No doubt after all that, in the next few weeks we'll have the first of the tabloid stories of some poor old soul found frozen to death in their sitting room by a postie who eventually noticed the pile of unopened mail and a slightly whiffy smell emanating from the letterbox. Shocked neighbours will be interviewed and claim that the poor old soul was a quiet body, maybe had relatives in Australia or such like.
Concerned nodding heads will talk about fuel poverty and how living in front of a one bar gas fire and surviving on a tin of cat food isn't conducive to a healthy lifestyle. Politicians in a rush to be more sympathetic than their rivals will nod solemnly and deliver sound-bites laden with just the right amount of gravitas that indicates empathy but no real solution. Next winter we'll go through it all over again. Nothing will change.
Deep within the bowels of the 'Resilience Room' aka chill out zone, where were the joss sticks, scatter cushions and ambient trip-hop beats?
Cabinet Secretaries will wail at the moon, gnash their teeth and beat their bare chests, well maybe not Ms Sturgeon. "What can be done to save elderly Scots in poor health from starving, freezing and just generally stop from being neglected after a lifetime of work and paying taxes for their meagre pension?" They might be heard bleating. Whilst in an effort to look cool and rational, as if they're not in an Emergency Crisis Command Bunker, some more enlightened souls will perhaps undo the top button of their stiff collared shirts or blouse, in the case of Ms Sturgeon, the only blouse wearer in the cabinet now...
Let's face it, surviving the Scottish winter for a lot of our elderly folk is pretty much shit. There are precious few things to crow about. It's an expensive and dangerous time of the year. If you're unfortunate to be old and on a state pension you can look forward to a hike in fuel and utility bill costs, crap television with the schedule full of things you watched first time around thirty years ago, begrudged visits from the children, the cost of Christmas presents for disinterested grand weans, a wee trip to the shops on un-gritted pavements is likely to lead to a wee trip to the hospital, which at this time of the year is like a lottery as to whether you come out or not. The winter virus, aka shitting through the eye of a needle whilst throwing up, as my nurse friends refer to it, will mean wards getting closed, Cdiff outbreaks, superbugs...nope a visit to our overfunded, beleaguered, mismanaged, consultant top heavy wonderful NHS 'trust' is not the healthy option.
So what can we do about it? Well here's a radical suggestion that has many ups, a few downs and a heck of a lot of opportunities for some sideways action.
Some policy wonk needs to sit down with a big calculator and work out how much it costs little old Scotland every winter to maintain our elderly population to the poor standard they have become accustomed to. This calculation should include costs to the NHS, local authorities, elderly care packages etcetera, they might also like to factor in the costs to the elderly person with regard to their heating and food bills. Then when they've come up with a nice tidy overall for the cost to the public purse and a lovely rounded up price per head, they need to shop around to find somewhere that we can relocate some of our needier fellow citizens in a pleasant climate with some sunshine, blue skies and pleasant locals.
My first thought is North Africa, by jingo, we've got friends in Libya! Average temperature November 24c, December 19c, January 17c, February 19c , March 22c. Both Algeria and Morocco suffer from similar clement weather during our winter months. However, as that suggestion might bring with it accusations of giving succour to terrorists, outbreaks of Islam-o-phobia and general racism against folk whose ancestors had the foresight to adapt to a stronger sun...
We might look slightly closer to home, albeit probably doubling our costs, by entering the EUROZONE...
Throughout southern Spain and the Canary Islands, there is a major crisis with the collapse of the property market. Tourist communities sit on the costas like ghost towns, resorts thrown up hastily in a cheap credit boom, put on sale and now sit empty, unloved and unbought. Hotels in the winter season put a brave face on it and try to lure holiday makers in with promises of cheap booze and class acts direct from Blighty...
An enterprising Scottish Government might arrange for starters, say booking accommodation for 1000 of our most vulnerable former tax payers at a preferably discounted rate in some of these hotel resorts, they might arrange medical and care staff through our reciprocal European Health Insurance, they might negotiate a deal with Europe's largest airline who fly direct from Glasgow and Edinburgh. They might just save some lives, save some money and bring a bit of sunshine into the lives of the most fragile members of our community.
The benefits of a few months in the sun could be huge, a healthier and slightly wealthier senior population with something to look forward to each winter, an opportunity of making new friends, rebuilding communities, ending isolation and loneliness. Many Canadians and Americans migrate to Florida every winter, they've been labelled 'Snowbirds'. They book cheap accommodation, close up their frozen northern homes, fly south and extend their lives. Why can't we adapt that basic ethos for those who ordinarily cannot afford it?
What about the strain on the countries we decide to temporarily relocate our seniors to? I hear none of you mutter. Well, as most of us accept, climate change is a reality. Southern Europe and Northern Africa increasingly undergoes regular heat-waves which result in the deaths of many seniors from heat exhaustion, dehydration etcetera. Something that rarely happens in Bonny Scotland, where the months from April to September are pretty much indistinguishable...Could we possibly reciprocate and bring elderly folk from abroad to stay in our country for a cooler summer?
Answers on a postcard below...
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