Elderly Deserve Better from Us

 Elderly deserve better from us
April 21, 2012
The Sentinel

RECENTLY there have been many complaints about discrimination against, and ill-treatment, of the elderly.
Proposed restriction of bus passes and virtual expulsion from hospitals are only two instances.
In most primitive societies, the few who survived to old age were revered. Their knowledge of sources of water, edible plants and management of childbirth were assets.
As time went on, some tribes grew harsher. In western Asia, one tribe killed and ate men over the age of 70. Women over the age of 70 were strangled and buried. Another tribe starved its over-70s. A third threw its sick and aged to packs of dogs.
Some villages in Japan gave their old a jug of water and a rice cake and sent them up a mountain.
Now let us take a leap to science fiction. One Star Trek episode featured a planet on which people committed suicide at the age of 60.
I hope our political leaders have no time for history or science fiction. If they do, they might bear in mind the following tale.
A couple get rid of granny by putting her in a leaky boat and pushing it downstream. The next day the father finds his little boy carving something out of wood. He says: "What are you making, son?"
Reply: "I'm practising for when I make a big boat to put you and mummy in when you're old."
MARGARET BROWN
Burslem

 SOURCE:       This is Staffordshire, UK

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