After such a bitter and divisive election campaign, I think it is time to reflect on whether people who try to influence policy makers, inter/nationally, or locally, regarding such things as dementia should show their political colours. Sorry, I have not capitalised the p in political party throughout.

We all have our own political views, but I truly believe that, in order to get anything done in this country, regarding dementia or otherwise one needs to keep ones views to oneself.

In this blog, I am talking about general dementia policy, not the paying of it, although that too should be cross party.

I will explain why; there are two main reasons. The first is that any policy for dementia will be a long ongoing one which will cross over into governments of another hue from the one that creates it. For dementia policy to become a party political football is a fail, for that reason, in my view. It requires cross party support from the beginning; this can be done. As seen in Scotland with Franks Law which gathered cross party support and was passed.

The second reason is that if any one individual who talks/campaigns about dementia is known to be the supporter of a particular party, they can be stereotyped rightly or wrongly. I am not a great fan of political parties anyway as they are too broad churched, hardly anyone can agree with everything one party says. People can never understand my politics as they don’t fit into any one party’s or ideology.

This association goes doubly so for getting endorsements from one party. IF there has been genuine cross party support, fine, acknowledge that. I am trying to get change locally, and I want to be known as pragmatic as to how things are done and who makes the change. To me what is important is that the outcome is right.

Yes, I am known for saying Scotland has a better outlook on dementia, this is not an endorsement of any party. I truly believe that the Scots, in general, have a different world view than the rest of the UK. Why is this? We had the Scottish Enlightenment, not the UK Enlightenment, my brother is a specialist in this, so some of what he says must have fed into me! The Calvinist views of John Knox are in the mix too. Also, as a relatively small country, we accept that cooperation with others, both as countries and individuals is more necessary.

As said, I have deliberately “ignored” the costings of policies as that is ideological. Some will say that is a cop out, I have my own views but if expressed would be agreed with by some and disputed by others, when what I would like to see is consensus so policies are owned by all parties and all of society, whatever political hue, so that they can be continued long term.

This is a follow up to my last blog about social media.

IT can be very useful for connecting people, but we have to find ways of getting the unconnected on line. Otherwise we are talking in a self perpetuating bubble, this is also an offline problem. These are who need it the most; isolated, poor and probably rural. Living rurally and not able to travel far, if it was not Twitter, I would find it impossible to speak to others like myself, although as I have said before I cannot voice strong views, like one can one to one, as people take them the wrong way. I do miss having a good blether about the state of the world with other people, as I can and do argue most sides, if only to make me think! Websites are as bad, most posters are personally rude if you disagree with them. Maybe, there should be a private group/page for those of us with dementia so we could discuss such matters politely…

We use Echo a lot in our house, and if not for one problem, people with dementia should be introduced to it at the right time. The one problem is that occasionally it starts speaking, even though “Alexa”, or any like sounding word has been used. This confuses me now, and it will get worse. However, I would much prefer an Alexa in my room within a care home than the TV.

VR is another technology that can be used well, it can bring back memories and allow people to try art etc. I know there is a discussion about taking people to real places to recreate the memories but cost will always come first; I know this firsthand as such outings were stopped for that reason where I worked.

I have mixed feelings about robots doing care; serving food etc sounds alright. Intimate personal care would be difficult for a robot to do properly; the human relationship is not always there when being done by a person (although it should always be!).