I Would Like a Choice

Over the years I have been asked more times than I can count by elderly persons unable to care for themselves if I could give them something so they could die. They didn’t want to live anymore with the everyday suffering of being bedridden and in pain. They didn’t want food pushed into their mouthes before they had finished swallowing any more.Or the pain that comes from large open bedsores that could take fifteen minutes or more to dress.

They didn’t want to lie for hours in wet,stinking nappies. They just wanted to leave this world with dignity.

I couldn’t help them.

It seems that in Switzerland where I live,the cost of caring for the elderly whether in their living accommodation or in a

nursing home will double between now and the year 2030. In that year an estimated 2 million people over the age of 65 will be living here. In 2005 there were only 1,2 million.

The growth of the over 80 year olds has risen enormously. This has had a massive influence on the cost of health care.

A study by the Swiss Health Observatory says the price for care will rise from 7,3 billion francs in 2005 to around 18 billion in 2030.

The rise is of course affected by the prescription of multiple medication for the aged, on average fifteen tablets a day,and performance of complicated operations, excluding emergency orthopaedic procedures on over seventy five year olds. Higher nursing and so called hotel costs add to it.

Ethics play a great part in how we approach the situation at the moment.

Mankind has the right to live ,but when are we going to have the right to die?

Food or Fuel?

Last year approximately 100,000 tons of grain was used to make biological fueI.
I love the colour green, but I love a fresh loaf of bread more.

1 Swiss Frank per day, per person.

Worldwide at least a billion people must live on this amount. That hardly pays for basic food.

The price for grain is exploding because it is being used for bio fuel.

The price of rice rose by 75% in the last two monthes. The price of corn rose over the last twelve monthes by 120%. One of the causes being merchant speculation.

It takes 200 kilo of corn to manufacture enough Ethanol to fill a 95 Liter tank. With this amount of corn a person could feed themselves for a year.

2102 Million tones of grain was harvested in the world in 2007. Half of it was used for animal food and biological fuel.

Work the rest of it out for yourselves.

Can we let this go on?

“The Battle of Bern”and the Swiss Civil War

“The Battle of Bern” was the heading on half of the front page of a Swiss Sunday newspaper today. The other half was taken up with how a “Music Star ” described his 24 hours in prison after running amok and driving a large black Mercedes into the entrance hall of the head offices of a media giant. Not everymans Sunday literature. Other newspapers reported that something happened in Bern yesterday which nobody thought possible in this democratic, secure and peace seeking country. The followers of the Swiss Peoples Party (SVP) and their figurehead, Minister of Justice,Dr Stephan Blocher holding an election rally in Bern yesterday ( according to the police, at least 10,000 people) were confronted by over 500 left wing radicals, burning and vandalising anything that they came upon. Their Guerrilla warfare tactics in the narrow, and many cornered streets of the old part of the City were apparently to much for the police who to the public eye failed miserably. Where were they all?
It is by no means a fair election campaign which the Swiss political parties are running for seats in our Parliament. It has a lot to do with disillusion. It has a lot to do with the aims of theSVP (Swiss Peoples Party) It has a lot to do with Cristoph Blocher and his clean up Switzerland ideas which to some are logical, for some too hard, to others inhuman, and to a few downright fascist.

Yesterday, some people wanted to give their opinion, but like at the World Economic Forum in Davos, went about it in the wrong way. That wasn’t Swiss Democracy, that wasn’t even adult , and we are ashamed.

It will make people talk, it will make people think, both here and abroad.

I think it will be better than any SVP poster up till now, and Dr Blocher must be rubbing his hands together in glee.

Call the computer Doctor

To all my new friends and readers who might have toppled over my blog in the last months, and  wonder what has happened to Diamonds and Rust just as she was going through a phase of literary fluency I would like to say I’m back again.

No I didn’t go on holiday,or start on my Asian trip. My laptop decided he’d had enough of people messing around with him who didn’t keep to his rules or take heed of his messages, and thought using him was something like playing the piano.

At first it was just a slight sneeze,and he seemed to recover,but then he kept sending smoke signals and we all know, where there is smoke there is generally fire. Unlike the piano I found you can’t just put the lid down and start anew the following day. When a computer sneezes he definately wants to be taken seriously. (Which make me think computers might be female)

Eventually of course we had to call the doctor, one of the  Swiss ones,very competent but who he doesn’t  really care for. But he is functioning again, probably not really cured, but waiting for a checkup with his private Canadian physician when he is on this side of the Atlantic again!!!

Glad to be back.

Stomach operations for fat children.

Wanted to scream yesterday as I read that British Doctors on the Board of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence advise partial removal of the stomach on very overweight children.

The Institute has now published guidelines to help with the problem of obesity in the land.

No other country in Europe has such a massiv number of overweight inhabitants. In the last twentyfive years the number has apparently tripled. They are costing the land roughly guessed 4,4 Milliarden Euro in health and and economic measures, and now it’s time for everyone to try and bend down to pull their socks up.

Here I did start to scream.

Can someone please tell me, in the case of overweight children why their parents don’t feel responsible for the weight of their children. Or don’t they even feel responsible for themselves?

Can someone please tell me why firms are churning out more and more highly caloried sweet products with little nutritional value, aimed mostly at the taste buds of the younger generation and are allowed to get away with it.

Can someone please tell me why people who care for children have forgotten the word NO

Yep, you’re all right,I’m older generation,am 1m 78cm tall and weigh 59kilo. I love,Crunchie bars,Peppermint creams, Apple pie,and Magnums. But my parents could say no, and I can still say enough is enough.

Solitude is a solitaire

“I want to be alone”

Greta Garbo 1905-1990 Grand Hotel. Film
Do other people have this problem,wanting to be alone. Is it a modern day thing,by modern I mean after Garbo?In the Bible, God says in the book of Genesis; “It’s not good that man should be alone”

It is good for me,I like my own company and I’m not lonely and I’m certainly not idle and I do have friends but I do sometimes want to be alone with my thoughts,my plans and my dreams. Recently it’s becoming rather difficult and the only place I can really be alone is the bathroom, but even there a voice calling’ what are you doing’ wants an answer.

The trouble is since the beginning of the year my husband has been retired.

Now don’t get me wrong, my huband is a helpfull,amicable,loving person but he is now always there and wanting to do things together.

I know I should be thankfull that I have someone like him around, and I am,but how do I get away from him sometimes without hurting him or making him think I’m having a clandestine relationship with someone.

I am still a working woman so out of the house four days a week in a demanding job working with people,-probably why the desire for solitude occasionally,and I really understand now the difficulty some men have coming home to an over communicative wife after a long hard day at work.

But Spring will undoubtably come and he will have more things to occupy him. But until then.?

Do other woman have my dilemma?

Could be that he has the same problem.

Maybe I should ask him.

Sitting through Mahler

We have an old traditional concert hall in Zürich, standing under national trust of course. Since the begin of the present season the hall boasts 1400 new red chairs at a cost of 845 000 Swiss Francs, being paid for by the local tax payers.

Wonderfull. Some people might have found other uses for the said sum of course, but I, as a born Brit have a warm spot for historic buildings.

The problem is, nobody enjoys a concert any more because the chairs are so damned uncomfortable.To quote an 80 year old gentleman who has been attending concerts regularly since his parents took him as a child, the seats are ”absolutely unacceptable” Another said, after one and a half hours of Mahler he has bad backache but can hardly stand up because the upholstery is much too soft. -The arm rests are too hard and too high.- The angle of the seat is out of line. The width too narrow, and the backs give just minimal support.
According to the Firm responsible the Natonal Trust and it’s narrow margins are to blame.

Not to worry, they have started to take them all out again. How much will it cost? At the moment there is according to the press no exact estimate.

Phenomena

Why is it that I am never up behind a slow driver if I’m not in a hurry, but sure as eggs are eggs if I havn’t a minute to spare they will be out there waiting for me to catch up with them.

The elderly men wearing hats and smoking cigars, little ladies in large cars hardly able to see over the dashboard,and of course all the learner drivers in the county. Not that I’ve really got anything against them but why do they have to be in front of me.

What I dont understand about them, and it seems to be like the phenomena of the lost sock in the washing machine,is why they can creep along a main road painfully below the speed limit but the moment they come to a built up area with a 50km restriction they put their foot down on the gas and away they go.

What is equally mysterious is that then there is never a police car in site.

Christmas

Should I dare admit that mostly I long for it all to be over again so we can all get back to normal.

Not that I don’t endear the Nativity stories of The Gospels, especially that of St Luke,but where does it get me when on my search of a happy Christmas I might squeeze a couple of minutes into the programme to think of that stall in Bethleham- and there have been years when I’d forgotten it altogether.

This year was going to be different.

Someone else was going to do the cooking ,and invite the whole family. We had done away with present giving (why would it have been so easy this year to find’ just the thing’.) I didn’t make a Christmas cake, and although I love mince pies I didn’t make them either or I would have eaten most of them myself.

So all I really had to do was to sit back and wait for Christmas Eve,when we celebrate here in Switzerland.

The house was clean, our tree was decorated and it didn’t make any difference thatI had to be on duty over the Holidays, afterwards I could sit down to a lovely meal that I hadn’t bought or prepared myself.

This year I really was going to enjoy Christmas.

Then the phone rang and I was informed that most of the crew at work were ill and on the 24th I would have to work the morning and late shift . So much for celebrating with the family.

Of course I was mad, and the fact that a little later I gave more than I intended to the Salvation Army lady shivering in the cold didn’t make me feel any better at the time either.

But I do feel better now, for I will be celebrating alone.

When I come home tomorrow, I can light the candles on the tree, think of that stall in the land of David, and of my loved ones near and far, and for probably the first time since my childhood feel the Chrismas Spirit.

God Bless you all.

Crazy Swiss Alpine roads.

We are forever building roads in Switzerland. Wonderfull roads, feats of Swiss civil engineering, hewn through our granite mountains,costing us billions of Swiss Francs and sometimes lives. Not that we necessarily need them,but the trucks of north, south, east and west Europe do- so that potatoes grown in the Netherlands can be taken to the south of Italy to be washed and then transported yet again to somewhere in the north of Europe to become chips. Where they are taken to for their plastic packaging I dont really know but you can be sure it’s somewhere south of the Alps.

Please note that the basis stone of our mountains is granite (I stand to be corrected by Geologists) and we have it in abundancy. Enough anyway to build roads and tunnels for a long time to come,the excavation of it also giving employment to men in areas where work is difficult to find.

Today I heard on the radio that for road building purposes in future Switzerland would be importing granite from the Peoples Republic of China.

Isn’t it a man made crazy world?