We are all getting older. It is irreversible and if we live long enough, we will all be old one day.
There are signs you are getting a little bit older, well older than many other people around you.
Being a politics reporter, it is not often I am asked about pop culture in the office, not that I wouldn’t know the answer.
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If someone needs to identify an MP or asked to explain if a UK government announcement applies in Scotland, then I’m your man (as Wham! famously sang)
But I get passed over if someone wants the latest intel on Miley Cyrus, like where does she buy her own flowers from, what songs Lizzo performed at the Brits or who designed Sam Smith’s outfit?
And I can sort of understand why. For example, last week I was thinking out loud that a story about a PD Rudi retiring was maybe some legendary Ibiza DJ hanging up their headphones when it turned out to be a Scottish Police Dog.
Happy retirement Rudi.
But my moment arrived this week when one of my colleagues asked: “Does anyone know if this is a picture of Duran Duran?”
Blank looks all around from the mainly Generation Z cohort in the office that day.
Time for the Generation X representative to step forward.
With her name is Rio and she dances on the sand in my head I was able to identify the new romantic legends.
“Yes, that’s Simon Le Bon, Nick Rhodes, I think that’s John Taylor and that’s … the other one.”
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Later in the day, someone asked “who is Nick Kershaw?”.
Wouldn’t it be good if there was someone who was around in the 1980s? Thankfully another colleague (one of those millennials) was also able to give the pop history mini-lesson.
I was also probably the only one who remembered when Snickers was Marathon, Starbust was Opal Fruits, bus fares in Glasgow were affordable and Prime Ministers lasted longer than Valentine’s day flowers.
I am still a long, long, long way from old age but it comes to us all, and it won’t be long before those same colleagues will one day be telling people, not yet born, how they remember when Fanta Pineapple and Grapefruit used to be called Lilt.
It does us all no harm in recognising one day, no matter how far away it seems, we will be old.
And when we are, we may need some looking after.
This week I spoke to people in Glasgow about the current state of services for older people.
What I heard was the result of a short-sighted, year-to-year budget-setting process that leads to the erosion of services for the people who need them most.
A workforce that is exhausted trying to keep up with growing demand and extra work without the extra resources it deserves.
And it leaves a generation of older people who mostly have worked all their lives, who now find they are not considered enough of a priority to merit the care we would all wish for when we need it.
A lack of funding for social care has led to people, mostly older, having to stay in hospitals when they do not require medical or nursing treatment.
This, in turn, leads to fewer beds available and people who do need treatment unable to be admitted, again mostly, but not exclusively, older people.
Older people rely on public services more than most other age groups and are often disproportionately affected by cuts to local services.
When the council axed financial support for sheltered housing a number of years ago it left people with fewer services to help them maintain a degree of independence.
When a community centre closes it is one less place for older people to go and meet other people and placing them one step further on the road to loneliness and social isolation.
Now we are looking at the prospect of cuts of up to £30 million for social care in Glasgow.
It will leave staff less able to deliver the standard of care they want and to the standard people deserve.
With a growing elderly population, we need to ensure we have enough resources to be able to look after people for longer.
So as Jarvis Cocker and Pulp once sang long ago in the 1990s “Help the aged, one time they were just like you”.
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