Harry Steer says it is time for anger and shouting!

I recently had the opportunity, with my fellow member of the OPC Francis Tonks, to talk to the Pensioners' Association about the Older People's Council, its formation, development and recent strategies. Apart from the Chair's proposal that there ought to be a competition held to suggest what 80 year olds could best spend their 25p increment on, which I thought was an excellent idea, a number of questions and observations arose. One was why isn't the OPC better known and others ranged around what are we doing and what were we actually for.Another observation pointed out that there were literally dozens of organisations ostensibly working for older people but seemingly getting nowhere when the one fundamental question is asked; why are we so miserably off in real money terms. We agreed at that meeting that this is an obscenity. Recently hiked up charges for gas and electricity, coupled with rising food prices leave many of us with the alternative, eat or heat, freeze to death or starve. Also recently I have been to a number of meetings suggesting that something ought to be done. There should be forward planning, there should be more health provision, better accomodation etc, etc which I seem to have heard continuously since my early days as a councillor in the 1960's!

I was reminded from all this of the words recorded, in translation, of a Roman army administrator named Caius Petronius talking in AD 66 who said, "We trained hard but it seemed that every time we were beginning to form up into teams, we would be re-organised. I was to learn later in life that we tend to meet any new situation by re-organising, and a wonderful method it can be for creating the illusion of progress whilst producing confusion, inefficiency and demoralisation". Nothing has changed in 2000 years! We talk about it and talk about it, but very little seems to get done. Let's form a Committee, a Working Party, a one day Conference, an Advisory Group!

Now we are entering the Conference season. Will any of the political parties address the issue of worthwhile pensions, or will it again be talked about, surveys undertaken, advisory bodies set up, comparisons made, one-off payments suggested for fuel bills, food bills or insulation, or ..... you name it!

This brings me back to our Pensioners' Association meeting and the questions asked. The OPC is not wider known because despite all attempts at publicity the media broadly is not interested unless there is a degree of sensation. Starve in a bed-sit this winter or die of hypothermia and there will be shock, horror .... but will anything result? We feel frustrated at lack of focus, the lack of attention, but where do we go? We in the OPC continue to raise issues appertaining to the nearly 50,000 of us in this City often with good effect. However my personal feeling is that now is the time for anger and shouting.We cannot wait twenty years while people plan and talk; we need action now. After all, that great economist, Maynard Keynes said, "In the long term we are all dead"!

Harry Steer
Chair
Brighton & Hove Older People's Council