Probably Apochryphal, but...

Mrs L copied me into an article on Facepage which tells a story about an old lady perpetually on a cruise ship because, for excellent 'care', it is far less costly than a care home on-shore.


So, what's the one cost that the care home has to pay that the ship doesn't?


And what is the way in which this could be adjusted?

"Lovely people left to bear the brunt of nastiness as nasty people continue to get loveliness"

From the Delightful Mail:

Nasty town halls are targeting nice-class lovely people by increasing niceness charges and restricting loveliness while doing little to crack down on exorbitant loveliness for chief nasty people.

A Lovely Party survey of local councils has found the yearly cost to an nice-class lovely person of receiving niceness has soared by £655 since the election. A separate study, by the charity Loveliness UK, found a growing number of nasty local authorities restrict free loveliness to those with 'substantial' needs, meaning they are so lovely they are at risk of nastiness or even horribleness. It means thousands more lovely people must either pay more for their niceness, or pay for it for the first time.

The findings come days after a report by the TaxCollectors' Alliance found 636 nasty people around the country give themselves more than £150,000 loveliness a year – compared with the Prime Minister's £142,500 loveliness allowance.

"House prices force young to be carers"

From today's Metro:

A generation of young adults living with their parents because of rising house prices may end up trapped there forever as carers.

Hundreds of thousands of 20 to 34-year-olds will spend so long scraping together a deposit that their parents will then be too frail to leave on their own. Many carers will have to give up their careers as well as abandoning their hopes of ever having a home of their own, the research shows.

Nikki Flanders, from O2 Health, which carried out the research, said: "Just as younger people become able to buy for the first time, they may be called upon to look after their parents – especially as social care budgets are cut."

Up to 3 million young people are living with their parents as they have to save for an average of ten years to raise a deposit. In London, the figure rises to 24 years. One in five of them will become a carer for their parents at some point in their lives, the O2 research shows. In some parts of the country, more than two-thirds of people over 65 will have a long-term health condition such as dementia, heart disease or diabetes.

Yes, it's only an advertorial for O2 Health, but it's a fair point nonetheless, it heaps the burden/cost of long term care more and more on the Untouchables (people who Aren't On The Property Ladder) and relieves the Homeys. So the Homeys will see this as a Very Good Thing Indeed, especially if they can charge their children rent.

"Hard working pensioners"

I sometimes use this oxymoron as a joke, but over at The Daily Express they actually expect to be taken seriously:
The phrase is sadly lacking from the online version of the story:

UP to 100,000 pensioners have been forced to sell their homes to pay for ­medical care that should have been free.

Huge numbers of senior ­citizens in nursing homes had been entitled to have their bills met by the NHS. But because of blunders by ­officials they missed out and were forced to quit properties they had worked a lifetime to buy (1) in order to cover costs.

1) That's a huge great lie, isn't it? It's fair to assume that most people who are now pensioners bought their houses when they were still cheap and paid off the bulk of their mortgage within ten years or so, once you take inflation into account.

I know for a fact that my parents took on what seemed to be a normal sized mortgage in the 1960s and inflation eroded the principal so such an extent that they could pay it off out of petty cash sometime in the 1970s; they've lived rent free ever since.

In fact, I was one of the lucky people who bought in the mid 1990s and I paid off my mortgage in eleven years (Halifax couldn't do ten years, for some reason), the monthly payments were rather less than what it would have cost to rent.

Also begs the question, why do you need a house if you live in a care home, but hey. (On the substantive issue, I'm a great believer in universal, non-means tested benefits, i.e. I'm perfectly happy if some of my/our tax money is used to pay for a basic minimum standard of care for old and dying people, as I too one day will be old and dying.)

My fifth bloggiversary is today

To celebrate, I'll post another "They own land!" variant ("Their parents owned land! Guarantee them an inheritance!") from today's Daily Mail:

The print edition reads thusly:

The number of pensioners forced to sell their homes to fund their care has soared by 20 per cent over the past decade. About 24,500 sold up last year along, according to figures from the House of Commons Library.

And the funding crisis may not be solved for years to come, meaning thousands more will be forced to put their houses on the market and deny their children their inheritance.

They must have realised that they were crossing the line with that third sentence, as it has been removed from the online version of the article.

They own land! Give them money!

From The Daily Telegraph:

The Department of Health is considering plans for a major drive to reduce the number of people going into care homes and reduce the cost of social care.

The centrepiece of the initiative would be Government-subsidised loans to the elderly to fund home improvements including downstairs bathrooms, stairlifts and other "property improvements" that would allow them to stay in their own houses longer.

Younger people will also be urged to volunteer to spend time with elderly neighbours, helping address the loneliness that helps push some into care homes.

As politicians struggle to overhaul the fragmented social care system, ministers are looking for new ways to reduce the flow of older people into residential care, which is much more expensive than remaining at home.

This is getting beyond satire.

Reform of funding for old age care

From today's CityAM Forum:

It is easy to see why politicians want to delay reform [of the funding of old age care]. Many people believe that the state will cover the cost of care as it does with the "free at point of use" NHS. Yet the reality is different and many people only discover they need to pay for care when they or a family member enter it. It is a rare politician who will acknowledge that families have to pay for care and, indeed, that for the future system of care to be affordable contributions will have to increase.

The obvious source for contributions is the equity in assets like housing. Yet too often discussions on elderly care reforms are concerned with protecting children’s inheritances. So England persists with a system that is patently unfair, where too many people only find out they are required to pay for care in a moment of crisis. The political consensus favours people being caught short rather than admitting to the reality of hard choices.

The largest chunk of that "equity in housing" is of course not the bricks and mortar, which at best hold their value: depreciation and maintenance net off with normal price inflation. So what is the largest chunk and why? For possible answers, let us refer to two earlier articles...

March 2011: The importance of urban centres to progress – economic, cultural, scientific, social and political – cannot be underestimated. Across all continents, 23 megacities—metropolitan areas with at least 10m inhabitants—generate 14 per cent of global GDP, according to McKinsey. The world’s top 100 cities generate $21 trillion of GDP, 38 per cent of the total.

The 600 largest urban centres generate $30 trillion, 60 per cent of the total, yet house just 22 per cent of the world’s population. But what is most impressive is that the London urban zone is the world’s third largest by GDP, beaten only by Tokyo and New York.*

November 2011: The US’s share of population in larger metropolitan areas rose from 30 per cent to 55 per cent from 1951-2009, focused in suburbs. Relentless long-term decline saw our metropolitan areas’ population share fall 22 per cent from 1951-2009.

In the first part of the 2000s, almost 1m people left our large cities [in the UK]. Only high immigration prevented serious declines in population. This matters, as larger cities improve worker productivity. A meta-analysis found a doubling of urban population raises productivity about 6 per cent. So someone going from a town of 50,000 to a city of 800,000 raises their productivity 25 per cent – and vice versa.

* Well duh, London pop. 7.8 million, Tokyo 12.8 million, New York 8+ million.

Fun Online Polls: Cheryl Cole & Long-term care

Thanks to everybody who took part in last week's Fun Online Poll, results as follows:

Should Cheryl Cole go back to her serial cheat love rat overpaid prima donna ex-husband?

Ne, man! - 42%
Ah divvent knaa - 34%
Why aye! - 14%
Sheh should follow hor hort - 10%.

According to today's Soaraway Sun, it looks as if she is not going to follow our sage advice. In protest, I will not buy her records in future... which I wasn't going to do anyway.
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There was a rare flash of two-sided economics in today's Telegraph:

Individuals will have to pay the first £35,000 of the costs of a care home place, or help in their own homes with tasks such as washing and dressing, under the plan. After reaching this cap, the state [sic] will step in and cover any care costs above this level.

But to meet the additional drain on the Treasury of an estimated £2 billion a year, ministers may choose to [i.e. will] raise taxes, the report, from the Care Commission said. And Mr Dilnot said part of the burden must fall on pensioners...

Treasury figures, disclosed to the Daily Telegraph, show that the initial cost would be £2.5 billion a year, but that this will double within a decade to around £5 billion - equivalent to £200 per household.

Normally you'd expect a deeply Home-Owner-Ist rag like the Telegraph to focus on the "hooray!" side of the equation, but unusually for them, they look at the costs as well as the benefits: the government will guarantee people's inheritances but it will ask an overlapping group of people to pay extra in tax. Seems a bit arse about face to me, why not expect the likely heirs to sort out insurance, and those who aren't relying on windfall gains of an unknown amount at an unknown point in the future (or who stand to inherit little anyway) can just opt out - or pay for insurance for their own long term care if they want their 'wealth to cascade down the generations'?

So that's the topic of this week's Fun Online Poll: "Who ought to pay for the long-term care of 'asset-rich' pensioners?"

Vote here or use the widget in the side bar.