Daily Archives: February 15, 2015

Dementia hits women hardest – study | Society | The Guardian

February 15, 2015 By in Austerity, Baby Boomers, David Cameron, Ed Miliband, Elderly, Healthcare, NHS, People, Politics, Research Tags: , , 2 Comments

This is a powerful, must read article by the Guardian. Check it out!

Dementia hits women hardest – study | Society | The Guardian.

The article gives a preview of a new study by Alzheimer’s Research UK. Critically dementia is now the leading cause of death among British women.  Let me give you a flavor:

The study, to be published next month, calls for the government to make a significant increase in its funding of dementia research and an improved investment in care. It also reveals that:

■ More than 500,000 women are now affected by dementia. About 350,000 men have the condition.

■ Women over 60 are now twice as likely to get dementia as breast cancer.

■ Women are more than two-and-a-half times more likely than men to be carers of people with dementia.

■ Most carers do not choose or plan to take on this role and often find the experience highly stressful.

With a general election in the UK a few months away, surely political parties should be focusing more effectively on the rise of dementia?

 

via Dementia hits women hardest – study | Society | The Guardian.

Bank Hackers Steal Millions via Malware – NYTimes.com

February 15, 2015 By in Business Administration, Central banks, Defense Policy, Fiscal Policy, People, Politics Tags: Leave a comment

This is an amazing article published in the NYT. It’s a must-read. Check it out!

via Bank Hackers Steal Millions via Malware – NYTimes.com.

I’m old-fashioned and I know that it’s quaint but I believe that banks have a fiduciary duty of care to their customers, and more especially their customers’ deposits.

Increasingly, I worry that bank are too big, operate as cartels, without adequate competition. The senior management seem distant from their customers. Vast bureaucracies apply frequently broken-processes, so that the customer experience is often far worse than in the public sector. Also the banks seem to employ vast armies of contractors, yet they seem to disappear just in time for the annual headcount statistics? Transaction costs charged to customers go up but service quality fails to live up to the image projected in marketing campaigns. Also in many parts of the world, the compliance overhead is shocking.

It’s bureaucracy, bureaucracy and more bureaucracy, without effective competition and light, yet effective regulation.

Governments seem to be slow to intervene to break up banks and increase competition – there’s a powerful banking lobby, of course.

Perhaps, it’s time for consumer class actions against banks and their directors?

Thoughts?