Even worse

Three years ago, I lamented that the assumption that every succeeding generation would do better for themselves than the previous one seemed to be dead and buried. I noted all the ways in which the young were now worse off than their parents and grandparents. I never imagined things would get even worse. But they have.

Job conditions and salaries are worse, homes are even less affordable, zero-hours and part-time contracts are more common, personal debt is colossal, there are even longer waits for medical treatment, and the interest rate for student loans has increased.

When I look back on my younger days, it's hard to believe I had it so good. Salaries were generous, homes were relatively cheap, most jobs were permanent (and often included annual bonuses), I was never in debt (except later on with a mortgage), and medical treatment was prompt.

My year as an undergraduate now seems extraordinary. I got free tuition, a maintenance grant and a travel grant. If I did a degree now, I'd be up to my eyeballs in debt, and paying it off for years to come.

Some youngsters blame us oldies for this deterioration, which is nonsense because we oldies have always wanted people's lives to get better, not worse. It's the politicians who've presided over a flagging economy and crumbling public services. It was Prime Minister Tony Blair who ended free university tuition in 1998. It's successive governments that have allowed the growth in precarious job contracts. And it's the present government that has allowed the NHS to fall apart.

It must be very upsetting for parents that their children will be so much worse off. They must have wondered whether to have children at all, given the bleak future they'll be up against.

Refugee hell

Like many others, I'm acutely aware of the growing global refugee crisis and the terrible images of desperate people being killed and injured in their attempts to reach a safe haven.

The recent picture of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi being washed up on a beach in Turkey - his brother and mother also died - has dramatically emphasised both the crisis and politicians' inability to get a grip on it.

The current British government, apparently oblivious to the country's proud record in absorbing thousands of refugees in previous decades, is being increasingly hostile to the present flood of refugees, seeking to batten down the hatches and turn them away.

Other countries like Germany have been far more sympathetic and welcoming and have taken in much larger numbers. They've recognised that those exhausted souls struggling through one country after another aren't spongers and scroungers but distraught human beings in dire need of help and resettlement.

But politicians aplenty trot out all the usual absurd excuses for giving them the brush-off. The country's already overcrowded. Public services can't cope. They'll be an endless burden. They're just chancers out to exploit us. They're all criminals and sex traffickers. They're a threat to the British way of life. And so on.

The aspiring Labour leadership candidate Yvette Cooper has suggested the UK could take at least 10,000 refugees on the basis of 10 families going to each large town.

We could surely take many more than that if we really wanted to. If there was political will and human compassion - and even the Dunkirk Spirit - rather than sour-faced hostility. Of course public services are severely stretched. They have been for decades. But they could be expanded easily enough with a bit of ingenuity and determination instead of the usual helpless shrugs.

After all, migrants not only work in the public services themselves, they pay taxes that help to finance those services. So why not take a few more?

The "I'm all right, Jack" attitude of those comfortably-off politicians who won't lift a finger to help the less fortunate is quite sickening.

Pic: Aylan Kurdi's body is taken from the sea

Foreign hordes

 Once again Prime Minister David Cameron has been banging on about "mass immigration", "the large influx of people into Britain" and the strains and stresses this is causing to those already living here.

He happily repeats the enduring myth that the UK is being swamped by a vast tsunami of foreigners who're plundering the country and leaving the rest of us destitute and done-for.

It's no good telling him that actually the immigration rate is still a minute percentage of the population (around 200,000 a year out of a population of 62 million) and hardly amounts to an uncontrollable deluge.

It's no good pointing out that many of these immigrants are highly skilled and greatly benefit the economy, and that they often take on vital jobs that other people don't want to do.

And it's no good suggesting that anyway the problem is not numbers but organisation, that if public services were better managed and new arrivals got more help to integrate into British life, there would be a lot less of the current hysteria and panic on the subject.

If it's really a question of numbers, how come people aren't bothered by the 790,000 new children who pour into the country every year? They also need things like schools, healthcare and housing. They also need to learn the language and learn how to integrate into British life.

But we're willing enough to organise that. We don't see children as a huge burden and liability we can't cope with. We don't demand a crackdown on childbirth. We see children as a potential asset, not a looming disaster.

Politicians should stop fanning xenophobic anxieties to improve their election prospects and set a more responsible example.

And pigs might fly.

Distressed nurses

The vast majority of NHS nurses say they sometimes or always leave work in distress because they can't give patients the dignity and quality of care they would like to give.

They say they are hampered not just by lack of time and staff shortages but by management failures that mean patients have to put up with embarrassing and dehumanising stays.

Patients are often denied single-sex wards, adequate washing and toilet facilities, help with eating and complete privacy when required.

In a Royal College of Nursing poll, 81% said there times when they left work feeling patients had been let down. Some 86% said dignity should be a higher priority.

Surely such issues as appropriate privacy and being able to wash properly are so basic they should be automatically guaranteed without nurses having to complain and make do and apologise to angry patients.

If we wouldn't accept these shortcomings in our own homes, why are they considered acceptable in hospitals, particularly when they just cause further stress to patients already suffering the stress of being hospitalised?

The feeble assurances by government ministers that patients' dignity is a top priority are not convincing when the everday reality is that this is clearly not the case and there is no sign of any radical improvements.

As in so many areas, the government is again fanatically penny-pinching with a vital public service that needs to be urgently upgraded.

There are shedloads of cash available for a new generation of nuclear missiles and a hugely ambitious ID card project, but the tottering NHS is apparently not so deserving. So nurses are left frustrated and despairing.