I get the fact that the article suggests that there is a problem with a quarter of the elderly living alone, and with as many as fifty per cent reporting loneliness as a major feature of their life, with more than seven per cent reporting that as a chronic problem. But, I would suggest that these problems are at least as significant for the young. They do not only cause problems for the elderly. They are a feature of all of life that is now lived remotely, online, and too often in fear of what contact with others might provoke.
Is the answer to that incredibly expensive retirement apartments, built in so-called retirement villages of the sort used by Richard Osman as the setting for his Thursday Murder Club series? Maybe it is, but if so, isn’t living space based on the need for community the answer to the problems of all in society? And why should access be limited to those with wealth?
In a world where so many very basic needs are not met, isn’t the need for safe spaces to meet and talk high on the list of priorities?
For me, the absence of such spaces that do not require the consumption of significant quantities of alcohol over an evening (which is not my thing, although I am open to the odd pint) is a major issue. Why is it, for example, that every coffee shop is shut in the evening? Is there really no evening market for them?
Why not change planning law so that it’s no longer necessary for people to live in chicken coops. Then they can have people ’round in the evening into the front parlour. Just one of those odd little ideas.
The reason the young live their lives online is because they choose to, not because they lack the opportunity to socialise face to face. You could put every young person into communal buildings, and significant numbers would still sit in their rooms playing on their X-boxes communicating with people from the other side of the planet. Online is a powerful drug, because going out and doing things in person as a young person can be very scary, especially for young men, who often find the face to face stuff difficult. Far easier to have it all at arms length and able to the turned off at the flick of a switch. I know I’d have preferred that as a young man.
“absence of such spaces that do not require the consumption of significant quantities of alcohol over an evening (which is not my thing, although I am open to the odd pint) is a major issue. Why is it, for example, that every coffee shop is shut in the evening? Is there really no evening market for them?”
For fucks sake. I’m a life long teetotaller. I’ve spent more time in smoky pubs, sticky carpet nightclubs and at wine soaked house parties than I care to think about, and yet I’ve never failed to find a soft drink. Every Wetherspoons in the country does coffee, and is open to God knows what hour. You don’t have to buy alcohol if you don’t want to. I used to go to a Wetherspoons quiz night with some mates for years, 4 of us, we never bought a single alcoholic drink in all the time we attended it. What fucking world does this gibbering idiot live in?
One of his own imagination, Jim. Which bears little relation to reality.
I can probably answer his question about the coffee shops. Because it’s so damned expensive to run a coffee shop. Which means a coffee’s so damned expensive, although coffee itself isn’t. So people can’t afford to go to them so they don’t open late.
Jim
For fucks sake. I’m a life long teetotaller. I’ve spent more time in smoky pubs, sticky carpet nightclubs and at wine soaked house parties than I care to think about, and yet I’ve never failed to find a soft drink. Every Wetherspoons in the country does coffee, and is open to God knows what hour. You don’t have to buy alcohol if you don’t want to. I used to go to a Wetherspoons quiz night with some mates for years, 4 of us, we never bought a single alcoholic drink in all the time we attended it. What fucking world does this gibbering idiot live in?
That has genuinely made me fall off my chair. Tommy Cooper levels of laughter. Genuine genius right there. And every word true. The man is a supremely earnest idiot as well – which makes him even more annoying.
The fact that coffee shops don’t open late answers his question – there is no market for it.
The Emeritus Potato will claim that this is market failure and the state is needed to provide lonely fat angry men of Ely a place to spend their evenings
Man who is banned from pubs doesn’t know what pubs are for?
Man who is banned from pubs doesn’t know what pubs are for?
He probably thinks they’re for political lectures.
Why not change planning law so that it’s no longer necessary for people to live in chicken coops. Then they can have people ’round in the evening into the front parlour.
I don’t think it’s necessarily that simple. Jim may have part of it with the young & on-line. But it goes back further than that.
The advent of TV.
You now have an old generation who abjured going out & building social networks in favour of sitting at home in front of the box. So with the kids long gone & living their own lives, of course they feel lonely. And they’ve brought up their kids the same way. They’re sitting in front of their boxes rather than going to see Mum & Dad. And unto the next generation & the next So the online thing’s just a variation on the same theme.
Then they can have people ’round in the evening into the front parlour.
It’s not whether they can have people ’round in the evening into the front parlour. It’s whether they would go ’round to someone else’s front parlour.
Going round for drinks and then driving home isn’t the low risk activity it was in the 1950s or 60s. Low risk, that is, of being nabbed. Quite a high risk of a crash, I dare say.
Mind you, mini cabs and Uber. Or, for us until we got too old for them, bikes. Mind you again, cycling, like walking, would no longer be taking place midst a First World society.
Still, I suspect pointing the finger at yer electronics – TV or O/L – is bang on.
Man living with wife and two children complains of loneliness.
66 year old man complains about the unaffordability of retirement accommodation.
Very revealing.
Back in the ’80s I lived at university in communal accommodation. I didn’t know any of the other 14 people who lived on my wing, and the people in the other 15 wings could well have been on another planet. I had absolutely nothing in common with them, other than living in wing 4D, and only saw them when crossing paths in the kitchen. The people I socialised with were the people I chose to socialise with from completely random other locations because we were people with similar interests, sometimes on similar/same courses, and frequented the same places. Not because we randomly happened to live next to each other.
My mother is getting on; she’s lonely because most of the friends she had were about her age and they’re dead.
As you get older, it gets harder to make friends with younger people who actually go out. And you get less able to go out as well.
It’s rather harder in suburbia, where a car makes things much easier. If you are no longer able to drive (because you forget where you’re going etc.), suddenly everything is further away.
Mass transit may work, though there’s the problem of many less socialized people being imported and those generally being limited to mass transit as well…
The young are mostly physically capable of changing their lifestyle to meet people and hopefully become less lonely. They also have the information about what’s available at their fingertips and low cost options are available.
Elderly people are often severely restricted in both of these aspects.
The last two comments illustrate exactly what I meant. The world is the other side of your front door. Before TV, people probably known everybody in the street. People didn’t live behind closed curtains with a flickering light visible in the gaps.
If only there was a place where people of all ages and walks of life could meet in pursuit of a common interest. If only there was a place that they could also socialize and talk.
Those places exist and they aren’t only open on Sundays.
Actually, given historical precedent, it’s probably a good idea for him to stay away from beer halls.
He wants dorm living for everyone.
Communal dining.
No privacy – better for the state to observe and shape your behavior.
Probably a sign that he’s recently read ‘Utopia’;)
Why don’t those old people go down to the pub anymore, I wonder?
>“absence of such spaces that do not require the consumption of significant quantities of alcohol over an evening (which is not my thing, although I am open to the odd pint) is a major issue. Why is it, for example, that every coffee shop is shut in the evening? Is there really no evening market for them?”
1. No, no there isn’t a market for them. They’re popular in places where you can’t get a drink and that’s about it. Everywhere else, you grab a coffee on the way into work in the morning – and you still stop for a *drink* in the cafe on the way home in the afternoon.
2. Is he not partial to drinking because his local pubs have banned him? So the option is a long bus ride or drinking from the bottle at home?
” Why is it, for example, that every coffee shop is shut in the evening? Is there really no evening market for them?”
Yes, there is a very limited market for evening coffee. Most folks drink coffee in the morning to wake up; and staying awake is exactly the opposite of what most folks want to do in the evening.
Most folks drink coffee in the morning to wake up; and staying awake is exactly the opposite of what most folks want to do in the evening.
And the dozy cunt doesn’t even realise that. In the evenings, people drink coffee after dinner. They go to restaurants to do that, which explains why restaurants are open in the evening (when staff, energy costs & rates allow) and coffee shops are not.
He really has no idea about demand and supply, does he? If there was a demand for evening coffee shops, suppliers would satisfy it.
Before TV, people probably knew everybody in the street.
Still true for me, although our ‘street’ is ¾ mile long with maybe 50 houses. Of the rest of our village (2,000 inhabitants), I’m probably on nodding terms with a few hundred of them (there’s a significant RAF establishment with fairly rapid turnover), and know 50 or so pretty well. But, unlike Spud, I make the effort to get involved in local activities.
jgh in Japan said:
“… I didn’t know any of the other 14 people who lived on my wing … I had absolutely nothing in common with them”
You might be right, but how did you know? At best you were making assumptions based on their outward appearance.
Since you clearly found people who you did have things in common with, t doesn’t really matter. But interesting that already then it was about finding people within your zones of interest, rather than getting to know what your neighbours were really like. It’s that social geography over physical geography that the internet has increased.
@Mohave Greenie – “If only there was a place where people of all ages and walks of life could meet in pursuit of a common interest.”
Of course there is such a place – the Internet.
“You might be right, but how did you know? At best you were making assumptions based on their outward appearance.”
There will have been the ocassional passing conversations along the lines of “Hi, I’m X, I’m doing sociology”; “Hi, I’m Y, I’m doing computing science”. If you didn’t also meet them elsewhere there was no re-inforcement of interaction, so yes my entire knowledge was based purely on the fact “they live in the room two doors down from me” and nothing else.
Every Wetherspoons in the country does coffee, and is open to God knows what hour. You don’t have to buy alcohol if you don’t want to.
Wether spoons tea is basically bottomless (or was last time I was there).
Part of the reason people don’t go out and socialise as much any more is because it’s becoming ludicrously expensive.
Government: let’s tax beer and wine to a silly extent
Also government: why aren’t people going to the pub any more and our communities dying?
On the continent, the same cafe will serve coffee in the morning and beer in the evening. Not sure why it works there but not here. After all, there’s barely any difference in climate between northern France and southern England.
The always Excellent Chernyy Drakon has it nailed down.
My expectations of government are so low they’d really have to go some to surpass them but they do frequently.
Taxes on alcohol are criminally insane and both this and the last government saw it as something that could easily be taxed further.
That, combined with increasingly Muslim dominated licensing departments who are looking longer term to outlaw the pub mean a lot of premises are worth more as private residences post conversion than they would be as viable businesses.
There is no practical limit to left wing and public sector stupidity. It is the equivalent of the Universe itself. The other thing I see only a hypothetical limit for (basically it would stop once you have exhausted left wing and public sector victims) is the multi person gallows Tim has often advocated.
@Jgh
Your story about your lacking companionship with the people you were living amongst is likely the reason you’re having trouble finding gainful employment now. That you don’t share particular interests in people doesn’t mean you don’t have another things in common. You might have struck up friendships based on any of them. And could give you experience of things you wouldn’t otherwise encounter. And who knows? You might have amongst those things, found something else that interested you. And added another string to your one string bow.
I think is very relevant to the subject under discussion. Due to changing life patterns people are less exposed to diverse others. So as they get older there’s less & less people they’re compatible with. They lose friends but are unable to make new ones. It is a recipe for being lonely.