Those who want to find out what causes teenagers to get into unruly gangs and otherwise behave badly have had huge success by recruiting other teenagers who understand the problem from the inside and know how their contemporaries think.
Those who try to improve the care of the elderly have no such idea. Our fate is decided for us by well-meaning people of every age except our own. Nobody, by definition, knows what it is like to be old because nobody has experienced it. But some of us could give help in that direction. When I visit a geriatric ward I so well understand how the inmates are feeling, but am usually condescended to and sometimes mistaken for one of them. With the best will in the world, those young nurses can't empathise with the elderly. They refuse to believe that there comes a point when you accept the thought of death with equanimity and the jolly rebuttals of any such suggestion only serve to make the aged more lonely than ever.
This blog is a plea for common sense in public policy. Our leaders don't seem to have any. They just make daft rules for us to follow. We need to assert our right to use our own good sense instead of ticking boxes which can only say 'yes' or 'no'.
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