Bond would have been a rotten spy and useless in bed.

To my eye, this seems to be like propaganda, and heavily suspect. Heavy consuming is no obstacle to overall performance in both sphere. Bear in mind that Ian Fleming had himself worked in the naval intelligence, and – in contrast to the medical professionals – had direct, personalized information of what he was speaking about. I suspect it was one of these physicians who thought up Dry January. The best solution is to keep away from temptation as much as possible. Lunch can be skipped altogether it draws a single as well readily into speak to with bores.

The evenings are more problematic. David Munk, foreign editor of the Telegraph, has given me some important tips. He says that if you consume a meal as quickly as achievable following arriving residence, that need for a drink to mark finish of the functioning day gets much less acute.

Nonetheless, I know it is essential to stay as dry as I can throughout January. Drinking is a very very good pal but a really undesirable master. I have witnessed it destroy the lives of a quantity of individuals, and that is due to the fact they allow it handle them, rather than the other way around. But as soon as in a even though, it is crucial to show to myself that I can get by with no it.

* One of the approaches to remain committed to the Dry January challenge – to go for 31 days with no drinking – is to ask your pals and family members to sponsor you. Set up your sponsorship on-line at dryjanuary.org.uk and increase income for a excellent result in although you are not consuming. The funds you donate will aid Alcohol Concern make a real difference and assist increase awareness of the problem of alcohol misuse. For full details, go to the Alcohol Concern site

Dry January: I felt great final time but I still dread it