WORLD: Nobel for UN Inter-Governmental Panel On Climate Control

. SIXTY-SEVEN YEARS-OLD Indian climatologist and the chairman of the UN's Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), Rajendra Pachauri poses with his family on Friday after learning he was a joint recipient of the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with former US Vice President Al Gore. AP

Rajendra Pachauri heads the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control, which was the co-winner of this year's Nobel Peace Prize.

ALONGSIDE AL GORE, AN INDIAN 'CLIMATE CONTROL' ENGINEER

By Mark Sappenfield | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

NEW DELHI, India (Christian Science Monitor), October 15, 2007:

Alongside the Hollywood chic of Al Gore, Rajendra Pachauri's day planner can seem a bit pedestrian: Work every day, sometimes until 3 a.m., and – if at all possible – shoehorn in a cricket match with co-workers.

But his work ethic, along with the ability to build and inspire a team, helped win Dr. Pachauri his share of the Nobel Peace Prize with Mr. Gore on Friday, colleagues say. If Gore is the frontman of the crusade against global warming, then Pachauri runs the engine room as chairman of the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Control (IPCC), which was named co-winner of the prize with Gore.

This year, the IPCC will churn out four reports on climate change, producing the scientific gravitas for Gore's glitz. Gore calls the IPCC "the world's preeminent scientific body devoted to improving our understanding of the climate crisis."

Like Gore, Pachauri is a global-warming pioneer. Since the late 1980s, the former industrial engineer has sought to use science to convince skeptics and CEOs of the need of reducing mankind's atmospheric imprint. Now, he warns that if the problem is not addressed, developing nations will bear the brunt of the crisis, suffering for a situation they did not create because they have not the resources to mitigate it.

The Nobel committee acknowledged this in its announcement, saying: "[Climate] changes will place particularly heavy burdens on the world's most vulnerable countries. There may be increased danger of violent conflicts and wars...."

Coordinating 600 scientists

It is from here, in a cluttered New Delhi office filled with teetering columns of paper and dozens of cricket trophies, that Pachauri has led his charge. Though he jokes that he has spent half of his five-year tenure as IPCC chairman in airplanes, Pachauri also spends long hours at his computer here, often arriving at 5 a.m. and sometimes staying past midnight, coordinating the work of some 600 scientists from more than 100 countries.

Austria's Renate Christ, Secretary of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), left, French Michel Jarraud, Secretary General of the World Meterorological Organization (WMO), right, and India's climatologist and the head of the U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Rajendra Pachauri, center on screen, pose for the media in Geneva, Switzerland, on Friday, Oct. 12, 2007. U.N.'s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, IPCC, and former U.S. Vice President Al Gore have won the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize. Photo: Martial Trezzini/Keystone/AP

His greatest wish for this prize is that it might underscore the urgency of the situation. Based on his team's research, he estimates that the global community has eight years to reverse the trend of increasing greenhouse-gas emissions. After that, the effects will mount and become irreversible, he adds.

Beneath a mane of untidy black hair streaked with white, Pachauri says he first began studying the impact of carbon emissions on the atmosphere, "when I was working on energy issues after graduate school in the 1980s."

As early as 1988, he delivered an address to the International Association of Energy Economics on the threat that such emissions presented. Back then, he says, "that was seen as heresy by many members."

Pachauri's Years of Activism

Today, he is grateful for progress. "Now there is enough knowledge available to know what actions should be taken and how they should be put into place," he says. "The technologies you need [to reverse carbon emissions] are all available, we just need the policies."

Though Pachauri has advocated a "carbon tax" in the past, penalizing those who use the most fossil fuels, he says the IPCC is not an advisory body. It exists only for the science. And this is where Gore comes in. Though there was a notable rough patch between them, when Gore characterized Pachauri as the "let's drag our feet" candidate for IPCC chairman in 2002, Pachauri says that was a blip in a long and productive friendship.

Indeed, after hearing that his group had won a share of the Nobel Prize, Pachauri told Gore in a brief phone conversation: "I am certainly looking forward to working with you. I'll be your follower and you'll be my leader."

Yet Pachauri's characteristics as a leader are what distinguish him, say colleagues.

A founder of The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), now one of India's top laboratories, Pachauri sought to bring the best young minds into a new biotechnology department in 1989. One of his early recruits, Bhawan Lal, was not initially convinced that the venture would succeed. He kept his old job as a professor at an Indian university as a backup.

Within months, however, Dr. Lal had abandoned his back up plan. When he joined, Pachauri said, " No one will ever tell you to do the work." Instead, Lal says, Pachauri led by example: "He is so hardworking."

Whenever Lal needed something for his research, for instance, Pachauri had it for him the next day; at his university, a similar request could take weeks to fulfill.

It was Pachauri who also pushed Lal to seek practical uses for his research. This lead to Oilzapper, a product he invented that cleans oil spills through the use of oil-munching microbes. "[Pachauri] said, 'You have to go out and do something so society would benefit,' " says Lal. "Otherwise we would have just sat in our air-conditioned laboratories."

Advocate of real-world solutions

This emphasis on the practical is one of Pachauri's hallmarks. "He has been one of the pioneers and voices of reason in the field, not just calling attention to an environment in peril but creating solutions by bridging the gap between academia, business, policymakers, and the public," says Tulsi Tanti, a friend and founder of Suzlon, Asia's largest manufacturer of wind turbines, in an e-mail.

Though he has a long way to go to bring Gore-like publicity to the Indian subcontinent, Friday's award was a start. In the space of one hour, his cellphone registered 90 missed calls. The next morning, the corporate cricket team from Indian airline SpiceJet was kind enough to wait for him to arrive, presenting him with a bouquet and a row of handshakes before uncharitably beating his TERI team.

But even this tiny gesture shows a shift now taking hold. "There is reason for optimism," says Pachauri. "Even businesses are beginning to realize the importance of the [climate change] issue."

Copyright © 2007 The Christian Science Monitor

AUSTRALIA: UWS Professor Identifies The Hidden Cost of Aged Care

SYDNEY, Australia (University of Western Sydney), October 15, 2007: Australians are well aware that they are facing a future shouldering the economic burden of caring for an ageing population. Now Professor Louisa Jorm from the School of Medicine at the University of Western Sydney has identified yet another cost set to impact the future health care of older Australians. The 'cost of dying' is not an issue usually talked about openly, however Professor Jorm, Foundation Professor of Population Health at UWS, says it's a concern that needs more discussion. Professor Jorm's research, published last week in the Medical Journal of Australia, investigates the costs of caring for the elderly in hospital in their last year of life and fills a gap in knowledge that will help policy makers plan for the future health care and economic security of all Australians. Professor Jorm says the hospital costs incurred by people aged over 65 in their last year of life equate to around 9 per cent of total hospital costs in New South Wales. "This 'cost of dying' is of significant economic concern given that by 2021 19 per cent of the Australian population is expected to be aged over 65," Professor Jorm says. Professor Jorm and colleagues from the NSW Department of Health conducted the study of 70,384 people aged 65 years and older who died during 2002 and 2003. The study found that while hospital costs fell as age increased, the biggest costs arose caring for people aged 65-74. The cost of dying in hospital for people aged 95 years or older amounted to less than half for their younger counterparts - $7028 compared to $17927. "This is because 73 per cent of people aged 95 or older died outside of hospital and most had not used any hospital inpatient services in their last year of life. While around 61 per cent of 65-84 year olds died in hospital and had clocked up an average of nine days of inpatient costs in their last year of life," Professor Jorm says. "Hospital-based end-of-life health care averages $13513 per person - around 40 per cent of this is spent in the last month of life - and the most costly and common inpatient costs occur as a result of cardiovascular disease and cancer." Professor Jorm says population ageing is likely to result in significant changes in the supply, organisation and funding of health services for the aged, and is expected to result in a shift of the economic burden of end-of-life care from hospitals to nursing homes and other residential aged care. © University of Western Sydney

CANADA: Celebrating Some Spry Seniors

Edwin Lacy, 95, and Verna Lacy, 94,
who recently celebrated their
70th wedding anniversary,
enjoy the Celebration of Age party.
The annual birthday party
recognizes seniors
over the age of 80.

Photo by Jennifer Roberts, Whitby


WHITBY, Ontario (NewsDurhamRegion), October 15, 2007:

For Walter Couke, it was the party of the century -- quite literally.

The Whitby resident, in his 100th year, topped the list of those honoured at the Celebration of Age, a group birthday bash held October 11 by the Town of Whitby Seniors Services.

"I don't really think about it," Mr. Couke said, about turning 100 on January 3.
"I'm very fortunate to be alive."

His secret? "I've worked hard all my life and I never drank or chased women," replied the Fairview Lodge resident, who came to live in Whitby in the 1950s after working in the Ajax munitions plant during the Second World War.

Gertrude Hachie, celebrating her 97th birthday this June, said being content can go a long way in life. She credits it with seeing her through two world wars and other difficult times.

"It feels wonderful to be here. I'm still meeting and seeing my friends, although a lot of them have gone on ahead of me," Ms. Hachie added.

Whitby began honouring its residents over the age of 80 in 1990. Over the years, it has grown from a small affair held at the Whitby Seniors Activity Centre to a large luncheon at the Heydenshore Pavilion, said Debbie Wilson, a supervisor.

"A total of 514 invites went out to seniors over the age of 80 and about 274 accepted to come," she said. Many have attended thanks to volunteer drivers "who have stepped up to the plate," Ms. Wilson said. The seniors centre also uses its van to transport celebrants, who receive a certificate of recognition from all three levels of government. The Colonial Retirement Home also offers its van to shuttle honorees to the luncheon, she said.

Ms. Wilson pointed to twins Bernice Taylor and Bernadette Sullivan celebrating their 85th year along with their 87-year-old sister, Katherine Rogers.

Longtime Whitby residents, all three were up the previous night at 1 a.m. playing poker. Ms. Taylor's husband, Robert, was the first to open a Ford dealership in Town.
While the event got started with the Mellowtones playing Happy Birthday to the crowd, it really was Elisabeth Novovesky's birthday. She turned 85 at the event.

"I like to come here. I like to talk," said the long-time Brooklin resident. "I speak only four languages but nobody seems to listen," she joked.

But government officials said the event takes nothing for granted when it comes to celebrating the contributions of local seniors. "Whether it was working on the land, raising a family or lending a helping hand, this world is certainly a better place for all you've done," said Mayor Pat Perkins.

"We very seldom have the opportunity to acknowledge and thank you for all your contributions today (and in the past)," added Whitby-Oshawa MPP Christine Elliott. "You have really contributed to the wonderful place Whitby is today."

By Lesley Bovie, NewsDurhamRegion.com
Copyright © 1995-2007 Metroland Media Group Ltd.

USA: Why Georgetown Is Top Retirement Spot For Texans

DALLAS, Texas (The Dallas Morning News), October 15, 2007:

North Texans in search of the best place in America to retire don't need to fly off to picturesque Cape Cod, sun-drenched Arizona or resort-rich Colorado. They have only to drive a few hours south on Interstate 35 to Georgetown.

The Central Texas town has just earned top billing in the latest edition of Retirement Places Rated, one of the oldest and most popular guidebooks for footloose boomers and seniors looking to relocate upon retirement.

"Though Georgetown may not be the first place to come to mind for most people, its strong economy and affordable housing gave it an edge over the 199 other communities we researched," said author David Savageau.

A half-million Americans move to other states each year to retire, while another half-million resettle within their states. Retirement experts expect those numbers to double as boomers claim Social Security and seek out their own Golden Ponds.

Mr. Savageau, who has published seven editions of his guidebook in 25 years, used seven criteria to determine the best retirement spots this time around:

* Climate,
* Economy,
* Community services,
* Ambience,
* Living costs,
* Housing and
* Personal safety.

"Georgetown offers the best of two worlds," he said. "It's a small community on the edge of the Austin metropolitan area. Retirees want both the neighborliness of a small town and the cultural, entertainment and health-care amenities of a big city."

None of this comes as news to Geoff Lawrence and his wife, Denise. The boomer couple moved from College Station to Georgetown's biggest active-adult community, Sun City Texas, three years ago after he retired from the military.

"The town's small enough to get tee times easily, and it's close enough to Austin to get to UT football games without much trouble," he said.

Mr. Lawrence said he also enjoys living in a college town – Georgetown is home to Southwestern University, a private liberal-arts institution. The Lawrences could well mount their own marketing campaign for their community. Not only have they moved to Georgetown, but so have his parents (from Santa Fe, N.M.), her parents (from Alabama) and, most recently, her sister and brother-in-law (from Waco). They all live within about 3 miles of each other in Sun City.

"We all have different interests and lead separate lives, but our back yard has seen quite a few family get-togethers," Mr. Lawrence said.

Retirement Places Rated has sold a half-million copies over the years, and a favorable score has sometimes bolstered a town's fortunes. Murray, Ky., reversed a population loss with its No. 1 ranking in one edition, Mr. Savageau said.

The president of Georgetown's Chamber of Commerce, Mel Pendland, said retirees have played a significant role in his community's growth in recent years. The town's population has jumped 64 percent to 46,479 since 2000.

Sun City Texas, the active-adult community Del Webb began developing in the 1990s, now contains 5,500 homes and 9,000 residents, mostly 55 and older. Plans call for 2,500 more homes, Mr. Pendland said.

"The first retirees to arrive in Georgetown came from other parts of Texas," he said. "The next group moved from the Upper Midwest. Now they're from Arizona, Florida and California."

Central Texas' lower housing prices have attracted them, Mr. Pendland said. Retirement Places Rated found that the median price for a three-bedroom, two-bath home was $199,210, compared with $339,600 in Sarasota, Fla., and $556,800 in Scottsdale, Arizona.

"People are taking the equity they've built up in their old homes and paying out of pocket for something here," he said. "Suddenly, retirement becomes much more affordable for them."

Mr. Pendland said some longtime Georgetown residents' initial fears that the senior influx would overburden the town have proved false. "These are highly educated, accomplished people who want to stay engaged. Many are our most active volunteers," he said. Through the Partners in Education program in the Georgetown schools, older residents have served as mentors for schoolchildren.

"Seniors are valued here," he said.

By Bob Moos
The Dallas Morning News

USA: Retiring Outside America - For Many, It's A Dream Come True

By Lisa Bonos, The Washington Post, October 14, 2007

With careful planning and lots of passion, some baby boomers are turning a dream of an overseas retirement into reality.

They're lured to distant climes on the promise of a higher quality of life. Often they discover a lower cost of living, stunning natural beauty and a sense of community. But relocating overseas isn't all fun in the sun, retirees and experts caution. A weakening dollar, the obstacles of a foreign language and culture, and disconnection from family and friends can intrude on paradise.

The Internet helps, however. Ubiquitous Web access helps planning and lets expatriates stay in touch with loved ones and up on current events.

It's difficult to know how many U.S. retirees seek new lives overseas. Neither the Census Bureau nor the State Department break out numbers. That makes Social Security figures the closest estimate. According to the Social Security Administration, 441,693 beneficiaries, or about 1 percent of those in the system, received benefits while abroad as of the end of 2005.

The AARP points out, however, that these numbers do not take into account people who may live abroad but collect Social Security payments at a U.S. address. The overseas dream takes many shapes. Here are three experiences in Panama, the Philippines and Britain.

North Americans are drawn to Panama to retire, for business or to invest in real estate. Many new buildings and communities are in construction.
Photo: Carey Wagner/Mcclathchy Newspapers.

Britain is a popular spot for Americans to retire. Here is a street scene in London.

Gladys Castro, of Florida, who was
considering moving to Panama to work and retire,
rides in a helicopter over the Panama Canal.

More Americans are looking at Panama as a place
to live in their retirement years.
Photo Carey Wagner/Mcclathchy Newspapers
_________________________________________________

WHERE MANY FROM THE US ARE RETIRING

Number of Social Security beneficiaries in foreign countries, as of December 2005.
1. Canada, 100,744
2. Mexico, 47,384
3. Italy, 33,865
4. Germany, 33,448
5. Britain, 30,210
6. Greece, 22,640
7. Philippines, 19,309
8. Portugal, 12,050
9. France, 10,661
10.Spain, 9,875

Source: Social Security Administration, The Washington Post
__________________________________________________

Panama
Mary Strociek, 49, and her husband, Matt, 67, had their hearts set on retiring to Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. They bought a condo there in the late 1980s "when it was a quiet, sleepy village," Mary Strociek said. But then others discovered the beauty of the area and the place boomed. "We decided to get out of there," Mary said.

Avid sailors, the couple hopped on a friend's 50-foot boat and cruised the Caribbean. They checked out all of the Virgin Islands, St. Martin and St. Bart, and yet were drawn back to Mexico.

Then they discovered Panama. The Strocieks were overwhelmed by the breathtaking sights. "It's one of the few places I can see the curvature of the Earth," Mary Strociek said of the view from her property, which she says looks out on nearly 300 miles of coastline.

Won over, the Strocieks sold their Chicago home and built a house near the mountain town of El Valle, where they now live, she explained in a phone interview from her pool. Two years ago, it cost the couple about $150,000 to buy their land and build a house, pool and bohio — a type of tropical gazebo. They live debt-free and enjoy the perk of a newly built Panamanian abode: no property tax for 20 years.

The Strocieks are among many Americans who have retired to Panama.

The Migration Policy Institute, a Washington, D.C., think tank, said last year the number of U.S. citizens receiving the kind of Panamanian visas most often used by retirees more than tripled between 2003 and 2005. The number issued in the first quarter of 2006 almost equaled those in all of 2003, said the report, which cited Panamanian statistics.

The institute found in focus groups with U.S. seniors in Mexico and Panama that the lower cost of living was among the most attractive features. The natural beauty and a sense of community also ranked high. "People felt like they had more interaction with people in their daily life than in the U.S," said Julia Gelatt, a research assistant who worked on the study. Both the institute's report and interviews highlighted the importance of the Internet to seniors living abroad.

Mary Strociek said she orders products online and regularly talks with family members, including the couple's children and grandchildren, over the Internet. "With that access, there's nothing that I miss about the United States. ... I don't miss the weather or the traffic," she said. The Strocieks also have tried to absorb themselves in the local community. They volunteer with Educacion Primero, a local nonprofit group whose work ranges from distributing donated shoes to teachers and hospital staff, to bringing in dentists to teach kids about dental hygiene, to installing fans and building a lunchroom for a school.

The main obstacles, Mary said, are the bureaucracy and the banking system. She said it took her a year and a half to get license plates for the car she brought from the States. She added, however, that she knows others who didn't have difficulties.

She noted that although she lacks health insurance, the cost of medical care and prescriptions in Panama is a fraction of what she paid in the United States. For the Strocieks, culture shock came as more of a light jolt. Mary speaks a little Spanish and says Matt speaks none, but that's no problem.

The couple maintain a Web site, WhyPanama.com, which chronicles the construction of their house and offers tips for would-be expats.

Do the Strocieks think of transforming their online advice site into a profit-making business? "We're retired," Mary said. "We do this for fun"

Philippines
Sometimes retiring in a land far away is like going home again.

Hans Groot was a Peace Corps volunteer in the Philippines in the 1960s. After finishing his service Groot, 68, returned to the Southeast Asian nation many times as a "returned Peace Corps volunteer." He was drawn back for winter retreats and work assignments until finally he and his partner, Emmanuel "Noel" Reyes, 61, left behind their life in Lake Hopatcong, N.J., to retire to Manila in June with their dog, Nikko.

"It was sort of like a homecoming because we have so many friends all over the country and speak the language pretty well," Groot said. Groot is not only back at the location of his original Peace Corps tour, but he also plans to fill much of his time with volunteer work to avoid becoming a couch potato in a tropical locale. He has been doing organizational work with the Peace Corps Alumni Foundation for Philippine Development, a nonprofit group that gives college scholarships to low-income Filipino children. He also has been talking with the chancellor at the University of the Philippines at Los Banos about teaching a seminar or assisting the agricultural-journalism department. During his Peace Corps stint, Groot helped establish the department.

Living for now in a Manila condo, the pair are working to finalize plans for a three-bedroom home with a swimming pool and large tropical garden near the active Taal volcano. Groot estimates the project, including purchasing the property, will cost about $350,000, a fraction of the expense in the states.

Thanks to the lower cost of living and affordable real estate, the pair plans to buy and keep the condo in Manila. Lower real-estate costs can also translate into more disposable income for travel. From their perch in the Philippines, Groot and Reyes plan to visit China, Thailand and Burma.

For Reyes, the move is a genuine homecoming. A native of the Philippines, he lived in the United States for about 40 years. Groot was born in the Netherlands and emigrated to the United States in his teens. But he wouldn't think of retiring to his homeland, which he says has "same problem as New Jersey — the weather is not all that great." Groot stresses the importance of relocating to a place where he and Reyes had strong ties. Reyes has a brother and extended family in the Philippines.

England
Retired journalist Robert Lyle, 66, has what some might think is the best life possible for a beer lover. He and his wife Mary, 64, a retired office manager, have been splitting their time between the East Coast and England's Cornwall region for almost a decade.

Given Robert's responsibility when he's in Britain, it might seem remarkable he hasn't yet retired there full time. He inspects pubs for the Campaign for Real Ale, a consumer group that works to preserve British nongassed, hand-pumped beers. He reports on Cornish pubs' overall quality and range of offerings for the group's annual "Good Beer Guide," and has contributed to other local beer guides. Not a bad gig for retirement.

The Lyles' half-year stints were supposed to be over by now but their plans have fallen victim to global realities. "The idea was to stop doing that at some point, but unfortunately the dollar has weakened over these years," Robert said, making it necessary for the couple to rent out their home in the Cornish town of Fowey for half the year, to make some income in pounds.

Brett Hammond, head of investment strategy at money-management firm TIAA-CREF, endorses such a tactic for Americans retiring overseas. "You might want to invest some of your money locally" in a bank or certificate of deposit, Hammond said. Basically, "some local investment that provides income in local currency ... to help smooth out bumps of currency" is critical, Hammond said.

The Lyles' local investment has grown significantly since they bought their Cornwall home for about $250,000 in 2000. Robert estimates the value has nearly tripled in pounds, quadrupled in dollars, accounting for a weakening exchange rate.

Besides the traditional beer, the Lyles were drawn to that corner of Britain for its rich literary past, where writers such as Daphne du Maurier and Kenneth Grahame (of "The Wind in the Willows") have lived or vacationed. Both of Cornish descent, the Lyles have strong social connections in the community, making the transition a fluid one. They've done extensive research on the area and are active in local historical groups.

Along with his historical work and pub inspections, Robert Lyle also does some free-lance writing and broadcasting work. Immersed in their part-time life in Cornwall, would the Lyles make the permanent leap if their bank accounts could support it?

Robert says he'd love to if the finances were right, but something else keeps the couple tethered to the states: their children and young grandchild in the Washington, D.C., area. If the kids were interested, "we'd go in an instant," Robert said. "But then I don't know what we'd do. ... My Social Security would hardly buy a few beers!"

Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

CANADA: Ottawa Defers Property Taxes For Poor Seniors

OTTAWA, Ontario (CBC News), October 15, 2007: A new Ottawa program will allow low-income seniors and disabled residents who own homes in Ottawa to put off paying their property taxes until they sell the property or earn more money. The property tax deferral program launched Monday by the city and billed as the first of its kind in Ontario is intended to help "house-rich, cash-poor" seniors and people with disabilities stay in their homes longer, said Coun. Peter Hume. He helped initiate the program after talking to seniors about the financial challenges they face. Under the program, qualifying homeowners with a gross household income under $35,000 would be charged only five per cent interest each year on the deferred amount instead of the 15 per cent interest usually charged to homeowners who fail to pay their taxes. To qualify, the residents would have to be eligible for benefits under one of the following: * The federal Guaranteed Income Supplement program. * The Ontario Guaranteed Annual Income System. * The Ontario Disability Support Program. Mayor Larry O'Brien said the program could give some Ottawa families a few thousand extra dollars a year to spend. "Ensuring that you can remain in your homes is important to maintaining a healthy, vibrant and wonderful city," O'Brien said at a news conference. He estimated that the money would have little effect on the city's finances, as it will be collected once the homeowner sells the home or no longer meets eligibility criteria. "On a city that has a $2.3-billion budget," he added, "this level of money that we're talking about here gets lost in the rounding." According to Coun. Alex Cullen, the average property tax bill in Ottawa is around $3,500 a year. He estimates about 6,900 Ottawa households in Ottawa would qualify for the program. However, in similar programs in other provinces, only about a fifth of those who qualify actually take advantage of the program. That means the city expects about $5 million in property taxes to be deferred annually. Copyright © CBC 2007

INDIA: New Investment Ideas From Old Men

FIRST PRINCIPLES
By Uma Shashikant

NEW DELHI (The Indian Express), October 15, 2007:

Srinivasanji from Chennai wrote in sharing his strategy for the rising equity market. He is 72, and had invested all his money in the post office and in RBI bonds. In the early days of the bull market, he began an equity SIP with a mutual fund, in which he invested the monthly income from his post office scheme.

When his RBI bonds matured, he invested them in a balanced fund. He then took a SWP (systematic withdrawal plan), and transferred the gains every quarter systematically into the Senior Citizens’ Savings Scheme. He has 10 per cent of his savings in an equity fund, which he has simply allowed to grow.

He may not have beaten the market, or earned a fancy return, but he was able to enhance his return from 8 per cent to 20 per cent by simply doing this, and is content to have doubled his corpus using the bull market. It was simple discipline that helped him do that. On the one hand, he was participating in the equity markets, but taking away the gain to increase his corpus periodically. On the other, he was making his income from the post office grow a little more by investing it in equity. An example to emulate, indeed.

Relevance of Sensex

The obsession with Sensex and the counting of the billions of the richest men is completely tiring. Voyeurism of varying degrees seems to have gripped the media, with the maximum attention being paid to what is happening to somebody else, or to weaving stories of fantasy. I dread the Sensex 20,000 level and the hype that will come with it. I can also recollect the complete sniggers when the Sensex crossed 1,000, when people claimed that an index whose starting point was 100 was overvalued at 1,000.

In the early days of its construction, people would ask: of what interest is a market number if it cannot be bought or sold? To the millions who don’t earn enough, and to the few more millions who cannot save, and to some more millions who don’t invest in equity at all, the number means so little. It is, after 20 years of construction, a number that enthuses only the urban well-to-do Indian. The Sensex level must persuade us to ponder this difference and ask how prosperity for a few can become prosperity for many. Closer to yet another election, this question remains unattended and unanswered.

Beyond consumption

This time last year, we are busy debating whether the economy was overheated or not. This time around, we are asking whether we have slowed down or not. The Index of Industrial Production (IIP) numbers released on Friday create some renewed optimism that growth may not have slowed down after all. But banks have already begun reducing interest rates and encouraging borrowers to come in. The credit-deposit ratio, which was galloping at over 100 per cent is now around 70 per cent, and it is time for banks to press the accelerator, at the first given chance. Earning numbers don’t show signs of slowing down yet and this quarter is expected to be as good as the previous 20. Interest rates cannot be increased now, even if there is no sign of a slowdown, because money will come flowing in from global investors.

The problem, perhaps, is that we are asking these questions purely from a financial market perspective, and ignoring the real economy with all its imbalances underneath. Consumption still dominates economic growth, and cheap credit will make it look even better. But it is investment, productivity and employment that must look up. There is no pill in sight for that yet. Since agriculture is not listed, productivity losses, farmer suicides and poor farming practices don’t have the power to drag the Sensex down, and create screaming headlines.

IFCI

The last of the large financial institutions, IFCI, will hopefully soon be taken over, and become a universal bank. Valuations have moved not on the basis of the balance sheet, but on the basis of offices, property, geographical presence and such ‘invisibles.’ Sudden concern about multiple public sector owners has cropped up, and halted the stock’s rise to Rs100 and beyond.

There is no denying that term financial institutions have had their run, and they should now metamorphise into something else. But what happens to long-term corporate borrowing? Despite several committees and reports, the corporate bond market has not taken off. Right now, companies may have a low debt-equity ratio, and are borrowing abroad or using internal accruals. But sooner rather than later, they will need large borrowings to fund their expansion. Infrastructure funding has to be facilitated by a large and liquid long-term corporate debt market. Another of the lesser known — and unimplemented — initiative.

Uma Shashikant is managing director, Centre for Investment Education and Learning
© 2007: Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd.

CANADA: I Can't Come In Today - Grandma's Died Again

From Globe and Mail /GlobeLife /WORK TORONTO, Canada (Globe and Mail), October 15, 2007: I can't come in today - grandma's died again Readers of the News.com.au website in Australia were recently asked to come up with the worst lies they had ever told in the workplace for the site's Office Confessions series. One woman lied about attending a wedding in order to get off work. After colleagues asked to see pictures, she said the couple used a "sketch artist" rather than a photographer. One manager recalled an employee who asked for time off after his grandmother died. After going to note this in the worker's personnel file, the manager saw the employee had previously lost a grandmother - nine times. "A few weeks later in a review meeting, I mentioned he'd 'had a tough run over the last two years,' with nine of his grand-parents having passed away, and showed him his file," the manager said. By Craig Silverman SMOKED BENEFITS Blogs: Silverman on the way we work COUGH IT UP Employees of Tribune Co., an owner of newspapers and television stations in the United States, were recently informed that smokers would soon be forced to pay an additional monthly fee of $100 (U.S.) on top of their regular medical premiums. "So much for the old stereotype of a fedora-wearing reporter pounding out copy on deadline, cigarette dangling from his mouth," wrote Michael Mayo on his blog for the Sun-Sentinel, a Tribune paper in south Florida. He also wondered what other bad habits would soon cost extra. "Will there be fees for alcohol use? Eating fast food? Having high cholesterol? Not adhering to proper weight/body-mass guidelines?" Or perhaps blogging about company policies? BY THE NUMBERS ANGER MANAGEMENT 80 Percentage of workers in the United Kingdom who say they have witnessed acts of "visible anger" in the workplace, according to a survey of 3,000 European workers commissioned by Canon, maker of cameras and printers. 94 Ninety-four per cent of Italian workers said displays of anger were "commonplace," the highest percentage in Europe. Suddenly The Sopranos make so much more sense. 20 Percentage of U.K. workers who admitted to kicking or smashing malfunctioning office equipment. Favoured targets included staplers, keyboards and printers. The top anger-triggering events for U.K. workers included "pointless meetings" and "being spoken down to by a boss or colleague." THE GOOGLE AGE HOW OLD IS TOO OLD?: Brian Reid previously worked as a director of operations and engineering for Google, a company that is regularly celebrated for its work environment and culture. But Mr. Reid, who is in his 50s, says Google is no picnic for older workers. He's suing the company for wrongful dismissal after he was fired three years ago because he wasn't a good "cultural fit." Mr. Reid thinks he was let go because of his age, and a court recently allowed his case to proceed. "I don't dye my hair orange and ride a unicycle to work," he told one newspaper, inadvertently causing clowns everywhere to send their CVs to Google. Source: Sydney Morning Herald

UN: THOUSANDS OF BLOGGERS UNITE TO ISSUE CALL TO SAVE PLANET

NEW YORK (United Nations), October 15, 2007: Thousands of online voices worldwide will join forces to push for environmental protection to mark the United Nations-backed first-ever Blog Action Day. More than 12 million readers have viewed the 15,000 blogs – ranging from those promoting gardening such as “gardenrant.com” to sites providing tips for those interested in web businesses such as “entrepreneurs-journey.com” – participating in the event, supported by the UN Environment Programme. By uniting to raise awareness of environmental issues, the global blogging community hopes to reach millions of people and spur debate, the Nairobi-based agency said in a news release. Topics touched upon by bloggers include the announcement of the Nobel peace prize being awarded to Al Gore and the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the safety of household cleaning products, and what people can do to contribute to the effort to reversing climate change.

USA: Emotionally, The Best May Be Yet To Come

AGING: MENTAL HEALTH

“I would say that the last 20 to 30 years have been the happiest. Before, I was so involved with my kids and other commitments, I hardly had time to catch my breath to see if I was happy. I think it’s about having more time. I love art and architecture. I didn’t have time to include some of the things I love to do when I was driving car pools and going to Little League games all the time.”

— Bea McArthur, 78; lives in Laguna Woods, retired from a career in decorative arts; mother of five children and grandmother to seven; divorced; active in community associations and with church. Photo: Karen Tapia-Andersen, Los Angeles Times
_______________________________________________________________

Researchers are finding that older people are many times happier than their younger counterparts. Life experience, passage of time and emotional stability appear to be driving factors.

By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
October 15, 2007

For centuries, sages have alluded to a richness in life's later years that is lost on the young. But only in the last decade have researchers begun to measure happiness across the life span and, in doing so, try to understand why older people tend to be so content.

The explanation doesn't appear to be biological -- some chemical in the brain that mellows us just when all those plump neurons needed for thinking and memory are shriveling up. Rather, most scientists now think that experience and the mere passage of time gradually motivate people to approach life differently. The blazing-to-freezing range of emotions experienced by the young blends into something more lukewarm by later life, numerous studies show. Older people are less likely to be caught up in their emotions and more likely to focus on the positive, ignoring the negative.

"I worry about getting older and getting sick and dying. I do still worry a great deal about the state of the world and the state of the country. But you have to have some belief in humanity. You need to focus on something positive. Sitting in my yard - I have a beautiful yard - with the sun shining and my dog here and having financial health and doing interesting work, life is good. That is true. I try to shift at any moment into mind-emptying peacefulness and letting go."

Thomas Greening, 76; lives in Sherman Oaks and has a private psychology and psychotherapy practice in Westwood; widowed; father to three children and grandfather to two; active in the peace movement. Photo: Gary Friedman, Los Angeles Times.

"When you have that disaster at 10 in the morning, you can deal with it better when you're older," says Stacey Wood, a neuropsychologist and associate professor at Scripps College in Claremont. "With people in their 20s, it throws them off. They experience more emotion, and it's more intense emotion."

In a study published in September in Psychological Science, Wood and her collaborator, neuroscientist Michael Kisley of the University of Colorado, recorded the brain activity of 63 adults, ranging in age, who were shown a series of negative and positive images, such as dead animals or a bowl of ice cream. Older adults were about 30% less reactive to the negative images compared with the younger adults.

Other studies have found similar results -- that older people experience negative emotion less often and recover from it more quickly. The insult that has your blood boiling for three days at age 20 may not even register a spike in blood pressure at age 60. And despite -- or perhaps because of -- the fact that anyone with gray hair has likely experienced his or her fair share of suffering, older folks are also adept at transcending bad memories.

"What we see is a real difference in how negative information is processed by the brain," Wood says. "When we talk about maturity or wisdom, we're talking about that ability to integrate negative emotion or cognitive information; being able to weigh it and not find it so disruptive."

Why people regulate their emotions better as they age may be due in part to school-of-hard-knocks experience. Eventually they learn the world will not end when the car breaks down or the child gets strep throat. The later stages of life also offer more opportunities to actively avoid those parts that are stressful or upsetting, Wood says.

"You can surround yourself with less negative people and events," she says. "At a certain point, you're established in your career. You don't have to put up with that annoying boss any more. You can structure your life the way you want to."

Influence of time

One of the first researchers to discover that older people tend to be happier thinks there's another reason for this greater emotional control. It's linked to a person's sense of time. Older people are aware that life doesn't last forever -- and, with a finite amount of time ahead, they think it should be well spent.

In a study at Stanford University's Center on Longevity, psychologist Laura Carstensen showed that people who perceived their future time as limited had goals that were emotionally meaningful. People who perceived their futures as open-ended had goals that tended to be knowledge-related. Carstensen concluded that, as people age, they encounter "shrinking time horizons." With less time left, people tend to focus on the now. The 2002 study was published in the journal Psychology and Aging.

"As people come to appreciate the fragility of life, they tend to put more value on it," she says.

Younger people may anticipate that the older years will be bleak because the body fails and the mind is aware that time is running out. But older people typically aren't depressed by that.

"The paradox of aging is that there is this decline in physical well-being and cognitive status and yet an increase in psychological well-being," Carstensen says. "We [colleagues in her laboratory] don't think of that as a paradox, of course, because it's the decline that reminds people that life will not go on forever."

With an eye on the clock, older people are more selective about their activities and relationships, Wood says. The happiest find ways to feel useful, giving them a sense of purpose and making their time feel meaningful. The happiest tend to say they enjoy serving others in some capacity.

"I think of old age as the richest form of emotional satisfaction that is possible," Carstensen says. "There are still positive emotions, but there is also an understanding and appreciation that there is an ending around the corner."

An appreciation of remaining time leads older people to be more grateful for what they have, Carstensen and other researchers say. And being thankful is great for mental health. Studies by Robert A. Emmons, a psychology professor at UC Davis, show that people who focus on what they are grateful for have better emotional well-being, especially a positive mood, compared with people who focus on the negative or neutral information.

"When you focus on gratefulness, you see that other people are providing you with support and value you," says Emmons, author of the book "Thanks! How the New Science of Gratitude Can Make You Happier." "You see that good stuff doesn't just happen randomly. It helps you make sense out of life. Grateful people see their lives as gifts."

Being able to forgive is the flip side, he adds. "It helps reduce negative emotions like anger and resentment."

That's why neurotics, who get stuck on life's hurts, may be among the few personality types that don't mellow with age, Carstensen says. Neurotics are people who "keep going back to the same negative relationships and the same negative thoughts. They don't change," she says.

In fact, individual temperament is still the best predictor of happiness overall, Wood says. A child who is always smiling will likely be joyful decades later. The grumpy 30-year-old will likely be a grumpy, if slightly less so, 70-year-old.

A pleasant surprise

Why does the idea of being most happy in old age come as a shock to young and old alike? Psychological science has a reason for that too. We humans are terrible at predicting what will make us happy.

Younger people tend to think that happiness is getting what you want: a fabulous body, great job, true love, a nice place to live and a good ride. No one should dismiss the hopeful dreams of the young, but it's just not that simple, Wood says.

"We try to make decisions that make us happy, but we're not good at doing that," she says.

Well-known research shows that a sudden increase in wealth doesn't correlate to long-term gains in happiness, and people who become paralyzed due to accidents return from despair to their previous levels of happiness. Parents assume they will be bereft when the kids leave home, but happiness and marital satisfaction typically improve.

Aging too falls into that puzzling category in which reality often defies expectations.

"Why is it that when we think of age, we think about all the bad things that will happen?" says Dr. Peter Ubel, director of the Center for Behavioral and Decision Sciences in Medicine at the University of Michigan, who has studied happiness among ill and older people. "That is one of the reasons we don't anticipate happiness in aging very well."

Until recently, psychological study focused almost solely on life's negatives: bad behavior, troubled relationships, depression and stress. Today, researchers are also studying so-called positive psychology -- those factors that help people thrive mentally and emotionally.

The study of elder happiness has been a fruitful foray in positive psychology, experts say, showing that older people are happier if they stay socially connected, pursue new experiences and do things that make them feel useful.

Young can benefit too

Such research offers lessons for younger people as well. Teaching adolescents and young adults about the joys of volunteer work and community service may pry them from the self-centeredness that contemporary society reinforces, Emmons says.

"We live in a culture where people expect certain entitlements; 'I'm owed these things,' or 'I deserve these things,' " Emmons says. "It goes against the spirit of having a sense of purpose and being useful."

Similarly, teaching a child to count his or her blessings might place that child on an elevated happiness trajectory that persists throughout life, he suggests.

The rare younger people who experience the rich happiness common to their elders may be those who have recovered from life-threatening illness or addiction, Carstensen says. She cites research that shows people often feel differently about their lives after surviving a serious illness. They have come face-to-face with the "shrinking time horizon" that older people routinely live with.

"As people come to appreciate the fragility of life, they tend to put more value on it," she says. "There is something about recognizing our own mortality."

Combining the mental shrewdness of youth with the ability to savor life might be a successful recipe for contented living -- whatever one's age.

"If only younger people could step out of themselves and focus on the positive and realize life is fragile and life is valuable," Carstensen says. "And if older people could think about the future and worry a little bit more, that's probably good."

For example, elderly people may be too trusting. They are the most likely to be victims of financial scams, and they may make bad healthcare or financial decisions because they fail to think critically through the pros and cons of a situation.

Freedom to grow old

Elders will probably always have the last laugh, Carstensen says. Young people typically don't have the freedom to be as choosy about their activities and relationships. They have to show deference to the professor, please the boss, network with business acquaintances, discipline the toddler and beg the banker for a mortgage.

"That is what goes on in youth," she says. "Younger people have to prepare for a long, nebulous future. That is anxiety-producing. I'm not sure it would be adaptive for young people to say, 'I'm not going to worry about the future,' because you do have to worry about the future.' "

As people age, they are gradually relieved of the burden of planning for the future, she notes.

In the words of the psychologically astute British poet Robert Browning:

"Grow old along with me!
The best is yet to be,
The last of life,
for which the first was made."

It’s very freeing to be at this point in life. You don’t trivialize things. If the dishwasher breaks, so what? It’s not a big event. You can be more grateful. I’m so unafraid now. And I’m so unlonely because of Jerry. Every night we go to bed and say, ‘Thank God we got through another day.’ It’s gratitude. That’s what it is — gratitude.”

— Rita Lowenthal, 80; lives in Santa Monica with second husband, Jerome Cushman, who is 93 and has dementia; retired from a career in social work; mother to two children, one of whom died of a drug overdose at 39; recently wrote “One-Way Ticket,” a book about coping with her son’s heroin addiction and death. Photo: Lawrence K. Ho, Los Angeles Times

By Shari Roan
Copyright 2007 Los Angeles Times

INDIA: Chandigarh Seniors Seek Specialised Geriatric Centre

CHANDIGARH (The Indian Express), October 14, 2007: Chandigarh’s sizable elderly population feels there is need for a specialised geriatric health centre despite the availability of ample health facilities. Many senior citizens suffer from multiple health problems. They also suffer because of limited mobility and prefer to be self-dependent. Hospitals need to be more sensitive towards their needs, they feel. "It is a tough situation for elderly who suffer from more than one health problem," said A. K. Ummat, chairman, Sai Tara Ummat Foundation, an NGO working for the benefit of the elderly. "Government hospitals are so crowded that the elderly wait their turn for hours. This is tortuous at their age," Ummat said. "Most of them live alone and are on pension, cannot afford private healthcare, especially for multi discipline care," he said. Two hospitals in Chandigarh run geriatric clinics, but the facilities are far from adequate. "We need hospitals that are more sensitive to the needs of the elderly. Treatment and counselling should be part of hospital visits, said Mr. K.K. Joshi, general secretary of Defence Services Civilian, a pensioner welfare association. "We also want that more hospitals should be empanelled to the Central Government Health Scheme (CGHS). For instance, as far as cardiac problems go we only have Post Graduate Instititute under CGHS and everyone knows how crowded it is," Joshi said. "Most emergencies require cardiac care and then we have only one option," he added. There are 77 million elderly in India and the number is rising. In contrast, there is no department of geriatric medicine in any hospital in the country. "The elderly have multiple problems. Moreover, handling of drugs, response to drugs, drug dosage, time of recovery after procedures is completely different in the elderly," said Dr S. C. Verma, Head of Internal Medicine at PGI. "For this, we need people who understand the problems of the elderly and therefore, there is acute need of developing a different department of geriatric medicine," he said. The geriatrics department would consist of doctors of all specialities and cross referral of patients would become convenient. "The elderly complain about long queues and running from one department to another. One department dedicated to geriatrics would solve that," said Dr Verma. The PGI has a holistic geriatric department, but the plan is still in the initial stages, he said. By Swaha Sahoo © 2007 Indian Express Newspapers (Mumbai) Ltd

USA: Seniors in Suburbs Left Stranded When Driving Gets Difficult

WILMINGTON, Delaware (The News Journal), October 14, 2007: By now, most people know that Delaware's population is aging. The oldest of the baby-boom generation will be eligible for Social Security payments next year. They will be followed by millions of others across the nation and tens of thousands here. The effect of this age wave will be immense, as many observers have pointed out. But it will be more than just numbers that affect us. Housing decisions made decades ago will present problems we never had to consider in the past. Not only are Delawareans getting older but they will be aging in suburbs that are spread out and heavily dependent on automobiles. That will be crucial. Most of our houses are now dependent on cars. Think of our present crowded roads, then picture what they will be like when a large percentage of drivers are over age 65. The immediate problem won't be safety. Older drivers tend to be safer than younger ones. They take fewer chances and they avoid heavily traveled roads at rush hour. But in about 10 years, we will see more retirees on the road, making frequent, shorter trips during off-peak hours. Stopping and starting cars on short trips won't allow engines to reach maximum efficiency and thus will aggravate pollution problems. In addition, today's seniors tend to do most of their driving from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. That's why major roads are congested even after rush hour. Multiply that traffic pattern tenfold for an idea of the future. The challenge is greater than mere inconvenience. Slowly this age group will give up driving. How will that many people get to doctors' offices or shopping centers? Our paratransit system is already overburdened. It becomes more complicated when this demographic wave is broken down. Today many senior citizens live with others or have someone close by who can drive them when they can't. In the future more senior citizens will be living alone. Many baby boomers never married or didn't have children. When an individual loses the ability to drive, he or she can be isolated. A facile answer would be to tell these people to move. But many will be unable to do that. Their houses will be their biggest investment. And not all all suburban houses are the mansions that elitists like to mock. Delaware has crucial challenges ahead. Solutions of the past will not always work in the future. We're long past the time to start thinking about them. Copyright © 2007, The News Journal.

USA: My Days With Morris - Friendship With A Centenarian

EVERYDAY HEROES: By Daniel Shoer Roth MIAMI, Florida (Miami Herald), October 14, 2007: The lines on his face that testify to a century-long walk though life seemed to present an obstacle to people who couldn't understand the reasons that drew Morris Rosen and me together. On a sunny spring afternoon, I invited Morris to an art exhibit in Coconut Grove. I insisted that we borrow a wheelchair. But Morris, a centenarian with more energy than most young people, didn't like the idea very much, though I finally persuaded him. As we passed through the galleries, the people watching us smiled. ''Are you taking your grandfather out for a walk?'' a woman asked. ''He's a hundred years old,'' I answered. ''He's your great-grandfather!'' she exclaimed with admiration. ''No,'' I said in a tone that created more uncertainty. I paused and then explained, ``We're friends.'' In a world in which the young don't make an effort to know any senior citizens besides their grandparents, and sometimes not even then, my relationship with Morris has made me think about the journey on the Time Machine that much of my generation, out of ignorance, is missing. His phenomenal memory allows him to recreate the street of the shtetl where he lived in Lomza, Poland, and his sense of humor -- so picaresque that during his 100th birthday party the microphone was taken from him because his jokes were too risqué -- has captivated me more than any book, movie or newspaper article. Morris is extraordinary. He has no time to think about his health, for instance, because for the past year, he's been occupied with his biography, Ghetto Roots. In it he narrates colorful details about his life, interwoven with the history of Eastern European Jews. ''I've forgotten where my doctor lives,'' he claims with a mischievous smile. Every afternoon, he sits in front of the computer in his apartment in Sunny Isles Beach to revise the Yiddish and English editions that he wrote in his 90s. ''Now I have better ideas than ever before, much better,'' he declares. The more I've gotten to know Morris, the more curious I am to discover how a person his age can be so full of life. ''I don't have a secret,'' he confesses. ``When you live to be a hundred, you get a lot of practice.'' Yet he insists he's not old: ``I don't believe the calendar reflects your age.'' • Friendships with younger people represent a window of learning for senior citizens, a breath of fresh air. ''How do you know what to write about every day?'' Morris asks me. ``Where do you get your ideas?'' Conversations like this, among myriad other topics, have marked the first year of brotherhood between a 100-year-old Polish Jew who left his country at the age of 22 in search of a better future in the Americas, and a 31-year-old Venezuelan Jew who left his country at the age of 23. Our lives have intersected thanks to Two's Company, a program run by Jewish Community Services of South Florida that pairs volunteers with clients who are senior citizens in need of companionship. The organization put us together because we are both writers. Most elderly individuals who look for company through the program live under the shadow of loneliness, which, along with heart disease, is among the top health problems faced by the million of those ages 65 and over who live in Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties. As a result, explained Carl Eisdorfer, a professor of psychiatry who directs the Center on Aging at the University of Miami, older people, especially those who live to 100 and beyond, have a high probability of suffering from depression and run the risk of malnutrition and the loss of mental energy, unless they are very disciplined, as Morris is. Census investigators calculate that nearly a third of the population aged 65 and over live alone -- a situation often accompanied by loneliness, a sad nostalgia that causes a lack of connection and a feeling of rejection by the rest of society. This ostracism makes many want to withdraw into their shell forever. Approximately every 83 minutes, a person aged 65 and over takes his or her life in the United States, according to data from the Institute on Aging in San Francisco. The risk of suicide is higher in this age group than in any other, the Institute finds. By establishing bonds with the generations following them, the elderly feel more connected to the community. For young people, it's an opportunity to learn. ''Many young people don't feel comfortable around old people who aren't their grandparents, unless it's within a professional context,'' Max Rothman, executive director of the Center on Aging at Florida International University, told me. ``The elderly are not part of their social environment, and there's also an underlying fear of aging.'' Although Morris feels lucky because of his long life, turning 100 has also increased his loneliness. ''All my friends have died,'' he says while looking at the floor. With the exception of a daughter who lives in his building -- the rest of his family is spread across the country -- and the volunteers who visit him, Morris spends the day accompanied only by his memories. That's why it's difficult to describe the enormous smile he has when I visit. ''I don't believe you're younger -- you're the same age as me,'' he says with a trace of sarcasm. ``Age isn't that important when it comes to a true friendship.'' When it's time for me to go, he becomes sad. I always come close to tears. ''Thank you very much,'' he says as he closes the door to his house. ``You're so good to me.'' ''No, thank you,'' I answer. ``You're the one who's good to me.'' -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- This is adapted from a column that appeared on July 11, 2005. © 2007 Miami Herald Media Company.

JAPAN: Senior Citizens Go On Rampage Through Japan

TOKYO, Japan (The Japan Times), October 14, 2007: A man in his 70s, tall and white-haired, takes a mikan (Japanese tangerine) from the supermarket shelf. He peels it and starts eating. "What do you think you're doing?" remonstrates a store clerk. "But if I don't taste it," retorts the man, "how will I know if it's good?" A woman of about 80, very nicely made up, enters a convenience store. She fills her basket with snacks and walks out again. A clerk chases after her: "You have to pay for those, ma'am." "My mind wanders. There's nothing I can do about it," says the woman. With Japan aging at a pace unprecedented in all world history, to grasp the national psychology we must grasp the psychology of the old. Shukan Bunshun takes a stab at it, querying 1,000 people at random on experiences they have had, or scenes they have witnessed, involving the elderly. The evidence is purely anecdotal, but its drift, for what it's worth, is clear. The elderly are more demanding, more capricious and at times — the word is unavoidable — more obnoxious than ever before. A man of about 70 takes the rind of a consumed watermelon back to the store. "It wasn't good," he says. "I want my money back." Once a week or so a woman in her 80s walks from her home to a nearby department store — but once inside, she suddenly finds herself in need of one of the store's wheelchairs. "Push me, won't you?" she entreats a saleslady. She always finds someone who feels uncomfortable about refusing, though she never buys anything. Once she went too far. "Would you mind," she asked, "taking me to the department store on the other side of the station?" Even with the very old in a still somewhat Confucian society, there are limits. An ambulance driver vents his frustration over the numerous senior citizens who call for an ambulance without really needing one. "The most surprising incident of that kind," he tells Shukan Bunshun, "was when a man asked me if I could please stop somewhere, he had to use the toilet." A certain senior citizens' club provides health checks and medical advice. One club member is a man in his 80s. "When I try to take his blood pressure," says a 56-year-old female staffer, "he takes hold of my hand. He puts his arm around my waist. He touches my breasts. The younger women won't go near him, so I have him all to myself . . ." "My 88-year-old mother lives alone," relates a woman of 60. "She's being stalked by a man of the same age. He phones her several times a day. If she turns her phone off he rides his wheelchair to her house and makes threatening remarks. So she leaves the phone on. She feels it's easier to put up with his phone calls." It's never easy being old, and it's doubly difficult, Shukan Bunshun points out, in times like our own, when rapid change can leave the elderly very far behind. "I once saved an old woman from being run over by a truck," says a 39-year-old man. " 'You could've been killed!' I burst out. 'That,' she snapped, 'would have been just fine!' " By Michael Hoffman, Shukan Bunshan The Japan Times (C) All rights reserved

U.K.: Longer Life Without Dignity Is A Living Hell, Not A Blessing

This is a year of miracles. We are at a dawn of biomedical genetics. Diseases of old age will be eradicated and babies born today may thrive long into the 22nd century. That's according to Newsweek magazine.

New Scientist, though, is gloomier. UK citizens aged over 100 will increase a hundredfold, to one million, by 2074.

But unless government acts now, ageing may be a curse to the individual and a national problem on a par with terrorism or global warming.

Medical advances have increased life expectancy,
but the quality of life
enjoyed by the elderly has not kept pace,
comments Mary Riddell in
THE SUNDAY OBSERVER

LONDON, England (The Sunday Observer), October 14, 2007:

Should any elderly patient in a Kent hospital pick up these publications from a passing Red Cross trolley, it's not hard to imagine which account would sound more true. In an era of wonders, 90 people in the care of Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust died from Clostridium difficile between 2004 and last year.
Many of the elderly victims were forced to lie, ignored and stripped of dignity, in diarrhoea-soiled sheets on wards that would shame a Crimean battlefield, let alone a country whose health service is fancifully supposed to be the envy of the world.

Here's another everyday story of how lives end. It's about a woman I know who is approaching her 100th birthday in this annus mirabilis. Her daughters, who live far away, discover she is being drugged at her care home to keep her quiet. It takes them six months of bureaucracy and rage before a place in another home is promised, in due course. In the meantime, their fragile and demented mother is threatened with eviction. Two weeks from now, she could be on the streets.

So who's right on the future of the elderly: the Jeremiahs or the Pollyannas? John Harris, a bioethics professor at Manchester University and the latest cheerleader for a superhuman race, is among the optimists. In his new book, Enhancing Evolution, Harris argues that we can and must create better and longer-lasting people by almost all available means. Coercion, such as enforced organ removal from the dead, is fine by him if it hastens progress.

Designer children, cloned babies and humans engineered to be free of killer diseases are, in his view, our tomorrow and an undisputed good. If the short-term result is a human race split into rich, intelligent, near-immortals and more stupid, disease-prone losers, then that is a price worth paying.

In the Harris theory, we are all enhancers. We ride bicycles to go faster, wear spectacles to see better and find, or buy, the best possible education for our children. Genetic fixes, he says, are merely part of an existing pattern. Even those who, like me, think human improvement mostly desirable, might have trouble with this logic. Nor is it clear whether the near-immortality Harris envisages would be desirable or what writer Douglas Adams called 'the long, dark teatime of the soul'. Even worse, lifetimes running into double centuries might simply be a variant of the Thomas Hobbes prescription: solitary, poor, nasty, brutish. And long.

None the less, we are heading for extended existence, with or without genetic miracles. Average lifespan has increased by 2.2 years a decade, or five hours a day, for the last century. By 2050, there will be twice as many over-85s as there are now. Yet as neuroscientist Guy Brown points out in New Scientist, healthy life expectancy rose by only 0.6 years between 1991 and 2001.

In this landscape, the brave new world sketched by John Harris and others is a gift for government. Politicians may dispute the cavalier ethics involved, but the prospect of bungee-jumping third-agers, with money in the bank and King Creosote on their iPods is a valuable illusion. We all aspire to the Harris dream of glorious old age, which suits government ministers. We don't want to dwell on the cold thought of dementia and death and they don't want to remind us of their abject lack of planning.

Thus, the appalling treatment of too many elderly people is the best-kept secret in Britain. There is almost no political debate about how to keep an ageing population from pain and penury, let alone how to provide what the elderly need and deserve. Just before the Kent hospital scandal emerged, Alistair Darling offered, in his comprehensive spending review, a hint of change in care funding.

The King's Fund health think-tank, which argues, sensibly, for individuals and the state splitting costs more fairly, said ministers were briefing an end to a system obliging many people to sell their homes to pay for residential care. This would indeed be progress, but Darling, less optimistically, has only nodded at some need for reform.

Now there will be a green paper. Big deal. You would have to plan to outlive Methuselah to imagine that vague promises of consultation are going much to help this cohort of pensioners or the next. Meanwhile, local authorities get a paltry rise of 1 per cent above inflation to pay for social care for elderly people living at home. Within three years, another 400,000 will be trying to get the domestic help that is, even now, almost impossible to come by.

When I inquired, not long before my 86-year-old mother died, whether she would be eligible for a small amount of care, paid for by her family, in her own house, the hospital staff looked as if I had asked whether Elvis Costello might drop by to entertain the medical wing. For the penniless, the situation is much more dire. Yet wards are clogged with elderly patients yearning to live, and die, at home. As Counsel and Care suggests, money spent on unnecessary, expensive (and, as today's Observer investigation shows, sometimes abysmal) hospital care should be used to help people live independently, as they wish.

Obviously, an ageing population is expensive. Sir Derek Wanless, who led the King's Fund review of social care, said that just standing still would mean increasing the £10.1bn spent in 2002 to £24bn in 2026. But at least four times that sum will be needed to make a difference. Cost is one reason that Brown, though keener on reform than his predecessor, is no Santa Claus.

But there are other questions, more difficult than money. For now, medicine imposes on people ever longer lives they may not want, especially if they are sick and weary.

On current trends, Britons face a 25 to 50 per cent chance of dying with dementia.

We must let people have a greater say in how and when they die, by allowing euthanasia to those who want to escape the tyranny of enforced existence.

Rather than preaching cruel platitudes about the sanctity of life, we need to discuss more honestly whether it is right to ordain a living death on stroke victims and others who will never regain any semblance of a normal existence.

Death, far from being the great taboo, is sometimes more desirable, and more gratefully received, than life.

But first, government needs to face up to the merciless treatment of the elderly and their family carers. More than 3.5 million old people are denied proper mental health care. Only 18 per cent of British dementia patients get the right drugs, compared with 50 per cent in France. Help with shopping, laundry and meals on wheels and transport is evaporating. Pensioners are so debt-laden that the number filing for bankruptcy has risen eightfold in five years.

By all means, hope for Alzheimer's cures and a future in which the Saga generation strolls, with Botoxed smiles, towards near-eternity on earth.

The danger of this fantasy of old age is that myths of our superhuman tomorrow obscure the truth of our sub-human today.

By Mary Riddell
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007

USA: Caregivers Have The Highest Rate of Depression Of All Workers

WASHINGTON (The Seattle Times - Associated Press), October 14, 2007: People who tend to the elderly, change diapers and serve food and drinks have the highest rates of depression among U.S. workers. Overall, 7 percent of full-time workers battled depression in the past year, according to a government report out Saturday. Women were more likely than men to have had a major bout of depression, and younger workers had higher rates of depression than their older colleagues. Almost 11 percent of personal-care workers — which includes child care and helping the elderly and severely disabled with their daily needs — reported depression lasting two weeks or longer. During such episodes there is loss of interest and pleasure, and at least four other symptoms surface, including problems with sleep, eating, energy, concentration and self-image. Workers who prepare and serve food — cooks, bartenders, waiters and waitresses — had the second-highest rate of depression among full-time employees, at 10.3 percent. The lowest rate of depression, 4.3 percent, occurred in the job category that covers engineers, architects and surveyors. Government officials tracked depression within 21 major occupational categories. They combined data from 2004 through 2006 to estimate episodes of depression within the past year. That information came from the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, which registers lifetime and past-year depression bouts. Depression leads to $30 billion to $44 billion in lost productivity annually, said the report from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. The various job categories tracked could be quite broad, with employees grouped in the same category seemingly having little in common. For example, one category included workers in the arts, media, entertainment and sports. In the personal-care category, a worker caring for toddlers at a day-care center would have quite a different job from a nursing aide who helps an older person live at home rather than in a nursing home. Working full time would appear to be beneficial in preventing depression. The overall rate of depression for full-time workers, 7 percent, compares with the 12.7 per cent rate registered by those who are unemployed. How occupations stacked up The percentage of full-time workers ages 18 to 64 reporting depression lasting two weeks or longer, by categories of occupation, as provided by the National Survey on Drug Use and Health using 2004 through 2006 data: Occupation...........................Percent Personal care and service.....................10.8 Food preparation and serving-related..........10.3 Community and social services..................9.6 Health-care practitioners and technical........9.6 Arts, design, entertainment, sports and media..9.1 Education, training and library................8.7 Office and administrative support..............8.1 Building/grounds cleaning and maintenance......7.3 Financial......................................6.7 Sales and related..............................6.7 Legal..........................................6.4 Transportation and material moving.............6.4 Mathematical and computer scientists...........6.2 Production.....................................5.9 Management.....................................5.8 Farming, fishing and forestry..................5.6 Protective service.............................5.5 Construction and extraction....................4.8 Istallation, maintenance and repair............4.4 Life, physical and social science..............4.4 Engineering, architecture and surveyors........4.3 Source: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration By Kevin Freking Copyright © 2007 The Seattle Times Company

MEXICO: It's Becoming A Refuge For US Retirees

Jim McMullin, 73, left, from Houston, and David Millor, from Edmonton, Canada, have their weekly game at the Lake Chapala Society in Ajijic. "I came down for a short visit and fell in love with the place," said McMullin.
Photo: Sharón Steinmann/Chronicle

A refuge for retirement: Lured by cheaper costs, more Americans head south of the border to live out their leisure years

AJIJIC, Mexico (The Houston Chronicle), October 14, 2007:

Drawn by the eternal spring weather and laid-back lifestyle, American retirees have been migrating to this lakeside village deep inside Mexico for decades.

Now, facing the sobering prospect that their money will run out before their last breath does, some are considering Ajijic and other expatriate communities across Mexico as a cheaper place to get needed care through the end of their lives.

Though few come with dying on their minds, tens of thousands of retirees long have been heading to this community on the shore of Mexico's largest lake — and dozens of other towns and cities nationwide — looking to spend their leisure years in paradise.

The Margaritaville moments might last decades. But the life cycle spins on no matter where they may live, and the aging Americans face much the same tough choices on health care here that they would at home.

Increasingly, they have decided that Mexico is as good or better a place as any to face the inevitable.

"I would never go back home," said Harold "Skip" Waggoner, 67, a former deputy sheriff from Central Florida who retired 12 years ago to Ajijic. "My mother spent five years in a nursing home. That's scary.

"The Mexicans value old people, and they take care of them."

With 78 million Americans hitting retirement age through the next three decades, and many finding themselves financially unprepared for the transition, the number of southbound seniors looking for warmer and cheaper climes is expected to surge.

Sales of retirement or vacation homes for foreigners already are booming in places such as Ajijic, San Miguel Allende and Mexico's coastal resorts. The same is happening in Costa Rica, Panama and even in impoverished Nicaragua.

Entrepreneurs are planning retirement villages and assisted living facilities to service the graying Americans. Pressure is building to allow Medicare, Medicaid and veterans benefits to pay for care in Mexico and elsewhere overseas.

Ajijic may prove a guidepost as the boom develops. Developers already have established a handful of assisted-living and extended-care nursing homes catering to the foreigners.

Yet the market remains small, and many American professionals in elderly care caution that moving out of the U.S. often is not the best solution.

Despite plans for other facilities, the only convalescent homes focused on caring for the foreign elderly in Mexico are in this town and several others along the shore of Lake Chapala, just south of Guadalajara.

A matter of numbers
The homes' paying residents total fewer than 150 people. That's just a sliver of the 50,000 Americans, most of them of retirement age, that the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara estimates live in the region.

The Ajijic convalescent homes charge about $1,200 a month for room, board and maid service, about a third of the price of similar facilities in the United States.

"When it gets down to the dollars and the number crunching, they're going to come," said Dudley Baker, 61, who retired to Ajijic nine years ago from a job with the IRS in Houston.

"I think all of us, if we're fortunate to live so long, will end up in a place like this someday."

Baker's mother, Agnes, came here two years ago to visit and ended up staying.

While spending Christmastime with Baker and his brother, Ron, she caught pneumonia, and she was treated in an Ajijic clinic for five days. After her release, Baker moved her to an assisted-living facility to recover.

Then Baker and his brother persuaded her that it was best to sell her home of 40 years in San Antonio and move to Mexico. She was living alone and had fallen several times.

"I hated to leave my house, and I had my sister there," an animated Agnes Baker, 88, said in a soft Texas drawl as she sat in an easy chair inside her clean, large bedroom at Alicia's Convalescent, the assisted-living facility that is her home now. "At first it was all new, so I was a little apprehensive."

But with time, Baker learned to adjust.

Her sons visit her daily now, instead of a few times a year. She said the food at the home is very good, and her room opens onto a pleasant garden. She has become good friends with the registered nurse who is the home's owner, Alicia Sandoval, and her children.

"She wants you to just act like this is your home," Baker said of Sandoval, who with her husband and two sons operates four Ajijic houses serving 25 foreign residents with conditions ranging from mild walking problems to Alzheimer's disease.

"If you want to go to the doctor, she'll take you, or if you need medicine, she'll go buy it for you," said Baker, whose husband of 60 years died in 2002. "It's a lot more reasonable than in the States to go into a place like this."

Still, the leg injury she suffered in one of her falls prohibits Baker from walking Ajijic's cobblestone streets. And though Sandoval and her sons speak English well, many of the women working in the home do not. It can get lonely.

"It's hard to communicate with them," Baker says of the staff, for whom she translates her needs with a Spanish-English dictionary and writes them down. "If I could just learn the language. I wish I could. I think it's a pretty language."

Words of caution
Like Agnes Baker, most residents of the assisted-living homes in the Lake Chapala area have children or close relations here or have been down here themselves for years.

Professionals trying to solve the crisis in U.S. elderly care caution that moving to a foreign land is hardly the solution, despite its economic advantages.

"Trying to do that at an advanced age? Wow!" said Bill Thomas, an assisted-living expert at the Erickson School on Aging at the University of Maryland in Baltimore. "The pressure is there because of the costs. But I don't think you can globalize your family.

"It's not the money or the facilities or the experts," Thomas said of effective care for the aged. "It's the connectiveness. It's very unusual for a person in their 80s to move somewhere new. Part of what makes old age meaningful and worthwhile is community."

Still, retiring relatively young to Mexico, assuming that friends made in an expatriate community stay put, could create what Thomas calls a "cohort effect" of growing old together and watching out for one another along the way.

Though relations with the Mexican residents are often limited — many find it difficult to master Spanish later in life — the foreigners living along Lake Chapala have formed a tight-knit community.

Home prices have skyrocketed in Ajijic recently, but a dollar still buys more than it might back home. A relatively frugal person's U.S. Social Security check can cover his or her monthly living expenses in Mexico, including the services of a maid and gardener, residents say.

In small houses in town or gated communities nearby, the retirees can spend their days playing golf and tennis, doing charity work in local communities, moving from one cocktail party and potluck dinner to another, traveling the country.

"Sometimes there's too much going on," said Waggoner, the retired sheriff's deputy.

But the foreign community seems in constant flux. Many people stay only a few years, then move on. Others return home as their health problems worsen. Still others stay, their world shrinking as their infirmities prevent them from leaving their houses.

In-home care is much cheaper than it would be in the U.S., retirees and Mexican health care professionals say. But a long-term illness such as cancer can bust a budget.

Many of the foreign retirees don't adequately prepare to pay for a major crisis, Mexican medical professionals say.

"Coming here is more than buying a pretty house," said Lidia Zamudio, a registered nurse who has run a home health care service for expatriates in Ajijic for a dozen years. "Once serious illness appears, they aren't prepared."

She explained: "A long illness costs a lot here in Mexico. As a medical professional, it's very sad to turn people away. But we aren't a charity."

For instance, cancer treatment here can cost up to $3,500 a month for medical personnel alone, Zamudio said, and medicine "is very expensive."

Comprehensive medical insurance has become widely available in Mexico and often is much cheaper than that sold in the U.S. Retirees say a policy here costs between $300 and $500 a month.

But many opt to pay out of their pocket for lesser ailments — a doctor's visit costs as little as $15 in Mexico. And with prescriptions unnecessary for most drugs, self-medicating is easy.

Many Americans rave about Mexico's social security system, known as the IMSS, which for about $300 a year in premiums covers them for surgery and hospital stays, should anything go seriously wrong.

But Mexico's social security hospitals, designed to treat the country's working class, are short of doctors, swamped with patients and simply overwhelmed. Although the medical treatments may be fine, long waits for care are the norm. Those Mexicans who can afford to, avoid IMSS hospitals.

"You have to realize it's a public service," Juan Lastra, a physician who treats many foreigners in Ajijic, said of the IMSS.

"If you get sick, where do you end up? This isn't paradise."

'He came prepared to die'
But Mexico seems close enough to nirvana for many of the aging immigrants.

His health in an irreversible slide, Lyle George came to Ajijic to spend his final days.

A retired telephone lineman from northern Montana, the 72-year-old had contracted an incurable nerve disorder that ravaged his body.

He and his wife, Jeanette, had spent time in central Mexico a decade earlier, before he took ill. When the prognosis turned hopeless, the couple decided his life would best end in Mexico.

"He came prepared to die," said Jeanette George, 66, who with the help of their gardener and a house-calling physician home-nursed her husband of half a century until his final breath last year.

She set up a hospital bed in the living room of their Ajijic house for him, and she mostly cared for him herself.

"He could look out his window and see the birds and the roses and the trees," George said. "He could watch the baseball games on television."

But the ordeal exhausted her. She asked her gardener to recommend a nurse who could help some days, letting her get some rest or time to herself. The man replied that he would be honored to help take care of Lyle George.

At the very end, when her husband could no longer swallow, the Georges' doctor asked them what they wished to do. Take no extraordinary measures to prolong his life, they replied.

For six weeks of daily care and visits, the doctor billed her just a little over $600. He suggested that maybe it was too much.

"I can't describe the compassion and care we experienced here," Jeanette George said. "The people who work for me are like my family."

She returned home to Montana after his death 17 months ago. But after three months, she returned to Ajijic. She had returned to stay.

"I knew that Mexico is where I needed to be," she said. "I will always live here."

She said she and most of her friends in Ajijic plan to "stay home to die," when their time comes.

"And what could be more beautiful?" she asked.

By Dudley Althaus
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle

U.K.: Families of Alzheimer's Patients Fighting Back

'I can't look after her - but she's still my Marjorie'

Specialist wards give thousands of Alzheimer's patients the care they deserve. But now they are under threat - and families are fighting back, reports Yvonne Roberts

LONDON, England (The Observer), October 14, 2007:

Most mornings Ted Hoyle, 81, walks the mile to Tolworth Hospital near Surbiton, south-west London, to visit Marjorie, his wife of 53 years, who has vascular dementia. She has been a patient on Fuchsia ward for five years, one of 15 men and women who require continuing care because they have serious dementia.

Some of the patients show aggressive, challenging behaviour; others cannot talk, walk or feed themselves. Ted, a retired engineer and toolmaker, looked after Marjorie, now 78, for seven years before she was admitted. 'She was terribly forgetful and doubly incontinent,' he said. 'I used to have to lock all the doors, but she got out one Sunday morning. The police found her. She was black and blue and covered in blood. She couldn't tell me what had happened.

'In the end, the staff at the day centre said they didn't know how I managed, because they couldn't cope with her any more. On Fuchsia, she is looked after by marvellously competent people who do for her what I can't do any more.'

Fuchsia ward, within the Acacia Unit of the hospital, is a prime example of 'best practice' and is one of a range of services provided by the South West London and St George's Mental Health Trust for the Kingston Primary Care Trust. The PCT has broken even so far this financial year, but it has a deficit of £22m, accumulated over the previous three years. So it proposes to cut a number of services, including the closure of Fuchsia and wants to move the residents into private nursing homes.

The proposed shutdown of Fuchsia, the quality of treatment its patients might receive in the private sector and the cost-cutting priorities of Kingston PCT in an effort to meet government targets and balance its books is a cameo of the much larger crisis of care affecting thousands of older people with dementia and their families - a crisis that is bound to grow.

The UK already has 700,000 people with dementia - a figure predicted to rise to a million in less than 20 years. According to the Alzheimer's Society, 62 per cent of people in residential or nursing care have dementia, but too few are receiving the specialised care they require. Although there are 201,000 people in residential care with dementia in England, there are only 124,000 registered dementia beds.

Neil Hunt, chief executive of the society, says: 'For years, continuing care wards have been closing across the country as the government seeks to move the care of people with severe dementia from hospital to nursing homes. As a policy this may look fine on paper, but in practice thousands of families are finding that nursing homes are simply not set up to provide the high-level specialist care that people with very severe dementia require.

'Continuity of care is incredibly important for a person with dementia,' Hunt adds. 'Moving can be extremely distressing when you have dementia, and should only be considered when it is in the best interests of the person and their family, not as a cost-cutting exercise.'

'My Dad said that he feels like he is in a bubble everything is going on around him, he can see it but is no longer able to be a part of it. Sometimes I can join him in that bubble and life is as it was, albeit fleetingly!
File Photo: Alzheimer's Society, U.K..

In Kingston, families are now campaigning to stop Fuchsia's closure. 'What the relatives already know is that a number of local homes aren't able or willing to provide the specialised care required,' says Helen Clarke, director of Kingston Advocacy Group, who has been asked by patients' families to organise resistance to the closure. 'That's why they have chosen to fight.'

Liz Harding, 91, is the oldest patient on the ward, having arrived three years ago. Her daughter, Sue Turner, says: 'She lived with me for three years and gradually got worse. She became extremely violent and abusive and is still very noisy. I worry that in a nursing home she'd be given extra drugs to keep her quiet.

'At a meeting we were told our relatives would be placed in homes with their own bathroom and TV. But that's not what they need. Some of them are in a vegetative state. What they require is excellent specialised intensive care.'

David Smith, chief executive of Kingston PCT, rejects the word 'cuts' and prefers 'reconfiguration'. 'We are seeking better quality of care for our money,' he says. 'The impact of a move for a person with dementia doesn't have to be negative. It can be very positive. A client will only be moved when we are absolutely satisfied we are matching his or her needs with what is available. What we are proposing means change, and change is obviously difficult. We are absolutely committed to tackling the financial issues, but only by improving care, not worsening it.'

'What reconfiguration opens up,' says Stephen Burke of the charity Counsel and Care, 'is the question of what kind of care are we going to provide for this growing group of older people with severe dementia - and who is going to pay for it? Whether it's in their own homes, nursing homes or hospital, many will require one-to-one support, and that costs money.'

The government has acknowledged the growing problem both in its White Paper, Our Health Our Care, and in commissioning the Wanless report which in 2006 further underlined that fresh forms of funding are desperately required to pay for the dramatic increase in those requiring care. A working party is drawing up a National Dementia Strategy.

On Fuchsia ward, the relatives' first objection is that the move itself could be life-threatening. Research endorses their concern. Professor David Jolley, a consultant in the psychiatry of old age, says: 'From common experience, from my clinical experience and from an informed review of literature, it is inescapable that relocation is a stressful event and can precipitate problems of mental health, physical health and even bring forth death.'

Professor Allyson Pollock, head of the centre for international public health policy at the University of Edinburgh, has conducted research on private care homes in the United States which may hold lessons for this country. In the US big companies have moved into the field, something that's also happening here, says Laing & Buisson, the leading health and care market researcher. 'Experiences in the US and Australia have shown the lack of political will to promote the interests of residents against the interests of the industry and its shareholders,' Pollock says. 'What goes is staffing levels and quality of care.'

In Britain, every registered nursing home is checked by the Commission for Social Care Inspection and a report made covering such things as diet, nursing care and staff. Three of the 10 nursing homes in Kingston and Surbiton had good reports. Commission inspectors voiced concerns about the other seven.

'Staff on duty... did not always appear sufficient to meet needs,' one report said. Another noted: 'The number of qualified nurses on duty consistently fell below that expected in a home of this size... some staff work excessively long shifts...mistakes are more likely to be made.'

Gail Wing, of the Alzheimer's Society, estimates the cost of providing good-quality care for people with dementia as between £1,000 and £1,500 a week. Costs in the 10 nursing homes mentioned ranged from £550 to £850.

Derek Williams's wife, Sheila, has been on Fuchsia ward for 16 years. She was admitted in her late fifties. He visits twice a week. 'She doesn't know me. People say why go - but after 50 years, I can't turn my back on her. She doesn't speak, but she knows the nurses and they know her. She rocks continuously in her chair. She eats only liquidised food. Sometimes it takes me or a nurse an hour to feed her. Is someone in a nursing home going to sit with her for an hour?'

Critics say NHS cuts appear to be hitting soft targets such as mental health and care for the elderly where it is thought there will be less vocal opposition, just when Conservatives and Labour are talking about patients having more 'choice' and 'control'.

Councillor Don Jordan is chairman of Kingston council's health overview and scrutiny panel, which monitors the health service for local residents. 'Relatives are never going to say "well done" when you are trying to find homes for the people they care for. But the PCT has to do as honest and careful a job as it can,' he says. '

Tomorrow Ted Hoyle will visit Marjorie on Fuchsia ward as he always does. 'I was told she would be there for the rest of her life, and that made me happy. Now they want to put Marjorie in a nursing home,' he says. 'They tried that once before - four days later she was sent back to Fuchsia because the home couldn't cope. If that happens again and the ward is closed, where will she go then? She's not a sack of potatoes, she's my Marjorie.'

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The growing danger

The term 'dementia' is used to describe the symptoms that occur when the brain is affected by specific diseases and conditions, including Alzheimer's disease and strokes. Symptoms of dementia include memory loss, as well as confusion and speech problems.

Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia. About 450,000 people suffer from the disease in the UK and more than 700,000 suffer from dementia. Age, genetic inheritance, environmental factors and diet are all possible causes for Alzheimer's, but age is the greatest risk factor. There are more than 15,000 people under the age of 65 with dementia in the UK. Each year 60,000 deaths a year are directly attributable to dementia. By 2025 more than a million people in this country will be suffering from it.

Rowan Walker
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© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007