Читать книгу The Moral State We’re In - Julia Neuberger - Страница 12

From the resentment caused by the government’s reaction to the Royal Commission on Long Term Care, after years of surprising political inactivity amongst older people, there has grown the beginnings of a grey-power movement. It does not yet have real political teeth, but they will come. Though the organisation of the grey vote is not in the league of similar movements in the USA, the voting figures, which show that older people vote more than younger people, make governments nervous. If older people voted more on self interest, then governments would be in trouble.

And there are signs that older people, who have not hitherto voted on sectional interests, are beginning to change. They see themselves as having to bear the risk of the costs of long-term care, and they cannot see how they can trust a government that has, in their view, reneged on a promise to remove the inequities of the present system. Worse than that, they are beginning to ask whether they can trust any government to treat them fairly. The 75p increase in the old age pension in 2000 met with a furious response. As Gary Younge pointed out, in a hard hitting article in The Guardian shortly after that famous increase, the government’s determination to keep the pension increase index linked ‘was more than a mathematical calculation. There was political arithmetic there too.’* The assumption, as Younge makes clear, was that old people would complain but that they would not fight back.

But the government got it wrong. Older people did fight back. The National Pensioners’ Convention is growing. On the question of council tax, some older people have simply refused to pay. In March 2002, one old lady, 102-year-old Rose Cottle, furious at the prospective closure of her care home where she had lived happily for many years, took a petition to Downing Street and caused some embarrassment-but not enough. By the next week things had moved on, and she was forgotten. Some have gone on hunger strike, and others have been moved-against their will-and have died shortly afterwards. But grey power is coming. As The Economist made clear recently, the overall fall in voter turnout is largely a change in the voting patterns of the young.^† The old vote as they always have done. So pensioners, who represent 24 per cent of the voting-age population, accounted for 35 per cent of votes at the last election. At the next one, the figure is more likely to be 40 per cent. So grey power will soon begin to bite.*

Long-term care has been one source of anger amongst older people. Another issue that has caused resentment is abuse.