Romseyredhead

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

Elder abuse

This subject has taken up a big chunk of time at the beginning of this week. Trotted off to The Royal College of Physicians for the launch of "Hidden Voices" which was a report about Older People's Experience of abuse.
A very worthy subject but the media coverage was dominated by stories about David Blunkett - my personal view is that it is a shame when the media can't judge what is the bigger scandal.

Today, a copy of the report was handed to 10 Downing Street along with a petition, signed by about 10,000 readers of the Daily Mirror. Chatted to the Mirror reporter for a while yesterday as we ended up sitting next to each other but, strangely, the paper did not send a reporter or a photographer - yet this was a campaign that the newspaper had run over a period of some time. In fact, they are the first national newspaper to devote much time and attention to this issue so it is even more strange that they were absent today.

Perhaps something more important came up - such as another minute twist on the Blunkett story perhaps?