Age Concern

True and sadly common stories highlighting the lack of care for the elderly:
An elderly woman waits a year and a half to have a bath cos social services deemed her outside their criteria to provide her with a bath lift. In the end, a charity bought one for her.

An elderly woman is on the verge of suicide cos her home is due to be repossessed leaving her homeless. Her landlord sold up, she didn’t want to move so the bank gave her a mortgage. She couldn’t afford the repayments on her basic pension. She also fell behind in paying for her gas and electricity, so they came out during Winter and (illegally) disconnected her.

An elderly man with mental health problems falls into arrears with his gas and electricity. The police arrest him, hold him in prison while British Gas change his meter to pre-payment.

An elderly couple in their 80s have been living off £90 a week since they retired. They had no idea there was help from the government. They’ve been using credit cards and store cards to supplement their income. They are in over £50,000 debt and seeking bankruptcy.

Man calls up the DWP saying he is starving. There is a 3 month delay in processing his pension. He is unable to get a Crisis Loan for food.

Man goes into his local Pension Office and slits his wrists because he is starving- there was a delay in processing his pension and he has no money. Never got into the press.

Seeking Autonomy

All I ever wanted in life was to be free, but this has always seemed just too much to ask. If it wasn’t the contraints of being owned by someone else as their child, or the taming and coercion of school into an efficient worker and polite citizen, it is now the constraints of working for a wage to meet my basic needs. Cleaning, call centre, retail, casual work, all completely pointless jobs, just to pay for food, rent and bills. Even more pointless when I have a university education and I could be doing something valuable with my time. And the struggle has been never ending, in constant inertia between liberty and coercion.

My way out has been to seek autonomy from capitalism. For as long as I am indebted to a wage to pay for food, rent and bills then I am not free. Although this is not easy, for we are coerced by the capitalist system to meet our basic needs, as well as in debt to the capitalist system to provide our basic needs: we have become so conditioned into and dependent on buying our food from supermarkets cos it’s cheap and we got no time or energy to grow our own; coerced into paying extortionate rent, cos we got no other choice and dependent on capitalist natural monopolies to provide our energy, cos again we’ve got no other choice. This capitalist system has made it virtually impossible to meet our own needs autonomously from the state. Where is the land to grow our food but taken up as retail outlets and plush apartments for the rich..? Where can we squat without being evicted, leaving us no choice but to pay rent..? Where can we rest without being forced to move on, rendering us static and in debt to council tax? Every which way we look to survive, we must pay someone.

So in my life I have taken steps to be autonomous from control. My first great step was to realise my lesbianism, reject my status as sex object and remove men from life, remaining only the odd exceptional male who is worthy of my time. My next great step was to move away from the city, back to the country near my family, to rent my Mum’s home from her. My Mum needed her mortgage paying and I needed cheap rent and a stable and habitable roof over my head. For the first time in years I have been able to breathe a sigh of relief in knowing that I have a home- I don’t *have* to work to avoid being homeless. The next and current step is growing my own food. My theory is the less food I have to purchase with my wage, the less I am dependent on a wage. Future steps will be to reduce energy consumption from private companies and try to source my own, and avoid paying council tax…although I haven’t quite worked this one out yet.

In seeking autonomy over our lives, from the capitalist system and structures of oppression, we can, as much as it is possible, live as free. And so the struggle continues…