This article was published on Bristol24/7.
Picture this. An energy company to challenge the big six. A company that puts its profits back into Bristol rather than the back pocket of its shareholders. A company that sees the city’s most vulnerable as those it most needs to help, not an opportunity to exploit for marginal profits. A company set up and is wholly owned by the council but is given an arm’s length structure to be able to operate commercially. An energy company that makes international headlines by working locally to turn local sewage into gas to then heat thousands of local homes.
This is a vision for Bristol that won plaudits internationally. Bristol was seen as a leader in creative thinking and potential answers to the impossible austerity question posed by successive governments: could a council raise crucial revenue through private council-owned companies while at the same time tackling the core issues like poverty and climate change?
This is a question that today I fear we may never know the answer to. When you have an idea that is this ambitious, this trailblazing, this bold, you need to throw your whole weight behind it. You need unequivocal political support. You need political leadership.
Today we heard the devastatingly sad news that Bristol Energy will no longer supply the city council – its whole owner – which is switching to a British Gas, one of the ‘Big Six’ energy companies. The current Labour administration who made this decision will tell us that they are “obliged to competitively tender our utility contracts” and this is of course, partially, true.
But as Eleanor Combley, the leader of the Green Councillors said today, “Just a few months ago Full Council voted through an updated policy on social value, committing to promote our local economy and environmental sustainability in the Council’s procurement rules”. Despite this, the Council have now chosen one of the Big Six over their own company to supply their energy.
Combley hits the metaphorical nail on the head when she says, “value for money isn’t just about choosing what is cheapest”.
I have no doubt that in the regimented form filling nature of council procurement British Gas ticked more boxes. But this move is the antithesis to the bold alternative vision outlined at the start of this article. It is a regressive move that will see Bristol tax payer’s money going not to the city but to the shareholders in British Gas. It will see our money going to a company that thrives on charging more to the poorest rather than one whose core aim is to support them.
This in and of itself is worrying. But when framed in the context of the choppy seas of cuts to local councils it becomes deeply worrying. What vision does this administration have for steering us as a city through these devastating cuts? Millions are being stripped from council front-line services in short-term budget-balancing moves but the lack of long-term action coming from the Mayor’s Office is deafening. Bristol wants to know if this administration is bold enough in their remaining 2 years to think big and deliver on projects to take forward the anti-austerity vision that it supposedly stands for.
Today’s news that the Council isn’t standing by its own energy company strongly suggests this administration isn’t.
Reflections on my Mum’s advanced dementia
“Death is coming for us all…the day we will have to face the crossing will come sooner than we think. I hope my day is many many years away, but… I don’t want to make the greatest leap in life in a vague dream. I want to have the chance to look it in the eye, to say: ‘You have had me in your sights all your life, but it’s on my terms that I come.’” Hendri Coetzee – Living the Best Day Ever
Sitting across from each other on slightly uncomfortable wooden chairs in the care home I watch my Mum interact with one of the staff. The young girl lays her hand on my mum’s shoulder, raises the volume of her voice slightly and asks if “everything was alright dear” and if my Mum would “like any help?”.
My mum looks up at her and smiles with wide unfocused eyes. The staff member smiles back, hovers awkwardly for a moment trying to decipherer what this blank stare means before finally she walks over to another resident. As she makes her way over to a lady sat hunched in the corner I look back at my Mum and catch just the faintest flicker of a death stare from behind her eyes. It was an unmistakable reflection of something deep within her that these days only occasionally surfaces. Today this was a split second of a “fuck off am I your dear”.
Of course, I could have imagined it, I could have simply wanted to see a bit of her old self and so read too much into a distant stare. But, in that moment I think I saw my Mum: proud, wanting to help others – not wanting to waste people’s time in being helped, and ultimately using anger as a shield to hide away from all the insecurities and uncertainties of her life.
She focuses her eyes back on me, a second of surprise or alarm gives way to a meandering anecdote about the walk she believes she had taken that morning over Dartmoor. I ask if she saw any deer and she responds that she had, but only in the distance. This follows a second of silence and a drop in her eyebrows before she asks if I was OK to count? I promise her that I was more than happy to count to which she scoffs and says she doubts it. I once again miss the nuance of her reality.
Asking questions of dementia patients often only increases distress and confusion and so I try to steer the conversation back onto safe territory and say it was a beautiful crisp winters day outside. Her eyes look at me. One, two, three. Seconds pass with no response. I try a new path. I tell her that I recently spoke with her nephew, my cousin, and that he is happy and doing well. One, two, three. Eyes wide. No response. I try three of four times more and get little in response.
I decide not to push conversation. I sit with her in the weak winter sun surrounded by the stuffy air of the car home. Silence.
In the silence my mind jumps to memories at random. I think back to my mum cutting all the fire wood for the house by hand insisting that she was perfectly happy with her bow saw and no, she didn’t want me to come around with a chainsaw. I think back to her carrying heavy trestle tables out of the local scout hut as all the other mums stood and watched. I think about her slapping down any idea or suggestion that she might in anyway need any help.
With these thoughts in mind I smile at her thinking that I might get going soon. She doesn’t smile back. The staff member approaches and puts her hand on Mum’s shoulder and, just before Mum smiles up at her, she gives her a split second of that recognisable death state. The staff member either doesn’t notice or chooses not to.
The thing I feel saddest about when I leave is that Mum has so little capacity, so little control. Despite both the care home and my family doing all they can, we are no longer able to play by her rules and there is nothing we, or she, can do about it. She is left to be looked after by others. She is clearly being looked after well but they also clearly miss the very essence of her. I don’t think I am sad that she will pass away in the coming, weeks, months, or possibly years. I am just sad that it must be like this, not on her terms.
Be one of the cool kids and share this article
Like this:
2 Comments
Filed under Health, Social comment
Tagged as Advance dementia, Care home, death, Dementia, dying, Hendri Coetzee, Living the best day ever, Living with