Number of Scots who starve to death has doubled

[Ambrosio Spinola]

Yet we need more inmigrants and give them all handouts possible.

http://news.scotsman.com/health.cfm?id=2273192005

THE number of Scots starving to death has more than doubled in the last decade according to new research.

Malnutrition amongst elderly Scots has risen dramatically in the last ten years, and pressure groups blame the Scottish Executive for allowing pensioners to live below the poverty line.


The Scottish Executive has confirmed there will be an investigation, after the figures revealed the number of Scots who died from malnutrition had risen from 40 in 1995 to 99 last year.

SNP health spokesperson Shona Robison is calling for an inquiry into the alarming new figures, which mainly affect those aged between 60 and 74.

She said: "There has been a significant increase in deaths where malnutrition is recorded on the death certificate, and we need to know the reasons for this.

"Is it connected to pensioner poverty? Or is it perhaps because vulnerable elderly people are increasingly left isolated? The Executive needs to take action to find what lies behind these distressing figures."

David Manion, chief executive of Age Concern Scotland, said the figures were "shocking", but he added that much of the blame lies with the isolation in which many elderly people live.

"Many old people become malnourished because of poverty, and because no-one is looking after them. They often become isolated," he said.

While the UK is the world's fourth richest country, more than two million pensioners live below the poverty line. According to charity Help the Aged, in 2000 a third of pensioner households lived in poverty.

A spokesman for the Scottish Executive confirmed that an investigation is set to be held. "There may be a variety of causes which have led to malnutrition being recorded as the cause of death," he said.

"We will need to investigate the circumstances in detail."

[Vindex]

This is where I agree with National Socialism, they would not let groids in and would make sure there Old folks where cared for. But ironically how many of those greezers do you think fought against National Socialism?

[Felix the Cat]

Related story - the last Scottish veteran of WWI has just died

Christmas Truce veteran dies aged 109 (http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1882287,00.html)

The last veteran to have personally heard the guns of the Western Front fall silent during the Christmas Truce of 1914 has died at the age of 109.

Alfred Anderson was 18 when British and German soldiers crossed no-man's land on the first Christmas Day of the war to exchange handshakes and cigarettes and play an impromptu game of football with bully-beef cans, using their own steel helmets for goalpoasts.

When the First World War broke out in October 1914, Mr Anderson's unit, the 5th Battalion of the Black Watch, had been among the first to be deployed to France, promised a quick campaign to give the Kaiser a bloody nose.

As December 25 arrived he was billeted in a dilapidated farmhouse behind the trenches and never joined in the famous game of football. But only last year, the old soldier recalled: "All I’d heard for two months in the trenches was the hissing, cracking and whining of bullets in flight, machine-gun fire and distant German voices.

"But there was a dead silence that morning, right across the land as far as you could see. We shouted ‘Merry Christmas', even though nobody felt merry. The silence ended early in the afternoon and the killing started again. It was a short peace in a terrible war."

Mr Anderson was born in Dundee on June 25, 1896 and and grew up in Newtyle, Angus, where he signed up for the Territorial Army as a teenager. He was invalided out in 1916 by a shell explosion which killed several of his comrades and left him with serious shrapnel wounds.

After his return from the front he met and fell in love with Susan Iddison, a nanny from Ripon, North Yorkshire, while stationed with his regiment at nearby Catterick. They were married in June 1917 and moved to Scotland where Mr Anderson took over his father’s building and joinery business in Newtyle. They brought up a family of six children and celebrated a diamond wedding anniversary before Mrs Anderson died of a stroke, aged 83, in 1979.

Apart from ten telegrams from the Queen, Mr Anderson also received a visit from the Prince of Wales two years ago after it emerged that he had served as a batman to Captain Fergus Bowes-Lyon, the late Queen Mother's brother, who was killed at the Battle of Loos in 1915.

Mr Anderson was the last veteran from any nation to have served in 1914 and his death means that fewer than ten British veterans of the Great War remain alive, of whom only three or four experienced life on the Western Front.

Mr Anderson was already too old for active service in the Second World War but helped to set up the home guard units. Fiercely proud of his army service, his Black Watch cap with the famous red hackle always hung over the door of the family home in Alyth, Perthshire.

He lived there until September this year when failing health saw him become a resident at Mundamalla Nursing Home back in Newtyle, where he died this morning at 3am. Mr Anderson is survived by four children, 10 grandchildren, 18 great-grandchildren and two great-great-grandchildren.

A special bust of the soldier is on display at the public library in Alyth and a biography - A Life In Three Centuries - was published in 2002.

He always put his good health down to being a non-smoker and drinking in moderation. But throughout his long life, the events of the Great War - especially at Christmas time - remained deeply etched on his mind.

He once said: "I think about all my friends who never made it home. But it’s too sad to think too much about it. Far too sad."

Lieutenant Colonel Roddy Riddell, regimental secretary of the Black Watch, said the death of Mr Anderson, whose funeral is expected to take place on Friday, was the "end of an epoch".

Speaking from the regiment’s headquarters at Balhousie Castle in Perth, he said: "For a man to have been plunged into the unimaginable hell of the First World War and not only to survive, but to lead a full and active life afterwards, shows what a truly remarkable man Alfred Anderson was.

"It really is the end of the epoch. The entire regiment is in mourning and we are all the sadder for his passing."

[Ambrosio Spinola]

This whole "letting your old folks rott" is beyond my understanding. Families should keep together and care for the elders.

[Felix the Cat]

This whole "letting your old folks rott" is beyond my understanding. Families should keep together and care for the elders.
Lovely idea, but the long lifespans of modern westerners make it difficult

Bear in mind that the average 25-year old married couple will still have eight live grandparents

This is completely unprecedented in our history, and difficult to deal with if you also have young kids to look after

[Ambrosio Spinola]

Damn...but then it does not have to be just you who takes care of the whole lot either. But you got a point there for sure.