ABSTRACT
I want to examine some of the consequences of the present government’s social and economic policies, specifically in relation to the elderly population. The choice of subject was, for me, a kind of coming to terms with the possibility (to put it as non-politically as I can) of an intensification over the next five years of the kind of policies experienced during the previous four. Even as recently as February, 1983, when an illicit copy of the cabinet Family Policy Group papers found its way into my hands, I recall being somewhat complaisant upon reading what was a relatively small and apparently innocuous section on the elderly. The document itself seemed to pose a much greater threat to the aims of friends and colleagues working in the poverty and family ‘lobbies’ than to myself in the ageing field. This is not to say that I was unaware of the effects which cuts in health and social services must inevitably have on the care of elderly people. All the same, it seemed reasonable to believe that the inescapable reality presented by an ageing population, particularly the increase over the next 20 years in the 75+ group, which includes some of the frailest members of society, would ensure that even a government committed to Victorian values would seek to protect this ‘deserving’ section from the worst effects of financial cutbacks and recession.
