Morston Quay

Another beautiful day today, it was 17C and sunny this afternoon. This morning I did some washing to line dry it, got my Sainsbury's delivery and then walked into town. I was there for a talk at the library by our ex-MP Norman Lamb about life as an MP, which was extremely interesting. He's one of the 'good guys' and it was interesting to hear about the heavy workload, the responsibility and the impact that has on the MP and their family, and his main area of campaigning on mental health care. This afternoon I met my friend G for a walk over the marshes to Blakeney and back. It was just glorious today, and so nice to see so many people out enjoying themselves, including the boys in my Extra. It was so surprising to be sitting outside with a drink in the sun in late October with no coat on.

When I was driving home listening to R4 I heard a very interesting interview with Sir Andrew Dilnot who first proposed a social care cap in 2011. The Conservative govt changed the proposed cap to £86k in Sept 2021 and implementation was delayed until 2024, then abandoned by the Labour govt in July. He set the case out very well: that 4 out of 5 of us will need to rely on social care; that the unknown is for how long; that we need 'insurance' for the tail end of the risk (i.e. needing social care round the clock for a decade, say); that private insurers would never insure that risk with so many future unknowns; that Govt therefore needs to do this for the tail end risk, but with a capped contribution from us for the rest of the risk and the first part of the tail end risk. I think someone else said that half of Council spending is on social care, but I'm not sure. To me, this seems the only way forward, otherwise the whole system will collapse.