Some of the people ratio-ing Giles Fraser on Twitter are making the same point about people not necessarily wanting their children or other loved ones wiping their bums, and preferring strangers to do it.

I mean, perhaps she went quiet because she was thinking "but I never had to worry about my babies finding it a crushingly distressing indignity that their own middle aged child was wiping their arse" who knows, eh.

— Hugo Rifkind (@hugorifkind) February 22, 2019

We persuaded my Dad to come live with me for end of life care rather than go to a hospice. His one condition was that I wouldn't be the one to wipe his arse. He had too much dignity to allow

Giles Fraser wishes everything were more like the good old days when everybody stayed home except rich men.

Last week the Evening Standard – now, of course, a propaganda rag for George Osborne’s Remain-inspired end-of-the-world fearmongering – led with the following front-page headline: “Who’ll look after our elderly post Brexit, ask care chiefs”.

I’m still spitting blood at the arrogance and callousness of that question. It summed up all that I have against the Osborne neoliberal (yes, that’s what it is) world-view. And why I am longing for a full-on Brexit – No Deal, please – to come along and smash the living daylights out of the assumptions behind that question.

Is he standing up for exploited workers? Haha … Read the rest

Giles Fraser sees part of the mistake.

The problem with the person who drove a lorry into a crowded market of Christmas shoppers wasn’t that he was too religious, but that he wasn’t religious enough. It was the action of a half-believer, the sort of thing done by someone who doesn’t so much believe in God – but rather believes in the efficacy of human power exercised on God’s behalf, as if God needed his help.

Of course. Obviously. I’ve said it many times, and I’m sure so have most talkative atheists. It’s absurd that humans who profess to believe in an omnipotent omniscient god think that god needs their help.

It’s a very basic point. The truth of