Bread Care Friends

I'm seriously considering banning Hay from slicing bread - she seems genetically incapable of cutting a slice without the loaf ending up looking like one of Picasso's early cubist experiments gone dramatically wrong.

It was Hay's dad's 80th yesterday but we had the party on Saturday - granted it's bit of a risk at his age, but he's quite fit. How many of us could have a birthday party these days and have 10 friends, whom we've known all our lives, attend from no more than a 3 mile radius? How times have changed - we move about so much that our childhood friends are either long lost or scattered far and wide.

The newspapers yesterday were once more filled with stories about people wanting the state to pay for the care of their elderly parents, even though said parents have assets and the kid themselves have assets. State funding translates to the taxpayer, of which there soon won't be enough to fund all the things we're meant to fund, especially with birth rates dropping and an ageing population. I believe the term 'elderly parents' contains the seeds of the solution - if these elderly parents have children (and they must by definition), then perhap the children should be assessed for their ability to look after their own parents and effect some repayment for the 16 to 20 years care they received, rather than continually harping on about how we all owe their parents a debt from WWII so they can dump their parents on the State.

Don't get me wrong - if you genuinely can't pay, then I'm more than willing to subsidise your care package when you become incapacitated through old age. But if you live in a massive house which you gave to your kids to avoid having to fund your own care, or you have affluent kids who can well afford to look after you or pay the care fees, you've lost my sympathy and gained my enduring hatred as a sponger and parasite. Why are people these days so obsessed about passing on an inheritance intact and expecting the taxpayer to fund it?