We have a residential home near us, Winifred Dell House. The private contractors who now run it got planning permission to extend it and increase the number of residents. Then they put in for permission to demolish the whole lot and rebuild, for (I think) the same number of residents. That means that now, all the existing residents will have to be moved out of what has become their home, away from other residents who have become their friends and away from familiar staff. Moving is stressful when you are young and are moving because you've decided to! What will it do to very elderly people? Well, some of them will probably die because of the strain, but of course you can't prove it.
Anyway, in the local paper this week, one of the ladies who lives there who is 87 years old has threatened to chain herself to the railings! And she did, symbolically, this afternoon and it is on ITV "London Tonight" even as I type!
The whole problem of 'privatisation' is illustrated so well here, where 'profit' is the most important thing. We've been told things should be privatised because the private sector can run things better than the public sector. And this is how they do it - by throwing the elderly out of their homes - the unacceptable face of privatisation.
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