Is this how Londoners care for each other?

Subject: Is this how Londoners care for each othe
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:30 PM

In light of how some of you take the USA to task on things, like the unfortunate incident with the two girls and their Mom recently, I would like to know how this could happen in such an enlightened big city as you live in?

Keep yer head down, Maura, there is a dustup a'comin'.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:37 PM

Mick, congrats on learning how to troll. It's not that hard, but it takes a dedication to pissing people off and at least lets people know a little more about you. If you keep trying, you can excel at doing what you hate.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: redsnapper
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:41 PM

No... it happened in Bristol (:>)

RS

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:41 PM

Jeri, you make trolling sound bad! It is a good thing to stir up emotions!

Your response is a good example of trolling as well - it you weren't trolling, you would have sent Mick a note privately.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Bert
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:43 PM

That was in Bristol. What does that have to do with London? And it wasn't reported because the guy had mental health problems.

Of course living in a port in the West of England he may well have been Irish.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Geoff the Duck
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:53 PM

Quite frankly, Mick the whole situation is totally inexcusable. It was reported on the news a couple of days back, but I didn't hear the start of the story. The location is Bristol, which is quite a distance from London (heading on for 200 miles West).
I've still not heard the full story, but it would seem that the living tenant has mental problems, and a number of years back would have been cared for by the health service.
The Tory Party decided they could save money by closing mental hospitals and Old Folks Homes and selling off the buildings cheap to Tory supporters. They replaced looking after mentally handicapped people with something called Care in the Community, which basically consisted of dumping them on the street or in sub-standard housing and ignoring them. As a result, we have had members of the public murdered by mentally ill people who ought to be in hospital, ones who, if they took medication would be perfectly safe.
The item on the news is another example of the fact that because of Government greed, we do not know how many people there are who need help.
It is an indefensible situation.
Quack!
Geoff.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Gedpipes
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:54 PM

Dawn Primarolo - local lawmaker. Thats a new one.
we call them Members of Parliament over here.
keep smiling Mick!
Cheers
Ged

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Noreen
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:56 PM

People have mental health problems wherever there are people.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Don Firth
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 12:56 PM

Why is this not in the BS section?

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:05 PM

I daresay this will shortly go below the line, but I'd just like to point out that Bristol does also have a 40 year old folk club on Monday nights at the Nova Scotia.

I thought Bristol was generally a nice place when I worked there in the early 1980s. Though there was a race riot in St Paul's.

Bert - I sympathise with the argument that the death wasn't reported because the other occupant had mental health problems, but that just takes you to the question of why the other occupant wasn't getting help....

This probably tells us more about big cities generally than any one city in particular.

Kitty

PS Horfield, Bristol, was also the birthplace in 1904, of Archibald Leach, aka Cary Grant.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:15 PM

No, Kitty, it tells us about Thatcher's policy (after stealing milk, when she was education Minister - remember "Thatcher, Thatcher, milk snatcher"?) of cutting public services including mental health services out, so that her rich friends could squeeze the poor harder.

The English posters above you generally got it pretty right.

Parts of Bristol are pretty. St Pauls is not. Remember the St Pauls riots? Again the products of poverty and oppression. Like the Watts riots.

And that brings me the circle - guess who was the evil Maggie's closest evil friend. He policy co-traveller and inspiration. The mindless Ronnie Ray-gun, who had all of Maggie's satanic core but none of her brains. I did say, when it was revealed that he had lost his mind to Alzheimers "How could they tell?". May they twist endlessly together in the fires and ice circles of hell.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Bert
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:18 PM

There are people all over the world with mental health problems that go unnoticed or are of such a nature that the person can care for themselves under normal situations but who cannot cope with extremes.

Take a look at the TV show "How clean is your house?"

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:34 PM

This is what runs through my mind when I read something like this: This 70-something year old wife's died, after they'd been married for years. The man, grieving, didn't know what to do and had no one to talk to. No one cared about either of them enough to notice anything wrong. He was sad, but he still could see her, and maybe talk to her and hold her for a while yet. He could pretend she was still with him and he wasn't all alone. For eight years, all this man had was a corpse.

And then Mick starts a thread in the music section only because he wants to bitch-slap somebody he thinks is in London.

It bothers me more than you'd expect because I didn't think he'd get even with people who did things he didn't like by doing those things in return. And I though he had friends in London. Live and learn.

And Ron Olesko, I've seen what you're about. You don't have to tell me you'd like more trolling here. Mick started this thread only to hurt people. Yes, I took the bait, but I'm done.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Morticia
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:41 PM

If you want a sensible debate on how health and social care is underfunded in this country, you can start with Maggie but it is every bit as bad now, or worse, after ten years of Labour.I know because I am one of the poor sods who try to work in the system. The bottom line is that no one wants to pay more taxes and everyone howls about how state funded services are a load of shit. Make up your minds, folks.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:44 PM

Not wife. Male lodger.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/england/bristol/7234810.stm

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:46 PM

Jeri - but the difference in postings from the UK and US is interesting. In the UK we expect our taxes to be used to help people who are ill, whether physically or mentally. I agree with Richard and Geoff that Care in the Community was a dump on the community.

Kitty

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Bert
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 01:53 PM

I was born in London Jeri, but I thought Mick was just having fun with us. That's why I stuck in the Irish bit.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:15 PM

The placing it in music, believe it or not FRIEND, was purely by mistake. It was meant to be BS.

The thread was started, for the information of those FRIENDS who don't go jumping to nasty accusations, to simply point out my central point in the NYC thread. For those that read those points for understanding, as opposed to just looking for a reason for self righteous punditry, my point was that it is time to stop all these cheapshots and oversimplification of complex problems. Americans and the USA certainly have problems, some unique to us. The Brits and what is Great Britain have their share as do all countries. But in this increasingly smaller world, these problems are worldwide and we need to be thinking as community instead of these tired old oversimplified shots based on our own lifelong prejudices and feelings.

I think the Europeans have been right all along. They recognized the tongue in cheek nature of the post, and the irony of it all. So did Olesko, as usual. It was designed to spark discussion.

Then there is my FRIEND Jeri, who as usual decided to chastise publicy instead of by PM, or better yet........ perish forbid ...... could have PM'ed me to see what I was up to on this.

So let the discussion continue.....

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Beer
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:20 PM

Sad no matter what. Reminds me of the song by Eric Bogle "A REASON FOR IT ALL". Very sad story behind it.
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:26 PM

This story upset me. It isn't just the fact that somebody with problems was not getting the help they should have had but also the fact that people in other flats had voiced concerns about the smell and still nothing was done.

This person not only had to cope with mental health problems on his own but had to live with a corpse, and all that entails, for years. It must have been terrible for him. If other flats were affected, just imagine what it must have been like in the same room - it doesn't bear thinking about.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:27 PM

Funny you say that, Adrien. I thought of the same song. Aside from the tongue in cheek part of it, I can't help but feel sad for the person that lived there, who was apparently mentally challenged. In cities, great and small, around the world, we increasingly see folks that don't even know, let alone care enough about their neighbors, to simply check in on them. While I certainly embrace the new millenium, I must admit to being a bit nostalgic for the time when we understood our neighbors and would come to know them, argue with them, watch out for one another's kids......... all too often in these days, we live right beside folks and don't even know their names.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:28 PM

cross post, eanjay. Well said.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: artbrooks
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:30 PM

Seems to me that I've seen at least two similar stories - that happened in the US - in the last year or so.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:38 PM

Yep, Art, and that is the point.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Beer
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:46 PM

I live in the country and neighbors are not as close as in cities. Not that it matters in this case. I have in my possession three set of neighbors house keys. They are on the emergency phone line and if something happens I am to go to their house to check on them. I think this is a great idea and do hope it spreads.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:55 PM

I live in a rural area and we have a mixed bag here. I also have neighbors keys and try to watch out for others. I also have a snowplow and try to keep folks able to get out to the road. The ones that bother me are the ones, like the neighbors across the street that never even say hello, let alone thanks, or offer to help with gas. But I still do it, and I wish others would just care enough about their neighbors, city, suburb or country, to just keep an eye on one another. This world is getting so impersonal, and I wish one of the offshoots of the internet would be that folks, in my country for instance, would see the commonality we have with friends around the world. If we could channel that into a more caring attitude for others, based on understanding that we all have a stake, that would be wonderful. But when folks can die right next door and lay there for years (no matter whose country it happened in), then we are all to blame and should be sad and ashamed, and determined to not let it happen to our own neighbors.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: skarpi
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 02:55 PM

just few years back in New York , a man was found in his
house dead for ten or twelve years ?

this is happening all over Mick , here in Reykjavik after
a week but not after a few years , we have what s called neighbours
watching , special made for older people who live alone ,
we do this in work with the Icelandic red cross

.All the best Skarpi

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Gulliver
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:14 PM

A similar thing happened in Ireland about two years ago, involving two elderly sisters, and in the house where I lived in Hannover, Germany, six months after I moved out, a body (of a woman I knew to see, as she often called to my apartment to use my phone) was found--it had lain in her apartment for eight months (neighbours thought she was in hospital--she was prone to having strokes).

In Ireland one of the sisters died and her body lay in the bed for about six months while her sister slept in the next room. Again there was a mental problem. These things happen quite often (and always have, IMHO), and are not always reported.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:30 PM

If you had included your posting of 215p, in your first posting, it would have saved some harsh words, imo, Mick. With people weary of the bickering and nastiness which have invaded most threads and the 3D world, it helps to explain, not to infer with irony. Folks are too wound up already to see the irony or humour, some times. And, I don't think we need nay more threads which slag off on one location or another. If you really meant to show how much commonality we all have, why not say so in the thread title? Why pick out Londoners, esp. when it was Bristol?

Ah, well...my brother's biggest fear is he will die and no one know for days. He does not trust me or anyone else to *know* or go check on him, yet he refuses to return phone calls for days on end, then gets all huffy if one of us goes to investigate and finds him well at home.

Sad situations abound.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:33 PM

Yes, Gulliver, that is that point, isn't it? Instead of demonizing and alienating one another, we need to reach out and understand what is common. The young women that had such a bad experience in NYC likely could have encountered the same thing elsewhere. It was a problem of a large city. It could have happened in Dublin, London, Paris, Chicago, Tokyo, or any number of other cities. I don't, for one minute, believe this event says anything about London, England, Great Britain, or any other country and its inhabitants per se. What it does say is the same thing the NYC event says. We need, all of us, to be more vigilant and caring for one another.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: kendall
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:33 PM

Someone said that the measure of a society is how we treat our elderly.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:42 PM

well, kat, it was intended to spark discussion, and to be a comment on another thread that you, and Jeri, conveniently didn't see fit to comment on, name BS: Is this how you treat kids in New York?
. Now perhaps that is because you didn't post.....oh wait, yes you did.....

I find gratuitous shots at the USA to be objectionable. It is my opinion that we must put this stuff away. I remember the day I would take gratuitous shots, in this forum, at "the English" or "the Brits". And my friends taught me over the years. I think that it is just as important to say that same thing back.

So no lecture neede, kat. I said exactly what I meant to say, and the conversation is going the way I hoped it would. I would like to say to one another that the gratuitous cheapshots should stop. I fully recognize what is wrong, in my view, with the country of my birth. And I don't mind discussions of that. But this continuous harangue against us, when all countries have the same problems, and others unique to them, gets tiresome. That is one of several points.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:49 PM

If Mick expect people in England to get all patriotically aerated about this, I think and hope he's mistaken.

This is a sad case that invites people to try to working out what may have gone wrong, and how people (neighbours and social services) could perhaps respond better to a situation like this. And that is something we should welcome.

There's a saying you sometimes hear - "They're good neigbours - you'd hardly know they are there". It sounds rather as if that kind of attitude may have been in play here - but I don't think anyone should leap to the assumption that this is a matter of bad neighbours or of incompetent or uncaring officials.

If it was a matter of a reclusive person who didn't ask for help, and perhaps indicated he didn't want people poking their nose into his business, it's easy enough to see how this could have happened. It doesn't even have to be a case of unhelpful or indifferent neighbours, especially if, as tends to be the case in many cities, the turnover of neighbours was such as to mean that they had no reason to know anything about this man, except that he didn't seem to want to socialise.

The cutbacks in all kind of social support systems which started under Thatcher, and which have never been reversed may well have contributed to this. Terms like "nanny state" have been used to justify a care system in which the notion of social worker sort community workers actually looking for situations where things are going wrong, with a view to finding ways of helping, has been vigorously discouraged.

The irony is that at the very same time that there has been talk about "Care in the Community" as a slogan, the policy in practice has been to fail to support and even to damage existing patterns of care in the community.

In principle the idea of closing down the big institutions that had been presented as providing "care" was completely right, just as it had been right to close down the workhouses a generation or so earlier. For example the big subnormality hospitals and mental asylums were basically awful places. People were often shut away out of sight and out of mind for lifetimes, and institutionally neglected or abused.

The failure was that as these were closed down, the resources, human and financial which were needed to provide adequate support within the community was not forthcoming. The institutions were closed, the land sold and developed, and the cash was all too often effectively embezzled - used to pay for other things, or to keep taxes down, rather than being available towards the cost of for real care in the community.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:51 PM

"...caring for one another." What a nice thing to say.

Fact is, when I die, I won't really give a shit whether anyone finds me. It's before I die that matters - to me, at least! The tragedy is not that a person's rotting husk isn't found for days or years but that the living person wasn't noticed any more than the corpse.

Why can that sort of thing happen? People don't have family or friends, or their family and friends couldn't be bothered to keep in contact. It happens everywhere where people become invisible.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 03:55 PM

No, Kevin, I did not expect that. I expected what I am seeing. A lot of decent folks responding to a tragic circumstance. And I used that to make the point that this is the case wherever people of honest intent live, without regard to national boundary. I purposely made the thread title provocative to show how provocative that other thread title was. My point is that we are all decent folks with many problems in common. The fact that these incidents happened is less a problem with one country or another, than it is a statement on a world where these things are going on more and more. It is more of a statement on how it is imperative that we all recognize what we have in common and begin to care about one another, instead of allowing our old prejudices, most of which are not even based in good logic, to foster gratuitous assertions of a general nature.

It is natural to take umbrage when one has been painted with a broad brush, and not conducive to changing the dangerous paradigms that we seem to be slipping into.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: GUEST,Cookyless Gulliver
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 04:11 PM

Last year I spent quite a while watching house-selling and house-diy programs on British TV (we're selling our family house), and I was struck by the importance that was placed on PRIVACY. Personally I don't give a damn what the neighbours can see, but the estate agents and others kept emphasising the high fences or walls, the thick foliage, the detached nature of a house, blinds and curtains and other ways to make it even more private or secluded. Now this means that people buying these must be looking for privacy. So then, when they have a stroke or whatever, is it any surprise that no-one notices it?

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Morticia
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 06:01 PM

I work with older and disabled people these days. One of the most useful tools we have to keep people independent yet safe is called Lifeline, a button people can press to talk to someone immediately who will call out whatever service is needed if you have fallen, or feel ill or whatever. The requirement is that you have at least two people on the list who can be called for less than emergency situations, a friend, a child, a neighbour. Someone who will come and check you are okay when an ambulance is overkill.

If you knew how many people I visit who can't name two people who would come, or even care...

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Anne Lister
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 06:36 PM

On a slightly lighter note, a few years ago I came back from a tour in the US to find a different front door on my (central London) flat. This had me confused, in my red-eyed jet lagged condition, and there was a note taped to the wall to say that I could get a key to the new front door by going to a certain office. Which meant waiting a couple of hours until it was open (and lucky me that it wasn't a weekend). When I went to the office I heard the tale - that in my absence, the postman had noticed flies in my kitchen (the only room visible when walking past the flat). He had assumed that therefore there must be a body in the flat, had alerted the caretaker and the police and the police had duly broken my original front door down to gain access. Of course they found no body, so replaced the front door (but left an unholy mess behind them, I have to say). Not a lot of logic here, because the door to the kitchen was a close seal, so if the flies were in there then so would the body have been ... and if they'd asked my neighbours they would have known that (a)I had told them I was going away and for how long and (b) had left a spare key with one of them.
However, in the light of the story that started this thread I should point out that in central London someone (a stranger, at that) DID care enough about what was happening in my flat to break the door down (and I'd only been away three weeks altogether). It wouldn't have been much good to me, of course, as I'd have been the body, but people in cities do sometimes take notice and care, even if they were misguided in this instance.

And the other night, driving into the centre of Newport, we saw a young chap half out of his car which was parked in a bus stop layby. He seemed distressed - we were the second car on the scene, as the first car was just pulling in when we did. First car was occupied by a lone female. We all ran over to the young man who was clearly in a lot of pain, and called an ambulance. He said he'd been there, too ill to drive on, for about 40 minutes, unsure how to attract anyone's attention. I was impressed by the lone female who had stopped, despite the potential risks she was running - but she was grateful to us, because her mobile was out of charge so she couldn't call the ambulance herself. I'm not saying this for any merit awards for us, but to underline the point that there are many people who DO care.

Anne

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 06:51 PM

Mick - well done!   I think your point went over the heads of many of our "friends" here on Mudcat, but you proved the point. It is interesting to see some of the same folks who were blaming NYC and the U.S. for that other story have taken another stance when it is in their own backyard.   It is food for thought.

The story that you posted, which is really secondary to the topic, is a horrific story that is repeated ALL OVER THE GLOBE.   I remember a very moving song called "Behind the Door" which was sung by a UK group known as the Ranting Sleazos. That story, based on another incident about 20 years ago, was about a young single mother who died leaving a young child. The child was able to attract attention by dropping blocks out of a mail slot.

By the way, it should be remembered that "trolling" derives from a fishing term, and the action is meant to catch fish. The action has a purpose that is benefitial.   If you feel that you do not want to be caught, avoid the hook.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 06:56 PM

I don't think I'd describe the title in either case as "provocative" - "challenging" perhaps, and challenging can be a helpful thing to do.

In any case I'd read the titles in both threads as being primarily critical of how things are sometimes done in big cities, as opposed to smaller scale communities. The differences between small scale communities and big cities are in some ways more significant than the differences between big cities or smaller communities in different countries.

And these differences involve some shared problems - and talking about that can help identify solutions that might help, and which other people have tested out for us.

If threads like this are provocative the thing is to be provoked into coming up with useful stuff like that - and some of the responses have in fact done that.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 07:28 PM

Well, this dumb bunny just watched it fly off over her little ol' head and missed the boat totally...too much of a rube to catch the subtle inferences which were plainly spelled out later. IF it had been started at the same time as the NYC one, maybe I would've caught the drift.

What have we learned? Oh, that people need people, can be kind and help one another? There are dozens of Mudcat threads in which we have demonstrated that. One day, the borders will not matter and we will all realise if you are slagging off on some one's country, you are slagging off on your own. We ARE all related...Mitakuye Oyasin. Oops...I wasn't supposed to know that...shhhh....

Justcallmeblond...kat

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Jeri
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 07:53 PM

Morti, we have the 'Lifeline' thing here, but I believe it's pretty expensive. I think home security systems might be effective too.

The older I get, the more stupid I think I was to, as someone without any family, buy a house in the boonies. I have great neighbors, but they're New Englanders who'd rather stick needles in their eyes than be intrusive, and the nearest hospital is just under an hour's drive away. If I think about stuff like that though, I don't sleep.

The military was pretty good about watching out for one another, but it didn't prevent people dieing alone and helpless. Smaller, closer communities might be as effective. In the end though, it's something that has always happened and always will, no matter what anyone does, but I like the idea of having an easy way to call for help.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Beer
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 08:05 PM

I find GUEST,Cookyless Gulliver point very interesting and true. Not necessarily the answer to this thread but one that many of us would like to have and many who are searching for.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 08:09 PM

My father-in-law, who's 96, lives on his own, and he's got an alarm system where you push a button on a pendant you wear round your neck, and they phone you up, and if you don't answer, they send in the emergency services and ring up the neighbours and so forth. Which happened when he wore forgot to take it off one night when he went to bed and he rolled over and set it off.

But then it saved his life last year when he had a fall and hit his head on a stone fire-surround. (He's doing well now with a stair-lift installed, and a computer with which he's learning to surf the net.)

Making sure that people get the help they need when they ask for it is urgent enough, and it doesn't always work out as well as that. But the really difficult thing is when you have people who don't ask for the help they need, like the one Mick brought to our attention. Or even don't welcome it, but they still need it. Tricky.

(I'm glad no one seems to have reacted to this thread as any kind of national insult.)

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Greg B
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 08:29 PM

Those 'Life Alert' pendants became quite the target of parody (or
at least their adverts did) in the US a decade or so ago. The
advert featured an elderly woman with a particularly 'old ladyish'
voice lying in a heap on the floor, pushing her button saying
'Heeeelllp! I've fallen and I can't get up.' That led to tons
of comic offshoots. Never mind that the product is brilliant, and
a life-saver.

Concerning closure of public hospitals and mental health facilities,
here in the USofA Ronnie Ray-gun started it when he shut down the
State Hospitals while he was governor of California. He turned out
thousands of mentally ill people to the streets, where they've lived
ever since.

When he got into the White House he promptly did the same for the
whole country, by withdrawing any federal aid funds from such programs
and facilities.

The rest is history; in the US our mentally ill folk are now 'treated'
by the police. Their 'asylum' is a subway station or sidewalk heat
vent, or perhaps a cardboard box.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Beer
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 08:46 PM

I maybe wrong but I think Greg B this first started in Briton picked up in California spread to the rest of the States than up to Canada. The buzz word used all around in the health field was D.I. or Deinstitualization. Yep, the governments cut the funding leaving the hospitals no choice but to cut beds. The hospital I was at had 1600 beds and when I left it was down to 300 and of those 250 were occupied.
Out you go buddy. Good luck on the streets.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 08:47 PM

"(I'm glad no one seems to have reacted to this thread as any kind of national insult.) "

THAT was the point Mick was making when he started this thread. The fact that a reasonable discussion of this event is taking place without any insults to the Brits, their people or city speaks volumes. Compare this to the New York Story from last month.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Beer
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 08:47 PM

Sorry for drifting off the topic. Difficult not to sometime.
Beer (adrien)

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 08:53 PM

Actually, Ron, it may be more to do with the fact that one involved active mistreatment and the other pretty well the opposite.

SATBYS

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 09:23 PM

The fact that a reasonable discussion of this event is taking place without any insults to the Brits, their people or city speaks volumes. Compare this to the New York Story from last month.

I've just had a look through that thread - it doesn't seem to me to have many (if any) insults aimed at Americans or at their cities or people. Some criticism of aspects of public services in New York, which is a different matter - though some the strongest of those apparently by Americans. And a number of posts indicating indignation at outsiders criticising, or suggesting that the particular news story involved was distorted or unreliable etc.

But all this is drift in a thread that - whatever may have been the intention to start with - has now become a discussion of ways in which the risk can be minimised of the kind of sad episode to which Mick drew our attention (wherever it happens.)

If anyone does want to carry on a discussion about examples of, or perceptions of, hostility towards the USA (for example) maybe it might be better if they started a thread specifically about that, and put a link to it in this thread.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 09:33 PM

So because the thread drifted from the original topic, we are not allowed to drift again? Does anyone have a copy of the rulebook here?

If the Brits did not feel that the comments made in the other thread were insulting, then I guess that discussion is over. The words are there for all to see.

Richard, I don't know if I would consider living with a dead body mistreatment, just tragic. As was shown, the other story had no mistreatment either.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 09:39 PM

The words are there for all to see. Precisely so.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 10:06 PM

amen

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Greg B
Date: 10 Feb 08 - 10:43 PM

Bottom line--- heartless bureaucracies seem to be universal.

As do people who otherwise might be caring individuals, overwhelmed
by the misery with which they get paid to deal while the rest of us
go off to overpaid drivel.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Richard Bridge
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 03:22 AM

WTF, WFDU?

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 07:51 AM

The buzz word used all around in the health field was D.I. or Deinstitualization.

A word about Deinstitutionalisation. It's right and necessary to kick up a fuss about the inadequate way care and support has been provided for people who would once have been shut away out of sight in large institutions, but that does not mean that closing those institutions down wasn't a right thing to do.

For an analogy - when slavery was abolished in the United States, the West Indies and elsewhere, the freed slaves often had a pretty terrible time. The society into which they were freed wasn't too helpful, the resources they needed weren't available. It is likely that in some cases they were worse off in many ways than they had been as slaves. But that didn't mean that it was wrong to abolish the slave system, it meant that it wasn't enough just to abolish it, other changes were needed as well, and they took a long time to come about, if they ever did.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: ard mhacha
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 08:10 AM

There is not a town or city in the world that this hasn`t happened, I lived in London for close on 10 years and I didn`t know, much less see, any of my neighbours.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 08:18 AM

precisely the point, ard

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: GUEST,LTS pretending to work
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 08:47 AM

Many people do not know what to do about a person who dies, regardless of their mental capacity or knowledge of their neighbours. It's upsetting enough when someone close dies, but if you don't have a clue about dealing with death, then often it is easier to just ignore it. From my experience, day care centres for the elderly make sure a person can feed and clothe themselves and very little else. I know there are conscientious social workers out there, I know that there are people desperately trying their best in a system that is inherantly flawed - it doesn't matter who instigated those flaws, the system does not work very well. But I also know that there are some people who fall through the cracks, people whom we walk past every day, but are to all intents and purposes, invisible.

The part I find most disturbing about this particular story is that it took EIGHT YEARS for someone to investigate the smells.

LTS

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: GUEST,jOhn
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 08:50 AM

Big mick-you are writing like a racist person, ie
something bad happened in London, you blaming all london people.
i know loads of london people, they are all really nice.

If 1 Muslim, or black person did something bad, would you make a thread=
is this waht blacks are like or muslims etc?

if 1 person does a bad thing, dont blame all of them.


anyway-maybe that mans nextdoor neihbours had mental problems as well?
[they often put them near each other], and unless they been there for more than 8 years, they wouldn't even know he was there, [average rented flat tenancy is for 14 months].

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 09:43 AM

forget it Mick, they just aren't comprehending the point you tried to make originally. Of course no one is blaming Londoners, and I am sure I can speak for Mick on that.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Jean(eanjay)
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 10:14 AM

The length of time to investigate the smells bothered me as well - surely that was a health and safety issue which was affecting other people in the flats - and it had been reported. The report says that his neighbour spoke to the BBC and said that he had assumed he had poor personal hygiene and had offered him air fresheners, so he did have some contact with other people which makes it worse. If he lived in the back of beyond you could perhaps understand it a little bit more but he did have some contact with other people so it isn't really comparable to people who have lay dead in an empty property for a few weeks or months. Presumably it wasn't a huge flat and even though our summers are not the best, it cannot have been pleasant. Imagine if heating was on in winter.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: manitas_at_work
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 10:32 AM

" Of course no one is blaming Londoners," - I should hope not, it's been pointed out several times that this was not in London. Although it could have been...

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Bill D
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 11:01 AM

I'm glad I didn't see this yesterday.

I think I will make a litte file of 'frequent things I need to post', so I can just paste them in and go on...

first on the list is my favorite aphorism: "It all depends on whose Ox is being gored."

Perhaps the 2nd would be Pete Seeger's comment about complaints regarding "Waist Deep in the Big Muddy"

"If the shoe fits...."

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 11:18 AM

Of course no one was blaming Londoners. And in the same way no one was blaming New Yorkers in that other thread. I've just had another read through of it, and I just couldn't find posts doing that. Perhaps they were there and have been removed by clones, but I don't think so. (Have a look if you think I'm wrong, though it's a longish thread..)
.............
I quite agree with eanjay's point that the authorities seem to have slipped up badly in failing to respond to the complaint about the smell. It's the kind of thing that happens when councils cut back on providing proper caretaking services and so forth.

I can remember when every block of flats in Harlow had a resident caretaker, and there was an adequate an more than adequate system of visiting wardens for elderly people living alone. Those kind of things got cut to the bone under Thatcher as the local tax system was changed - and they never got reinstated under New Labour.

Yes, of course we need to be good neighbours, and there are things about the way we live, especially in big cities, that can make that harder - but there is a limit to what even good neighbours can do when essential services have been chopped to pieces.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: WFDU - Ron Olesko
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 12:14 PM

We will have to disagree.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 01:48 PM

jOhn, get someone to read the thread for comprehension and then explain it to you. And your implication of racism makes me hope we meet one day 3D,in whatever personna you happen to have at the time, and you repeat that one to my face. That implication is one of the most offensive things on this earth you could say to me.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 01:51 PM

I think that's jOhn teasing there...

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 01:58 PM

I understand teasing, Kevin, but this one I have no tolerance for. jOhn is one of my favorite "characters" here, but I draw the line at racism.

Now...back to the discussion at hand, please. Don't want to get sidetracked.

....and jOhn, the point ofthe thread is exactly that Londoners aren't like this.

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Gedpipes
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 02:46 PM

Mick
Lend us a fiver mate. ;-)
Cheers
Ged

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Big Mick
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 02:52 PM

Thanks, Ged and Kev, sometimes I still get a little too into this stuff. What say we head to the snug, bring that layabout from Hull along, and we drink the odd pint or two? Intensity.....sometimes it's a curse.

All the best,

Mick

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: GUEST,jOhn
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 03:38 PM

Mick-I'm led to believe that this thread was posted as a reaction to another thread, [i keep seeing references to "the new york" thread].

Maybe we could take a tip from "You-Tube", ie
"This is a response to .... ".

I'm sure you are not racist, point i was making was you appeared to be judging all members of a particular group {residents of london], by the actions or inactions of a few.

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 03:44 PM

jOhn's shout I'd say.

Thing is, though, "racist" only work as an insult (serious or teasing) when it's addressed to someone who isn't a racist. Which means in aay it's a kind of arsy-versy way of recognising that.

All getting too heavy in here. Now for something copmpletely different...

Subject: RE: Is this how Londoners care for each other?
From: Herga Kitty
Date: 11 Feb 08 - 07:46 PM

Oh dear, the trouble with posting tongue in cheek (as Mick originally did) in this format is that people can't see the tongue in cheek and you get taken literally.

Kitty