Have this week's events brought good news or bad for older
people?
This was a bad week in the bus world according to
an update from the Campaign for Better Transport. Tens of thousands
of pensioners could be left without transport as 72% of local
authorities target buses as a means of making savings. The cuts
mean that hundreds of routes are being axed and the number of
services slashed.
The news will be a real blow for thousands of older people, who,
without their own transport are reliant on the bus network. It's
particularly bad news for those in rural areas where links are
already poor. Access to public transport allows older people to
continue leading active lives and to stay linked with their local
community, when they might otherwise struggle to get out and about.
While we accept that councils have to save money, we believe, with
moves like this, they are targeting the wrong things. Cutting bus
routes would have the worst impact on those who need them most and
will simply leave a greater number of older people cut off.
National and local government needs to be much more joined up. It
makes no sense for central government to require councils to give
all pensioners a free bus pass, while at the same time allowing
them to withdraw subsidies from the very routes that the most
isolated older people will be using.
It's a good week for all the 90-year olds out
there who happen to have adopted a Stone Age diet since their
thirties. According to Michael Rose, a professor of evolutionary
biology, you can halt the ageing process for the next few years and
enter a stage of "coasting" where the body won't face any new
problems beyond those already present. Sounds good - if a little
like a Gulliver's Travels narrative plot. But other experts remain
sceptical claiming that "Professor Rose [has] dismissed solid
evidence into the causes of ageing...it is misleading to hold out
the hope that something remarkable happens to arrest ageing very
late in life..." So, perhaps for now, the jury's out, but, as they
say, the proof is in the pudding, so for those who would like to
give it a go for themselves, the full article is here: http://t.co/xposrzW
