Open Road

Thursday Jul 16th 2009

Death and Taxes

The old Benjamin Franklin adage “The only things certain in life are death and taxes” continues to ring true, with the recent publication of the long anticipated green paper on social care, which announces the need for the elderly to pay approximately £20,000 for care. Even though the vast majority of whom this will effect are still paying taxes, and have done so for many years, with the belief there would be state care if they needed it after they retired.

The elderly for many years have been left without a voice, living on the outskirts of broken down communities - no fight left in them after the war years, to fight their own cause. It’s no exaggeration to label the elderly as the forgotten members of the population. This hasn’t happened overnight though - it has been a growing epidemic for decades. As the country’s economy ‘boomed’ our social ties ‘went bust’.

The community spirit which was once the epitome of life on the island has disintegrated. Indeed to get a slice of this action a heart-warming jaunt down memory lane is needed in the form of a hoary soap-opera. I must admit I struggle to associate myself with any strong ties/ sense of duty to any community as such, the only sense of belonging I have is to my immediate family and friends, and I do not think this unusual.

If we look back to the foundations of a successful state we will witness the growth from the family unit to a society- however through the looking glass of the elderly it is obvious that society has been left behind, replaced by our own unwavering self-interest. Just as with a jigsaw; in order to create the scene advertised on the front of the box, each little piece needs to slot into another piece until the scene is complete. However, after completion it is easy (as illustrated in modern-day Britain) to forget what the scene was created from, and once this is forgotten all society is lost. The microcosms integral to a fully functioning society have been lost behind a façade of institutions.

However, the only way for humans to function is in a society, so it is now our government’s responsibility - not to ‘sort out the problem of the ageing population’ with extensive government expenditure but instead to inspire our own collective responsibility. We need to exit our blame culture and step forward into ( or should I say back into) society, otherwise as Hobbes remarked the life of man indeed will become solitary, poor, nasty and brutish.