The young old

What do you get when you merge two doom-mongering organisations? A banshee of patronizing wailing despair.

I have turned down the invitation to witness the sob-in in Cardiff. Age Concern Cymru and Help the Aged Cymru are pooling their weaknesses. Their brand new boss Robert Taylor has characteristically foreseen an apocalypse. His first statement is a whine that older people are ‘living in poverty’, ‘suffering discrimination' and 'dying of cold’. Right sentiment.  Wrong century Bobbie Bach.

Of course there are very serious problems. Joan Bakewell as the champion for the elderly is the intelligent advocate against elder abuse. But there is better news.

In the 21st century older people are healthier, richer and sexier than in any other century. We are more alert, articulate and self-reliant. More of us are taking exercise and working after retirement age than ever before. The old have never been so young. How about a bit of balance, Bobbie Bach?

While I am on the subject, how did Age Concern England manage to lose £14m? The last time I attended an event organized by this charity they were all cooing about a new wizard wheeze named Heyday. More than £22m of charity money was invested in this madcap scheme. Most of it has been lost as their income was less than a £1m. Three million members were expected to join. 40,000 did. The Charity Commissioners have been less than charitable in their choice of adjectives about this calamity. No one from Age Concern resigned.

Undeterred the new merged body has promised, "A new and exciting approach to how it engages with older people" to replace Heyday.

 For a start they could stop patronising us.

Bully boys

Anti-depressants have replaced religion as the opium of the people.

The people of the Gwent Valleys swallow more of them than anywhere else. Are we back to valium-zonked out days of the sixties. Depression can be a serious affliction. Its incidence has not trebled in recent years. But prescriptions have. They are mostly for mild depression and the inevitable vicissitudes of life.

The Benzo generation of the sixties is still fighting their claims for compensation. A recent Commons report said that there are one and a half million people addicted to them. Seroxat is a different family of anti-depressants that have caused their own havoc.

The Seroxat case had a plea from the drug maker Glaxo Smith Kline. They 'invited' the claimants’ solicitors to discontinue the cases. Moreover, if they do so by 30th April 2009 then Glaxo say they will bear their own legal costs. If Glaxo were successful at trial in defeating the claimants then they could seek their own legal costs.

Not content with this, Glaxo are now, it seems, using brute force by writing to the Legal Services Commission and have asked them to withdraw public funding!

At present, the Solicitors representing the claimants in this case are in the process of obtaining documents from GSK. Previously sealed files will have to be released.  These will show that GSK had knowledge that Seroxat created dependency and suicidal thoughts.

These are underhand tactics by GSK to silence their critics. The Seroxat users group is made up of tough people.

Bullying tactics will not move them.

Intensive rest

Today’s twist in the papers’ 'Bash the MPs’ season is on select committee attendance or absence.

I’ll fess up for a start. I attended 30 out of 38 meetings. For six of the others I was out of London at meetings of the COE and WEU.

One hilarious response is from the office of Tory Adam Afiyie. His staff were asked for a comment on his lamentable record of attending only 3 of 45 meetings. They explained, “Mr Afiyie has instructed us not to disturb him during the Easter recess’. Presumably he is intensively resting, charging up his batteries ready for another demanding round of committee meetings.

The Tory pin-up Nadine Dorries MP explained that she attended only one out of fifty meetings because the chairman of her committee is ‘not fit.’  The well-respected Lib-Dem Chair of the DIUS committee is Phil Willis who is regarded as very good chairman by the rest of parliament.

The greater sin on Select Committee is to turn up, ask the first questions then leave. Parliamentary work is different and MPs usually should be in three places at any one time. But the question of poor attendances is a fair one. It exposes some of the lazy MPs.

They deserve a bit of attention.

Kettling

The footage that I saw from two angles is proof that the policeman hit Mr Tomlinson with his baton and then violently lunged at him  knockinghim to the ground. There may be evidence of an exchange beforehand that we have not heard about. Otherwise the police are in an indefensible position. They lied about the circumstances in every respect.

They have been building up the myth that the country is about to riot. This was a very mild demonstration by people making serious points. There is no justification for kettling and imprisoning them in a confined space for hours. That must be stopped.

There is a police agenda here which is threatening and dangerous. These mistakes feed the paranoia of alarmists who forecast a Police State. It's light years from that.

Comments

[Kay Tie]

And here's me thinking that select committees are actually one of the few areas where a non-ministerial MP has power to do something. If they didn't want to diligently investigate and exercise some power, why did they even bother to become an MP?

[Paul Flynn]

KayTie. I often ask myself that question. The lazy ones are a minority. Most MPs are pathetic driven and obsessed work gluttons.

[greg]

Speaking of Rx - surprised you didn't pick up this revolutionary new treatment for your compatriots!

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/health/depressed-welsh-patients-prescribed-severn-bridge-200904081689/

[DG]

Thank you Paul - here's hoping that this is resolved quickly, with minimum distress to the Tomlinson family

[patrick]

I feel sorry for the police in the modern world. It's very hard to invent fantasies to convict people. They find it increasingly difficult to fabricate statements in the courtrooms.They can't even beat people up without it being filmed.
Even if they don't have street patrol to support the public at least they have drug raids and loads of time to play with speed cameras.

[Liz]

With regard to society's ever more patronising attitudes towards people who happen to be older, my husband has a wonderful take on life. It is that whilst growing old is inevitable, growing up is only ever optional. He also happens to be 65 and a Monkey.

[Liz]

Who are the alarmists who forecast a Police State? Does this not depend on who might be considered as 'alarmist'....it could be argued that since Jacqui Smith has been Home Secretary, things have been on a downward spiral. For such an important role, Ms Smith does not exactly inspire confidence and this seeps through in all sorts of ways; into the 'talking up' of the Police's views of a Summer of Discontent; to the means of comabating 'terrorism'. When gentle elderly men are evicted from a Conference (not by Ms Smith), one must question not only the means that allowed this to happen but the definition of terrorism itself. What was once considered to be chastisement of a child is now viewed as child abuse. As it is with 'terrorsim'. It does not mean that child abuse or terrorism does not exist but the continual need to over-inflate detracts from any genuine debate on either issue.

The Home Office has (or used to have) a slogan that (pre-dating Ms Smith) says 'Building a Safe, Tolerant and Just Society'. What the Home Office failed to explain is when did the UK ever cease to be those things? If it is their view that we are now an intolerant society, then intolerance is what they will see. Either we are innocent until proven guilty, or we are not. They/we cannot have it both ways.

[Kay Tie]

"it could be argued that since Jacqui Smith has been Home Secretary, things have been on a downward spiral."

Since? Since!?!! Have you forgotten David Blunkett? The Home Office has been on a downward spiral for quite a few years.

"Building a Safe, Tolerant and Just Society"

That motto is a sick joke now. The Home Office is a highly intolerant organization, desperately looking for the next thing to ban.

[Er...]

"When gentle elderly men are evicted from a Conference (not by Ms Smith), one must question not only the means that allowed this to happen but the definition of terrorism itself."

Good points, except the elderly man you mention wasn't evicted from Conference under Terrorism Laws. He was briefly questioned under them later, when he tried to re-enter the conference.

While that doesn't excuse the actions towards him, and John Reid, Ian McCartney, the then Chairman of the Labour Party and the then PM Tony Blair apologised to him the following day in recognition of this, the story is not the one you appear to think it is.

(Walter Wolfgang, the man in question, also later became a member of Labour's National Executive Committee, but that never gets mentioned as it doesn't fit the narrative people who refer to the Conference incident want to put about.)

[DG]

"They can't even beat people up without it being filmed."

Bring on the surveillance society! As long we *all* have cameras (not just the State) we'll be alright.

[Paul Flynn]

'Er' has answered 'Liz" point about Walter Wolfgang.

There are worrying trends. All are is response to the (exaggerated?) terrorist threats. but a 'Police State?' North Korea and Zimbabwe are Police Sates. Today one senior policeman has resigned and another has been suspended.That does not happen in police state.

Giving demonstrators a hard time to deter them from demonstrating again is not the role of a policeforce.

Kettling must be kettled.

[HuwOS]

I don't see how Er has answered the point about Walter Wolfgang.
He was ejected from conference for having the gall to call nonsense, nonsense.
This says nothing about police but an awful lot about new labour.
Having been ejected, on attempting to re-enter, the police held him using anti terror legislation in a way which it was certainly not intended, but was bound to happen. How long for, is irrelevant, it was a misuse of power and it concerns people greatly, and it is also irrelevant if he was apologised to unless there was to be some change in the behaviour of those who so badly misused their powers, nor does his current position within the labour party change anything about the events.

I think Paul, people generally believe there are two ways to a police state, one is of course coup or revolution, the other is the gradual erosion of personal freedoms with ever increasing powers for the police based on incredibly ambiguous and flexible legislation.
Which is what people are seeing here and wanting to see stopped and then reversed.
It is of course also worrying when judges offer statements like
"There is room, even in the case of fundamental rights as to whose application no restriction or limitation is permitted by the Convention, for a pragmatic approach which takes full account of all the circumstances." as part of their rulings.

Fundamentally Paul, we are sleep walking towards a police state, even granting that everyone involved has only the best of intentions. There is no conspiracy to overthrow all that is held dear, people just want to follow the quickest route to easy results and that is always a bad idea.

Police need to have the powers necessary to make their job possible, they should never have the powers to make it easy.
It is a difficult balancing act at the best of times and is completely out of whack today and only getting more so.

[Kay Tie]

Interesting how little support for the police there is right across the political spectrum. The senior police officers have been playing a political game and got too close to Government. When the Government they will find they are in the cold.

At one level I blame the Government, specifically the Home Office, for the terrible mismanagement. But I reserve most blame for the police - their utter lack of integrity when choosing to follow ridiculous distorting targets and abusing their broad new powers at the expense of justice and their support from the public. They completely forgot the Peel/Hendon principles of policing.

[Gareth Williams]

What really disgusted me most about the G20 protests is that you can see in every video, particular those in the climate change camp, that when the protesters were confronted by the police, they held their ARMS in the air, a universal gesture of non resistance, coupled with them shouting "This isn't a riot".

Yet the police were completely disproportionate in their response, if it's not allowing a dog to bite the arm of someone with their back to them, backhanding a woman across the face (he is now suspended) or the Tomlinson case.

I wonder if that's the type of treatment I would receive if I "broke" the law, if I protested outside parliament. Undoubtedly I'd be arrested under the terrorism act?

I'm hugely concerned, and before anyone makes any assumptions that I must be some old guy with an axe to grind, I'm 25.

[Kay Tie]

It's now 7 days after my last piece and now we know: Mr. Tomlinson died of internal bleeding caused by violent injuries. And yet the chief suspect has not even been arrested.

The police in this country are out of control and the public do not support them. As this article in El Reg today discusses:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/04/17/camera_shy_coppers/

The police are very shy of being photographed and are leaping on the misconception that a recent law somehow outlaws photographing coppers. It doesn't, but plod thinks it does.

I was struck by the following words:

"Unfortunately for the police officer in question, Mr Sleath is articulate, confident and well-versed in the ways of officialdom. This story hit the local press a day later – and the Daily Mail the day after that. Mr Sleath also spoke to officials within the Council, who were sympathetic, and lodged a complaint with the local police."

It is the New Labour state writ large: those who are under-educated an inarticulate will suffer abuse by the instruments of the state.

The concluding words are prescient:

"Whatever the precise reasons, our own sense is that a tipping point is being reached. Police excuses are wearing increasingly thin. If the issue is not addressed soon – as the systemic problem we suspect it is - then the Police will only have themselves to blame for a massive loss of public belief in their integrity."