Posted on 10/20/2012 11:29:18 AM PDT by DogByte6RER
LILLE, France (Reuters) - Police in France said on Friday they were trying to identify the skeleton of a man believed to have lain undiscovered in bed for more than 15 years.
The body, found in an abandoned house in the northern city of Lille, is thought to be that of the elderly owner of the property, who lived alone and appeared to have no relatives.
Police said they had found piles of unopened mail at the house dating back to 1996.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
This is reminiscent of France’s 2003 heat wave in which close to 15,000 died ... mostly elderly whose relatives were away on vacation and assumed that the state would look after them.
France heat wave death toll set at 14,802
PARIS (AP) — The death toll in France from August’s blistering heat wave has reached nearly 15,000, according to a government-commissioned report released Thursday, surpassing a prior tally by more than 3,000.
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/weather/news/2003-09-25-france-heat_x.htm
This is the French socialist “healthcare” system. They want all the useless eaters eliminated to make room for the little fascist, muslim babies. They can’t wait for heat waves and bed sores.
Beautiful plummage, eh?
2003 European heat wave
- France
In France, there were 14,802 heat-related deaths (mostly among the elderly) during the heat wave, according to the French National Institute of Health.[4][5] France does not commonly have very hot summers, particularly in the northern areas,[6] but seven days with temperatures of more than 40 °C (104 °F) were recorded in Auxerre, Yonne during July and August 2003. Because of the usually relatively mild summers, most people did not know how to react to very high temperatures (for instance, with respect to rehydration), and most single-family homes and residential facilities built in the last 50 years were not equipped with air conditioning. Furthermore, while there were contingency plans for a variety of natural and man-made catastrophes, high temperatures had rarely been considered a major hazard.
The catastrophe occurred in August, a month in which many people, including government ministers and physicians, are on holiday. Many bodies were not claimed for many weeks because relatives were on holiday. A refrigerated warehouse outside Paris was used by undertakers as they did not have enough space in their own facilities. On September 3rd, 2003, fifty-seven bodies still left unclaimed in the Paris area were buried.
The high number of deaths can be explained by the conjunction of seemingly unrelated events. Most nights in France are cool, even in summer. As a consequence, houses (usually of stone, concrete or brick construction) do not warm too much during the daytime and radiate minimal heat at night, and air conditioning is usually unnecessary. During the heat wave, temperatures remained at record highs even at night, preventing the usual cooling cycle. Elderly persons living by themselves had never faced such extreme heat before and did not know how to react or were too mentally or physically impaired by the heat to make the necessary adaptations themselves. Elderly persons with family support or those residing in nursing homes were more likely to have others who could make the adjustments for them. This led to statistically improbable survival rates with the weakest group having fewer deaths than more physically fit persons; most of the heat victims came from the group of elderly persons not requiring constant medical care or living alone without immediate family.
That shortcomings of the nation’s health system could allow such a death toll is a matter of controversy in France. The administration of President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister Jean-Pierre Raffarin laid the blame on families who had left their elderly behind without caring for them, the 35-hour workweek, which affected the amount of time doctors could work and family practitioners vacationing in August. Many companies traditionally closed in August, so people had no choice about when to vacation. Family doctors were still in the habit of vacationing at the same time. It is not clear that more physicians would have helped as the main limitation was not the health system but locating old people needing assistance.
The opposition, as well as many of the editorials of the local press, have blamed the administration. Many blamed Health Minister Jean-François Mattei for failing to return from his vacation when the heat wave became serious, and his aides for blocking emergency measures in public hospitals (such as the recalling of physicians). A particularly vocal critic was Dr. Patrick Pelloux, head of the union of emergency physicians, who blamed the Raffarin administration for ignoring warnings from health and emergency professionals and trying to minimize the crisis. Mattei lost his ministerial post in a cabinet reshuffle on March 31st 2004.
Not everyone blamed the government. “The French family structure is more dislocated than elsewhere in Europe, and prevailing social attitudes hold that once older people are closed behind their apartment doors or in nursing homes, they are someone else’s problem,” said Stéphane Mantion, an official with the French Red Cross. “These thousands of elderly victims didn’t die from a heat wave as such, but from the isolation and insufficient assistance they lived with day in and out, and which almost any crisis situation could render fatal.”[7]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_European_heat_wave
No, he’s pining for the fjords!
“The French family structure is more dislocated than elsewhere in Europe, and prevailing social attitudes hold that once older people are closed behind their apartment doors or in nursing homes, they are someone else’s problem,”
People are expendable biological units in a secular society, and the nuclear family too much work to create.
It’s not that I don’t see the dark side here of social neglect.
But, I can’t help but see a bright side, too. This guy’s privacy was respected for 15 years. His house wasn’t trashed or vandalized, he wasn’t robbed, and the tax collectors didn’t confiscate the place for back RE taxes. How long do you think you could lie undisturbed in your home here, in the Land of the Free?
No joke; one of our neighbors, an unmarried 30-year-old military veteran who was training to become a medical aide at a world-famous hospital 20 miles from here, choked on food and was found dead three weeks later, in his front hallway, apparently trying to get out to get help. Seems his parents hadn't heard from him in awhile. Sign of the times.
IIRC correctly about 3 years. May have been Florida - can’t remember for sure.
The person had everything set up on automatic payments/bank drafts. Can’t remember exactly how it was discovered. Was reported in the national news, and I think an article was posted here too.
I too thought about that aspect, and I agree to an extent.
But ... your point would further make the case for eliminating the high confiscatory tax rates and nanny state programmed government in France. When alive, this long dead elderly man surely paid his exhorbitant taxes, yet the big lazy and incompetent nanny state never sought fit to check on the man’s welfare or status.
The dead man deserves a refund!
When some dead person is discovered, usually people report some hideous smell, but since this guy was in France probably no one noticed!
16 years of superior government civil service.
Gotta love the French postal service. When the mailbox is full, just throw it on top of one of the huge piles in the yard and move on.
Who was paying the rent?
The property taxes??
The power bills? etc.
Maybe the guy who was signing his pension checks?
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