NEWS: Does This Old Man Belong to You?

love is tough. good in the good parts. better in the bad.

Don't forget: They didn't just leave him. They booked a plane ticket from Spain to the UK, travelled from the UK airport to some hospital, and then left him.

I can understand someone unable to cope suddenly taking him somewhere and leaving him with a note, but this took some planning. Why didn't that planning involve speaking to someone who could arrange proper long term care?

I'm grateful for the variety of response to this thread; people seem to understand that it's not just a callous abandonment of some old geezer.

Yes, it is highly callous, and I would apologize for the comment I left earlier, but my heartless mood at the time called me to leave said comment.

The fact of the matter is that it is extremely hard to care for a person with a mental illness or degenerative disease, but to just blindly abandon an elderly man who has no clue as to what is actually happening is an exercise in the worst kind of cruelty. I am sure that the UK's Human Rights group is going to have their hands full with this one.

You may love someone very dearly, and when you love someone very dearly, that means not throwing them out the window when they are broken. I also understand that the monetary expense of caring for someone with a degenerative disease, mental illness, or critical condition is highly prohibitive. However, this is no excuse. Am I correct in assuming that Spain's healthcare system is very much like the UK's? (read: socialized healthcare?)

Why, then, is it so difficult for the family to allow their father/grandfather healthcare from one of Spain's hospitals? If they feel so callous as to drop their relative off in a completely different country, why did they not just move him into an assisted living facility?

The family are British expats living in Spain - it's not a question of just going somewhere foreign and dumping him.

Dumping him in Spain would have been much worse.

But the fact that they can book airline tickets, get him to a Spanish airport, get on a plane, get from the UK airport to the UK hospital, DUMP HIM, and then go home - that's the thing that's chilling. Why didn't they call from Spain to try to arrange care in the UK?

Not getting at you, D; just trying to do context for undone.
My guess is, they feel guilty/uneasy, that maybe moving away means they'd be refused if they asked, so they tried to avoid the question.


[Edited on Nov 13, 2004 5:34PM]

Pardon me, but I don't quite understand what you're saying.

"Moving away" from where? Are they feeling guilty about having their elderly relative "move away" to an assisted living facility? Is that what you mean? If that is the case, I still find their want to leave said elderly relative back in the UK (whilst his family is in Spain) to be incredibly insensitive and cruel. This is true whether or not the family had previously lived in the UK or not. One does not go about dropping one's family off in countries with notes pinned to their chests, and then just leave them there. This is regardless of whether or not said person had previous ties in said country.

I would like to add that avoidance is the worst tactic when it comes to anything; be it emotions, situations, or people.

Also: They should feel guilty, because they're being douche bubbles.

I meant, moving from the UK to Spain, which I think the family (including the old man, who presumably was compos mentis then) did a few years back, if I understood the press reports. I'm not arguing that it's not insensitive or cruel. Though if my ex-neighbour is anything to go by, it may not be; he doesn't know his own name, he doesn't recognise his wife of 40 years, nothing.

I think that if they felt guilty about moving away to Spain in the first place, that someone would have moved back to the UK with him so that he would have someone he might, maybe, possibly recognize.

People aren't teddy bears in raincoats.

I'm not defending what they did, at all. I'm just trying to see how they got where they are.

Yes, I guess this is what happens. I actually think that taking him back to the UK was a good thing. Dumping him in spain would have been terrible. But it's a shame they didn't go that xtra step and sort out care. They must have been in a terrible situation to do it, so I feel sorry for them.

thats why i'm so glad to have been born in that hospital,

waht a place Essex is

you really have to wonder about some peaplo, but there form Essex, it realy isn't that shocking, Essex is full of the overspill from London and it is a crap hole, it makes the Deep south (i.e. deliverance) look like NY

still shocking, but not serpriseing,

just want to point out, spain has thousands of Expats liveing there it costs about £40 qid to get there and takes about 3 hours many faimilys in teh UK have relitives out there or no peaplo who do,
its like if somone in NY' has there gradparents move to florida.
obviosly discounting the newas story, man peaplo retire to spain as its cheeper then the UK