Saw this on FB and realised how true it is and how much it pi**es me off to know that it is true.
The ironic truth
Let's put the pensioners in jail and the criminals in a nursing home.
This way the pensioners would have access to showers, hobbies and walks. They'd receive unlimited free prescriptions, dental and medical treatment, wheel chairs etc and they'd receive money instead of paying it out. They would have constant video monitoring, so they could be helped instantly, if they fell, or needed assistance. Bedding would be washed twice a week, and all clothing would be ironed and returned to them. A guard would check on them every 20 minutes and bring their meals and snacks to their cell. They would have family visits in a suite built for that purpose. They would have access to a library, weight room, spiritual counselling, pool and education. Simple clothing, shoes, slippers, PJ's and legal aid would be free, on request. Private, secure rooms for all, with an exercise outdoor yard, with gardens. Each senior could have a PC a TV radio and daily phone calls. There would be a board of directors to hear complaints, and the guards would have a code of conduct that would be strictly adhered to.
The criminals would get cold food, be left all alone and unsupervised. lights off at 8pm, and showers once a week. Live in a tiny room and pay £600.00 per week and have no hope of ever getting out.
Having worked in a bog-standard nursing home in Lancashire, I pray I die young enough to avoid the experience.
I got told off for giving one lady a cuddle after she thanked me for doing up her cardigan correctly. She had arthritis and couldn't grip buttons.
I got in trouble for sneaking a cup of tea for another confused soul I found drinking water out of a latticework plant holder. It was like a punishment out of Greek mythology, every time she tipped it to her mouth, the water disappeared out of the holes.
I got told off for sneaking more tea (and a
spoon!) up to the room of an quiet Italian woman who spoke no English and had not understanding of what kind of bedlam she had just landed in. Most of my telling offs involved tea.
I got in more trouble for holding a 108 year old woman's hand after she fell and hit her head and was bleeding/crying, because I might have somehow rubbed my face in the blood and caught HIV.
All of these times they had been completely alone and I just happened to be passing. God only knows how many times little things like this go completely unseen.
The thing that sticks with me most was how few people I ever saw come visit, and how resigned everyone was to accepting this. There was no hopeful waiting around, no grandkids appearing after school kicked out, no expectation. Just shelves of people in little grey rooms, and brains switching off. Nothing to do, it kills the mind. You watch
people become nothing.
Once I went into a woman's room and discovered she had been an art teacher, an active artist when she came to the home. She was still painting and drawing when she arrived. Then the surroundings gradually wore her down or complete lack of stimulation caused whatever little bits inside her brain to stop moving... Or maybe it's the best coping mechanism to just shut off. Either way, after 9 months there was nothing of her left in there. She walked in circles and repeated bits of sentences back to you. I caught her mindlessly moving people's things from one room to another.
"Oh, she does that."
I'm not saying that homes cause dementia, or that these things wouldn't happen elsewhere... I guess I'm just saying that poorly managed homes are a catalyst to shutting off the brains of abandoned people... If someone shut me in a small grey building with nothing to do and nobody to really talk to, with no prospect of leaving, I daresay I'd be a vegetable inside a year.
Oh right,
things that piss me off... My neighbours climbed up on my roof and cut down my TV aerial on Sunday, without asking. Because it was rattling in the wind and it was mine. Because they are insane and self-righteous. Possibly also because Gangrel said he wasn't going to climb up on my roof in a gale to deal with it at 11am on Sunday after they
demanded he do something about it.
Now my landlord (who has just given birth this week) has to arrange someone to put it back again on a different wall, fix the now rattling tiles they knocked whilst fannying about up there, and I bl**** well hope she bills them for damages.
