On Monday, the media began to print a real horror story: a woman aged 81 was left in her home with no food, drink or medication for over a week: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-21361631
The woman had money: she'd been paying an agency to send carers to her home 4 times a day. Then the agency was raided by the Borders people, the illegal immigrants running it vanished and her carers stopped coming. Somehow, the word that she was alone - and vulnerable - was never acted on by the local authority.
Her name was Gloria. Not that it matters now. She's dead.
Every week there are reports of elderly people going missing: wandering off from sheltered housing or care homes or what used to be called mental hospitals, most vanishing while 'out for a walk' - alone. Some but not all are demented. One man (aged about 84) was found dead in the garden of his block of flats in Edinburgh after ten months.
Imagine if he - or Gloria - had been 1 year old rather than 81. For a start, the story might have stayed in the headlines for more than 48 hours. There might have been calls for an enquiry into the death. Someone would have been called to account for their failure to act, though probably not sacked or struck off as a result. That's not how we do things in the UK.
But because the case involves an elderly person, no one seems to get over-excited.
I suppose it's not as bad as leaving your old people to die on an ice floe, as the Inuit were said to do. Or is it?
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