I’ve got an idea! Unusual, I know, for me to have any kind of idea, but I think I have come up with the perfect solution to deal with the £369 million bill to repair Buckingham Palace. Let’s have a telethon! last week, Children In Need raised £46.6 million for the most disadvantaged children in the country so why not try it for the royal family? Surely it would be a resounding success?
My timeline on social networks has offered conflicting views on the matter. Some people feel that the Queen should pay for the repairs herself, but if she did she’s probably heading off to a nearby food bank because that would empty her bank account. Even I, a quiet republican who accepts that most people want to keep the royals so it’s not worth fretting about, don’t think that would be right. After all, the Queen attracts large numbers of visitors to this country and who would otherwise subsidise the tat sellers of Oxford Street and the hoteliers of the capital? The latter would probably have to drop their prices so the rest of us could afford to stay in London too. Actually, that might be no bad thing.
This all gets a bit more serious when you look at some frightening and disturbing statistics obtained by the charity Age UK which show that “nearly 1 in 8 older people are struggling without the help they need to carry out essential everyday tasks, such as getting out of bed, going to the toilet, washing and getting dressed.” That’s 1.2 million people who don’t care the care that they need. And let me quote directly some from Age UK the actual numbers:
535,300 (43.1%) of the 1,243,300 people aged 65+ who struggle to wash/get in the bath don’t get the care they need.
222,600 (47.1%) of the 472,600 who have difficulty going to the toilet don’t receive the care they need.
343,500 (47.8%) of the 718,600 who find it hard to get out of bed on their own do not receive the help they need.
125,100 (44.4%) of the 281,500 who find it hard to eat on their own do not receive the help they need.
797,400 (51.2%) of the 1,557,000 who find it hard to get dressed on their own do not receive the help they need.
240,500 (42%) of the 572,500 who find it difficult to walk across a room on their own do not receive the help they need.
Some will say that if we cannot afford to care for the most vulnerable senior citizens in the land, or worse can’t be bothered with them, then now can we justify forking out such a relatively large sum of our money to an already seriously rich woman?
But given the levels of public support for the monarchy – and I know there is huge support – then let’s have a telethon. We could have sponsored events, groups of celebrities could perform semi-humourous sketches and perhaps even Celebrity It’s A Knockout (without Stuart Hall, obviously). I count myself in a very small minority as a disinterested republican who can’t be bothered to be an interested republican, but if every royalist texted a fiver, that £369 million would be raised in no time.
Wearing my more serious hat, why not pay for all this stuff from public funds instead? I don’t have any objection to the Queen putting in a few bob herself, but in truth £369 million is a relative drop in the ocean. I doubt that providing adequate care for the 1.2 million people currently going without it will cost as little as the repairs for Buck House, but I don’t really care. I have a quaintly old-fashioned view, probably not popular in the post-Thatcher era, that we have a moral obligation to look after our fellow man and woman, both here and abroad and that we should not tolerate a situation where senior citizens are struggling to get out of bed, eat and even use the toilet.
Personally, I can only provide anecdotes from my personal and professional experience but I do not doubt for one second the accuracy of the Age UK statistics. Many older people are among the most supportive of the royal family and good for them. And I suspect they would be in full support of the Queen’s prime residence being repaired at public expense. By the same token, we must ensure that “ordinary working people”, as Theresa May calls them, are looked after, too, and that means providing dignity in old age. That includes providing care.
