Thoughts of a carer

  My mum enjoyed her 90th birthday last December. She’s led what many would consider a good life; worked hard, saved a bit here and there, and brought up me and my sister. A few months ago it became apparent that she couldn’t manage any more in her shared-equity ‘retired person’s’  bungalow, and moved into a care home. My sister and I have Power of Attorney, and we’ve been helping her manage her affairs. The sale of her old bungalow back to the local council went through in February, so we looked around for ideas on what to do with the proceeds - a small six figure sum.  Mum had an ISA at her bank which had built up to a good five figure sum, but otherwise no savings accounts. This included National Savings, which surprised me, for I thought everyone had one or two Premium Bonds, but I didn’t worry: my thoughts were that we should use her ISA allowance every year, and buy her the maximum amount of Premium Bonds (£50K), where her interest, or prizes, would be tax free....

  I was reading The Daily Sceptic recently and came across the following comment, from a reader who styles themself ‘Karenovirus’: The other day I was watching Michael Palin's travelogue Pole to Pole; in episode 3 he is in Leningrad trying to buy some vodka. Someone explains that first he must obtain a ‘kiewpon’ from the Casa Kiosk (I had witnessed similar in restaurants in Kiev and Odessa a decade previously). Fortunately for Michael a passerby sells him a coupon (in the way that someone might illegally pass you a parking permit with some time left on) and nobody else batted an eyelid. This might seem like a minor transgression but it actually struck at the heart of the Soviet system in which full employment was achieved by having three people to do one person's job. Reading it, I realised that life in the UK is now almost as absurd as it was under the Soviet system. Parts of our national infrastructure are supported by teams of people that, well, seem to need to pass you to ...