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The quota that we daren’t mention

Head Rambles Posted on by

According to the Irish Times – Flu caused 726 excess deaths among over-65s last winter.

Now the article itself is of little consequence, but there is an interesting Freudian slip of the pen in that headline.  They didn't say there were extra deaths or an increase in deaths.  No – there were excess deaths.

Now I can only draw one conclusion from this and that is there is a quota and that last year we exceeded the limit.

The EU is very fond of quotas.  There are [or were] fishing quotas, milk quotas, grain quotas and a shed load of other quotas so it is only logical that they have secretly imposed an old age quota and that we inadvertently exceeded it?  Everything is going swimmingly well until along comes that pesky flu which as we all know is nearly as infectious as smoking, drinking and obesity and knocked all our figures to shit and back.  So 726 of us very inconveniently drop dead leaving the quota rightly fucked up.

So what are the implications?  I presume Ireland is going to have to pay a massive fine to the EU for over destruction of old folk?  Will they balance the books by allowing an extra 726 wrinklies live in 2016?

Over the last year there have been quite a few stories about old folks' homes where staff treat the inmates patients like shit.  Old dears were regularly tied to their chairs, force fed drugs and beaten up.  Naturally there was uproar in the general populace, but those staff were only doing their duty – making sure that we filled our quota for culling old people.  We see the same type of carry on in our hospitals were seventy, eighty and ninety year olds are left sleeping on trollies for days with the excuse that there are no beds available, whereas the truth is that they are all part of the Grand EU Scheme, and were just left there in the hopes they'd kick the bucket.

I can understand their reluctance to talk about this quota system.  After all, it's not very nice for the grieving family to be told that their relative just had to snuff it so the quota can be filled?  It's much easier to lie and pretend they did their best?

I suppose I can see the EU's logic here.  After all, us geriatrics are just a massive pain in the arse, sitting around all day pissing and shitting our pants and soaking up that lovely pension fund which could be put to much better use.  We are of no use to society as we don't work so we aren't filling the coffers of Big Industry or even paying taxes. 

You almost have to admire those devious fuckers in Brussels?

 

Comments

The quota that we daren’t mention — 10 Comments

  1. "We are of no use to society as we don't work so we aren't filling the coffers of Big Industry or even paying taxes."

    Okay Grandad lets just you and me stand back a little and give some thought to that there statement.

    Antiquated duffers who still live in their own houses and drive leaky Fords, well they're paying VAT every single day and their motor car, well what exactly is that that does into the fuel tank? 80% tax. And those who enjoy any form of tobacco and any form of alcohol, well it's pretty close to all tax as well. Then there's all the stuff they tack onto houses, like rates and things.

    That make sense to you Squire? Ok let's move on.

    Looking at those in the "waiting room", well they may not pay as much in the way of tax, but they need the people who look after them – and they, well they're the same as old differs were 40 years ago, they're in that process of accumulating things, like cars and houses and sproggs and such which – by now you'll have gathered is a tax heavy burden.

    So okay they may not pay income tax, but that's because for the most part they don't earn (sorry declare) enough to cross the tax threshold.

    Still on the same songsheet me old mate?

    But there's a neat twist in the tail – and that's when they eventually kick the bucket. Far too many of them don't protect their estate and then there's a feeding frenzy with all sorts of "duties" to pay before their estate is finally split up the way they hoped it would.

    Nice chatting with you.

  2. What's that you say?

    Big Industry?

    Oh, my humble and abject apologies. I didn't expand on that Ford or Toyota or DIY superstores or all the branded junk those guys have in their medicine cabinet.

    Names like Astra Zenica, Pfizer and such.

    Oh and Esso and BP and Tesco fuels and oils.

    And computers and stuff that makes them work.

    Nor banks.

    Hells teeth man, just look at their televisions, cookers, washing machines, gas boilers and so on. Even their sodding lawn mower.

    Big Business, especially they pharma lot just love the end of life lot.

     

  3. So why the fuck are they making our lives a misery on the basis that by being as miserable as them we may live a few unproductive years longer? Meanwhile placing an increasingly heavy burden on both the health and pension systems. There seems to be a fundamental dichotomy here which I think has passed 'Public Health' by.

    • (Quiet virtual whisper in your ear).

      They do this because they don't care about health Nisakiman. They only care about you being alive. They positively salivate when you contract a condition that needs very long term medication. In short they love sick people – very much.

      Yes we in the developed countries can turn to the health services for free treatment, however the pharma companies really don't care who pays, it's fearsomely profitable. Take a shufty at this rip off – was $13.50, now $750.

      http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2015/09/18/company-hikes-price-5000-drug-fights-complication-aids-cancer-daraprim/32563749/

      Doubtless you'll recall that they pretty well wiped out herbalists several years ago when they insisted all claims be backed up by scientific evidence. Back in the 70's we had a very good herbalist who knew exactly what to use and in what doses. Decades of practical experience meant an appointment was essential – and his office was always busy. Not there now.

      What they use now are two measures. Infant mortality and life expectancy. Become a world standard now and they beat up on governments that slack on them. Scotland's one that's constantly criticised on the life expectancy part.

      So who set this up ? The World Health Organisation.

      Wanna guess the power behind the throne on that one??

      On a lighter note, the whole herbal industry has come back with a vengeance, quite simply because the web allows people to do the searching and because the better shops have  knowledgeable staff.

      Herbal is way lots better for old farts because they're slow and can quite frequently sort the underlying problem. Something our forefathers knew and something the whole pharma industry would prefer we forgot about. 

      Whatever you do Nisakiman, do not tell people with high blood pressure about Hawthorn, nor those with polyps about good old Turmeric, nor many of those with COPD about Sea Buckthorn (a berry Alexander the Great discovered). To tell would be awfully unfair on shareholders across the globe. And there's naff all scientific proof.

      • Considering that the vast majority of modern medicines derive from plants, I'm not surprised that Big Pharma want to sideline herbalists.  Just as an example, St John's Wort has been banned here in Ireland in favour of Big Pharma's chemical antidepressants.  Why buy a cheap readily available herb when you can buy chemical tablets with God knows what side effects at a much higher price?

        It's enough to give me a headache.  I had better chew some Willow bark…..

      • Yes, I'm aware of all that stuff, SS.

        Including the power behind the throne.

        And the assault on herbalists.

        My comment was somewhat rhetorical.

        I wasn't aware of the benefits of Hawthorn, Turmeric (although I use it in cooking) or Sea Buckthorn, although I haven't had need of those particular remedies. However, things like Nux Vomica and Camomile were always in the cabinet when I had young children, and for the last decade that I've had a Thai wife, we have all sorts of 'country' remedies that mum sends over to alleviate whatever symptoms we display. Balms, powders and pills. It's big business in Thailand. In fact I have to resist my wife, otherwise she'd be shoving all sorts of unknown stuff down my throat!

        Heh! That guy (I forget his name) who hiked the price of Daraprim to $750 got slaughtered in the press! I believe he ended up dropping the price again, such was the outcry!

  4. Oh stop being so silly; what you're seeing is nothing more than a statistician talking. They expect a set number of people to die each year, from various causes. This can be averaged, and a figure together with standard deviations off from this figure can be given. A standard deviation is a value that encompasses a number away from the average that should encompass 95% (I think) of the expected variation.

    The expected variation works on the variability year to year in deaths fitting to a bell curve, also called a Normal Distribution. It's shaped like a cross section of a church bell, but the thing is, it can be described mathematically in elegant ways, and a lot of modern statistics assume that the variation of any variable can be described by this shape of curve.

    So, you end up with a lot of language describing the statistical mathematics, which expect and predict various things, based on the assumption of a bell curve variability plot.

    "Excess deaths" or for that matter "excess births" are numbers that occur over the numbers that the statistical assumptions assume. For excess births, we might have a cause on the lines of "Evening TV nine months before this event was exceptionally boring, forcing people to amuse themselves in other ways". This is just statisticians talking, that is all.

  5. Er…..  How shall I put this?  I wasn't being serious.  Just a little whimsical sideways look at something that caught my eye.

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