David Craig, on April 5th, 2023Wednesday blog
I’ll only leave this up for one day as it’s not very important. However, if it just helps one or two people, then it was worth covering this.
I’d like you to look at a few pictures from Thailand:
Your first reaction is probably: so what, aren’t these just pictures of typical Thai holiday resorts?
Well they’re not holiday resorts. They’re care homes in Thailand specialising in looking after foreigners – Europeans, Americans and Australians etc – with conditions like Dementia, Alzheimers, Parkinsons, mobility problems or other reasons why they can no longer live independently.
Here’s the dining area at one of these care homes:
And here’s a typical room:
A member of my family has worked in several care homes in the UK and I can assure you that there aren’t many care homes in Britain which can match what is available in Thailand.
Obviously there are advantages and disadvantages of deciding to go into a care home in somewhere like Thailand rather than in Britain:
Advantages:
- the facilities are much better than most UK care homes
- there are many more staff per resident than in the UK
- there is a tradition of respecting the elderly in most Asian countries which means you tend to get better care there than in a country like Britain where the elderly are often seen as a nuisance
- the weather is much better – always above 27ºC
- they are often set in lush tropical gardens with swimming pools
- depending on how much care you need – a couple of hours a day, 8 hours a day or even 16 hours a day, prices per year are anywhere from £20,000 to £40,000 – around half of what you’d pay in the UK
Disadvantages
- the obvious one is that you’d be far from friends and family. But the Internet allows you to have video sessions with people back home whenever you want. And you’d save so much money on your costs compared to a Western care home that you could easily afford to buy plane tickets for visitors a few times a year. There aren’t many people who are going to say no to a free trip to Thailand to come and visit you
Here’s an article from the Guardian reporting on the trend for some people to choose care homes in Thailand rather than in Britain:
Apparently there’s outrage/fury/anger in the UK at the moment because the Government has reduced the amount of extra money it was going to pour into the voracious and insatiable black hole that is the social care sector. But if our local authorities offered some of their care home residents the option of going to a care home in a country like Thailand, that would save taxpayers between £100,000 to £200,000 a year for every 10 people who chose a luxurious care home in Thailand rather than a grotty, understaffed, over-expensive excuse for a care home in the UK
What is a woman?
And for a little light entertainment, here’s the latest idiotic, woke, progressive New Zealand Prime Minister trying to answer the question: “What is a woman?”
Category: 
Good to know. Thanks
When you say something is not very important, it usually is. I didn’t know about this but found a list of care homes on the UK government website. A problem from my experience is that the people I know who have gone into care homes is that they would not be fit enough to do the plane journey to Thailand. For me personally, living in temperatures of 27C is out of the question.
The issue to be addressed is the problems in the UK. I have the view that my grandparents generation were all looked after by their children at home. One main reason was that they had not been in the clutches of the NHS and certainly in my family they died quickly and at home cared for by the family. Even better there were no post mortems and the coffins were brought to homes and only left for the burial. Now the NHS fills people with pills and offers other treatments that result in conditions that are impossible for families to deal with at home, then the final indignity is that they want to cut them up to find out why they died. In addition we have all been encouraged to be more mobile and move to get better jobs. The result is that what should be a family matter has become a state matter. It is the same with children – they are also given to the state for care because work is more important than family life. This has to be paid for by taxation and meaning more work that is to supply the state with money. The Guardian article says that the state has to do more. This is the route to socialism and complete failure.
Simon Reeve started a new series on Cornwall and the first showed the increased demand for food banks and the number of homeless. He did not however examine how this situation developed.
In my view all these issues are because Britain has become a high cost country with expectations of entitlement to have the best. There is no incentive to save so many have no provisions any emergency or for care. The “free” NHS distorts the economy completely and means important issues are left to the state so that we can spend on trivia. The immigrant population has resulted in people working for lower pay and living in conditions we would not accept. Reeve showed this with foreign workers harvesting cauliflowers. British people would not do the work.
Britain is becoming a failed country and I put the blame on politicians who thrive on increasing state power, but we have allowed it to happen.
The video was a gem. It is why the west is in rapid and unstoppable decline.