“Sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment.”

- Damon Runyon

From an article in The Scotsman:

THE cost of Scotland's flagship free elderly care policy will soar more than threefold to £813 million a year by 2031, a new report has revealed.

A dramatic growth in the number of pensioners over the next three decades will send costs, put at £256 million in 2006, spiralling, Lord Sutherland's report shows. And the author warns that Scotland must wake up to the huge impact the country's rapidly changing age profile will have on public finances and services.

Free personal and nursing care was introduced to a fanfare in 2002. It has been hailed as one of the biggest achievements of Scotland's devolved government, and is the envy of many south of the Border. But the independent review, commissioned by the Scottish Government last summer, reveals the price that such a popular policy will have in years to come.

The report says the bill will far exceed initial predictions – costing hundreds of millions of pounds more – due to the number of elderly people rising more rapidly than was expected.

Lord Sutherland insists the policy, which has attracted widespread political and public support, will be "affordable" in years to come.

The number of over-65s is expected to rise from 837,000 in 2006 to 1.36 million by 2031.

Read the whole thing. Note, however, that no mention is made that it is likely that the number of taxpayers available will also be decreasing as these costs are increasing.

Update:

Katherine Kersten has just visited Scotland and wrote today on some of her impressions of the Nanny State.

In one of Garrison Keillor's Lake Woebegone Halloween monologues he reminisced about how the wild imaginations of he and his young friends could get taken with the scary thought that cougars were hiding in the low-hanging branches of the trees along their trick-or-treating path. Of course, he said, you knew that cougars were more afraid of you than you were of them, but what if it was an old, sick cougar...an old, sick cougar with nothing to lose?!

I thought of that today when I saw the Fox story about Chicago police shooting and killing a 150-pound cougar on the city's North side. I guess a 150 pound cougar doesn't sound like it would be too old or sick to me, and if it really had nothing to lose it would have gone for the South side of Chicago and the baddest part of town. Still, it's something to keep in mind if you're ever out trick-or-treating again.

The University of St. Thomas has yet another speaker controversy on its clumsy hands. Just months after inviting, then disinviting, then re-inviting Archbishop Desmond Tutu (he respectfully declined) to speak at the school, the University has now blocked another speaker from appearing: author and pro-life advocate Star Parker.

Enough people (see the links above) are covering this latest development that I really didn't feel the need to cover it here. That doesn't mean, however, that I didn't have an unction to apply the needle a little bit to the young woman who works for me as I left the office today. She's a St. Thomas grad. "What's with your old school and it's treatment of would-be guest speakers, anyway?" I asked. She wasn't up on the news of the day (I work her too hard for her to peek at headlines).

"What now?" she asked, with a roll of her eyes.

I gave her the quick rundown, and wondered why a Catholic university would block a pro-life advocate from appearing on its campus, especially after the Tutu hoo-doo. "Don't they have PR people over there, or at least someone who'll tell them that if you try to play in the middle of the road you get run down by both sides?"

I don't have her exact quote, but she showed the kind of keen mind and insight that caused me to hire her in the first place. The gist of it was, "It's not the politics, it's the money." She said she used to work the phone bank on campus, calling alumni to ask for money. "So many times I'd call and get someone who was angry about this speaker or that speaker who had come, or a book that was selected for a class, and they'd say they weren't going to give any money because of that." She finished by saying something to the effect that St. Thomas was more concerned about the money drying up rather than, say, the same thing happening to free speech.

Wow — here I was, thinking that St. Thomas wasn't interested in principle, when it turns out that principle and interest are pretty important to them after all!

Both the blogs and the MSM have been featuring Obama's estimation of why just plain folks seem to not be warming to him in Pennsylvania:

"So it’s not surprising then that they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion or antipathy to people who aren’t like them or anti-immigrant sentiment or anti-trade sentiment as a way to explain their frustrations."

[Image HT to Gino, via The Lumberjack, who really knows how to get his whacks in.]

While the blogs tend to feature the entire quote, the MSM (or the apologists offering commentary in the MSM) tend to focus on the "bitterness" part of the statement while ignoring the rest of Obama's ignorant statement. I say "ignorant" here not in terms of "stupid" but according to the "lacking knowledge or comprehension of the thing specified" meaning of the word. Essentially, Obama's statement is an ill-informed assumption on his part, based on his experience or world-view. I say it's ignorant because I was reminded of a Pew Research Center study that I blogged about back in 2005 after reading about it on Craig Westover's blog. My post read, in part:

The study suggests that the old political party stereotypes of rich and poor, educated and less-educated no longer hold up as the two major parties now have similar demographics in terms of the distribution in these categories. The primary difference is now along the lines of attitude. From the Washington Post article:

The most striking differences between lower-income Republicans and lower-income Democrats come in their perceptions of the power of the individual. Both Pro-Government Conservatives and Disadvantaged Democrats include a substantial number of people who consider themselves to be struggling financially. Overwhelming majorities in both groups say they often cannot make ends meet.

But where they part company is in their overall sense of optimism, with the Republican group expressing much greater faith in personal empowerment. Three-fourths of the Pro-Government Conservatives agreed that people can get ahead by working hard, and four-fifths agreed that everyone has the power to succeed. Just 14 percent of Disadvantaged Democrats agreed with the first statement, and only 44 percent agreed with the second.

Meanwhile, this faith in one's ability to overcome may be rooted in a greater faith:

For all their similarities on income and education, Enterprisers on the right and Liberals on the left diverge on religious habits and cultural attitudes. For example, almost half of Enterprisers attend religious services at least weekly, while just a fifth of Liberals go to religious services that often. A fifth of Liberals are classified in the Pew study as secular - defined as atheists, agnostics or those who say they have no religious affiliation - compared with about one in 20 of the Enterprisers.

So, the way I put this together is that even though they are about the same in terms of income and education, the group with the more positive view of the future is the one that puts its faith in God and in themselves. The group with the most pessimistic outlook puts its faith in the government.

Which group do you figure already knows who its Savior is, and which one is most likely to turn, in their bitterness and hopelessness, to the next one that happens to come along?

Nevertheless, Obama has proven himself to be nothing if not resilient and adaptable. I expect that once he leaves the high-falutin' San Francisco fund-raising circuit and returns to campaign in Pennsylvania his next quote will be, "Git 'er done!"

In general I'm not a big fan of disruptive protests, seeing them as typically producing more inconvenience than enlightenment. That said, I've taken an untypical satisfaction in the multiple protests around the world seeking to shame China in the run-up to the Beijing Olympics. While I'd personally feel more of a connection if the protesters were trying to call attention to the persistent persecution, monitoring and attempted intimidation of Christians instead of Tibetans by the Chinese government, any ridicule that can be heaped on that totalitarian regime is ultimately in the service of a good cause.

To be clear, I don't support or endorse any violent or destructive protests, but I am amused by the daring ingenuity of the protests that have made use of international landmarks in London, Paris and San Francisco. The Chinese government's objective of using the Games as an image booster is blowing up in — and causing it to lose — face.

When China was first awarded the Games I found it regrettable that a country with such a heinous record on human rights and of suborning it's capitalist partners such as Google had received such a boon. Surely they would use the opportunity to present a more enlightened face to the world while continuing to betray the truth and it's own people. If nothing else, the protests have shown Beijing that not everyone is buying it or is willing to kowtow or look politely the other way.

(On a related note, last Sunday I heard a man from the Gideons relate how the organization had been granted the privilege of bringing Bibles into the country and placing them in Beijing hotels for the Olympics — on the condition that they would subsequently be removed from the country as soon as the Olympics are over. We prayed that there won't be a single Bible to be found when the Gideons go back because the guests and staff will have — safely — taken them all).

I know some say embarrassing the host country is improper and rude and that the Games should transcend politics and be about the spirit of athletic competition. Others say the protesters are depriving the torch-bearers of a once in a lifetime opportunity.

Well, if you're concerned about the athletic spirit and the ideals of fair-play, sportsmanship and a level playing field then I would suggest that China itself has already thrown these principles to the dragons, and it's only fair to call them on it. I do feel some sympathy for those of good faith looking to honor the Games by carrying the torch who are being deprived of this opportunity, but on a lesser scale than those deprived of liberty and even their life for trying to uphold the light of freedom.

Embarrassment is too mild a price for the Chinese government to pay for its abuses; at the very least I would that they be mortified.

TechnoChitlins directed me to the story and PHOTOS from Zombietime.