Have this week's events brought good news or bad for older
people?
By Rebecca Law, Media and PR officer
This was a bad week for older gardeners in
Brighton and Hove who are being issued with notices and even
threatened with eviction if they fail to keep their allotment in
good order. An article in local paper,The Argus, reported
that, "a notice to repair a shed has been served on a 78-year-old
woman… another elderly plot holder was called upon to remove a
tree, while an elderly widow, who has recently lost her husband to
cancer has been served with a cultivation order."
Gardening has been shown to have a number of benefits for older
people, such as providing physical exercise through stretching,
bending and walking. It has also been shown to help with mental
health by reducing stress levels. And that's to say nothing of the
social interaction that may result from being an allotment
holder.
While we can understand the need for allotments to be properly
tended to, to ensure they remain viable for future users, it's a
shame to come down so heavily on older gardeners. We'd like to see
the council use more innovative ways of finding a solution. Schemes
already exist where younger people, keen to grow their own but
lacking a green space, can team up with an older person who may be
struggling to keep on top of their gardening.
In fact, a quick internet search on this threw up that Brighton
and Hove has its very own "Grow Your Neighbour's Own" scheme,
which, according to the website, "pairs up gardeners who have
nowhere to grow their own food with garden owners or allotment
holders who have space to grow but for whatever reason are not able
to." Perhaps Brighton and Hove council would do better ploughing
resources into their green-fingered matchmaking efforts than simply
issuing intimidating notices.
It's a good week for anyone hoping to be able
to celebrate their centenary as the ONS released it latest data on
the ageing population ahead of Older People's Day this weekend.
According to the Daily Mail, when today's centenarians
were born, there were thought to be only 100 people across England
and Wales who qualified for a birthday card from the Queen. Today
in Britain, we have 12,640 people aged 100 or over (and that's up
from 2,500 in 1980). The proportion of people aged over 85 has gone
up from one in 100 in 1985, to one in 50 today, and is projected
reach one in 20 by 2035.
That's great news for the UK population, although perhaps not so
good for the Queen who will have to make sure she keeps up her
wrist exercises to prevent writer's cramp setting in. The news
should put further pressure on the government to act on Dilnot's
recommendations for the future funding of long-term care: the
population may be reaching an older age, but it's arriving with
increasingly complex care needs. The debate at least seems to be
gathering momentum at the party conferences this month, but, moving
away from the Queen of our land, to the King of Rock n' Roll, in
the profound words of Elvis, we need to see "a little less
conversation, a little more action please."
