15/10/2012 Inside Out Yorkshire and Lincolnshire

Will come to a new series of Inside Out from Yorkshire and Lincolnshire.

Here is what is coming up. The hidden misery of the baby-boom

generation. Who am I going to be when I retire, and what I am I

going to do? The future can be quite frightening. We investigate

why the problem of depression in older people is being taught.

people are suffering unnecessarily from something that is at treatable

condition in most cases. A also tonight, who is going to pay for

your care when you get old? And the spiralling costs of an ageing

population, and how it needs radical solutions. And the untold

story of Lincolnshire's role in the Cuban missile crisis. The tension

built up and we really did not know what was going to happen. Now,

we're all living longer but instead of looking forward to a happy

retirement many of us are facing decays of misery and our twilight

years. It is estimated one in four older people suffers anxiety or

depression. I have been looking at what is being done to tackle this

hidden problem. They are supposed to be the golden years but, for

people like Christine Cook, ring Auld has failed to provide a silver

lining. It's was 18 months before I retired, it was looming large, and

I got quite anxious and depressed about it, when you are going to

work full time, you have a persona, so it was the thought, I don't know

who I am, who am I going to be when I retire and what a might want to

do? To do not have enough research to understand how much of their

need is around being an older person and how much is a round

mentor of conditions. There is a big unmet need, and people are

suffering unnecessarily from something that is essentially a

treatable condition in most cases. From the outside, Christine's life

looks positive, but as have a starter to make up so did her

worries. There are three main wants, the first is help issues. The other

is money. And the third is loneliness, really. If you combine

all those three, the future can be quite frightening. Christine might

feel isolated but she is far from alone. According to some estimates,

as many as one in four elderly people could be suffering from

anxiety or depression. And that figure could be just the tip of the

expert. Depression amongst older people is very common and a

substantial proportion of older people, that depression will not be

recognised or picked up by the general practitioner so we think

that in about 50% of cases of people with depression it will not

be receiving any treatment at all. According to mental health

charities looking after the emotional needs of the elderly is

costing the NHS millions and unless steps are taken to tackle the

problem then the cost and the impact on society in general is

when to get worse. As people get older they access health services

more because of they get high incidences of chronic disease, and

they are more likely to develop depression as a consequence and it

is the consequence of physical disease and depression that can

make it harder to diagnose as people get older. Worrying about

the mental health of the elderly is a relatively new phenomenon.

Grandparents who survived the Second World War were seen as

people who could grin and bear it. But that might have massed the real

story. Figures from the Mental Health Foundation show that people

between the ages of 55-65 are twice as likely to seek help for

depression and anxiety as those beyond retirement age. The baby-

boomers are going to need help. transition from the routines of

working, to actually not having those routines is quite difficult

for people, and many people look forward to their retirement, so

sometimes their expectations are not met. Opportunities to travel,

socialise, go on holiday and all the things you perhaps dream about

and that you have worked towards, then you realise, reality strikes

home and you realise you're not won to be able to do any of these

things. At the University of York, the UK's biggest ever study into

the mental health of the elderly is under way. It is a five-year

project, costing �2.5 million. It is trying to find answers. Older

people with depression have had very few treatments available to

them well looked after by their general practitioner, other than

the prescription of anti-depressant medication. There is a sense that

people have not appreciated how important depression is up until

more recently. Talking therapy over the phone is being trial. What we

talked about last time was talking about one of the things you

mentioned that help you to stay well. As part of research, 1,000

case studies will develop a model of psychotherapy support that it is

hoped will influence future NHS policy to deal with depression in

the elderly. The focus is on changing attitudes and expectations.

They say they feel comfortable working over the telephone and can

discuss with me things in as much debt as if I saw them face-to-face.

But there are things they are not able to do any more, they might

talk about what they got out of doing that activity, what

activities they could do that would give them an alternative. A study

by the LSE put the cost the country of depression of �23 billion. In

terms of benefit costs and lost working days. My until health

services hoping to move people on at 60-65, into older people's

services, but people do not retire from having mentally of difficulty

and losing the support you have had an going into a generic older

person's service with no specialist support can be a hugely difficult

and confusing time. Charities say that with health care spending

unlikely to rise in the future, watching out for the medley of of

older people is a responsibility that we must all bear. Isolation is

one of the most common causes of anxiety and, for Christine, keeping

busy has been a key part of a recovery. I have been through the

talking therapy, the anti- depressants and the tranquillisers

and all that sort of thing and it got to the stage where I would be

well for a period of time then I would relax and go back again, but

I found that when I was well and doing something, an art project or

I was involved in something, then I felt much better. Helping out at a

local mental guilt trip Arts and Crafts Centre provides to we

support. I need a focus a ready, so my diary is full. I found that I

need that so that I have got a reason to get up in the morning.

For people like Christine lack of a co-ordinated approach -- approach

has led to a finding her own solution. We think we're doing

important research that has the potential to transform her care for

depression in the NHS and to ensure that there is a wider range of

treatment options available for people with depression and, to

ensure that people with depression received treatment, because that is

not happening at the moment. Findings might come too late to

have a significant impact for Christine, but for the time being

she is happy doing all she can to help herself and others through an

increasingly problematic area of mental health, which many feel has

been neglected for far too long. has made a big difference. When I

was retired I was scared about being at home on my own, died in,

day out, so coming year, it means that I can use my skills, so it

makes me feel useful and contributing to something and,

hopefully, my experience of having mental health problems makes me

sympathetic and empathetic to So will to come, the Secret Cold

War Plan to launch nuclear bombs A very Council now has less money

to spend and that means tough decisions as to who gets what care

as we get older - should we rely on the state to look after us ordinary

have to find new, imaginative ways to look after the order -- the

elderly, and should we be looking for new ways to liberalise. BBC

Home Affairs Editor Mark Easton has been honoured journey across

England to find out. I wonder what it's like to be 80. If I live that

long, who's going to be there to care for me when I can't manage?

And who is going to pay the bill? They're questions we all ask,

because none of us can know how much it's all going to cost and you

can spend almost everything before the state steps in. But I'm here in

York because in this city, some of the elderly have clubbed together

to share the risk. It's a simple idea. Before you get too decrepit,

you can apply to live out your days at Hartrigg Oaks a community run by

the Joseph Rowntree Foundation where residents know that if or

when they need nursing care, it's available on site at no extra

charge. It's not easy to get in, though. You have to pass a medical.

And one of the leasehold bungalows needs to be vacant. It pays to

apply early. I'm 53. You make a decision to come here at the age of

The residents paid into a communal pot. In return, they can be

confident that whatever happens to them, they will not be hit with

these they cannot afford. It covers your care however much you need.

When you are 50, you are paying over the odds, but when you are

older, you don't pay any more and when you need it. We know where we

will die probably and four meek that is great, we can get on with

It seems to me this is a local solution to what many would argue

should be a national state responsibility, paying for the care

of the elderly, but at the time of public services, the politicians

cannot agree on where to find the money, so the politicians keep

going round in circles. Despite the recession, Britain is still many

times a richer than it was when today's pensioners were born. We

can afford to look after them, but in Westminster, seasoned

politicians will tell you that priorities lie elsewhere. Is it

just too ridiculous to imagine that the answer to this is just to put

taxes up so we can actually pay to look after our elderly?

It isn't ridiculous to suggest that we should use the tax system

progressively to look after and care for people in old age. It's

ridiculous politically because nobody will touch it with a barge

pole. Why not? Because people are scared of

arguing about tax and spend. They're scared of the consequences

at the moment of the economic impact of course in terms of

further depression of our economy. So with taxpayers apparently unable

or unwilling to pay for the increasing care demands of the

elderly, the search is on for ways to provide help without the need

for large amounts of public money. I've come to Wickford in Essex to

see one of the country's hundred or so home-shares in action, an idea

already very popular on the continent. My husband died in 2002.

I've had rheumatoid for about 20 years. And then gradually I found I

was getting worse. My daughter did some research and

came up with Share and Care. She rang up one day and said "how would

you feel about a man?". And I thought, "A man? A man?". Well, why

not!? 80-year-old Iona was matched with 45-year-old Graham, an NHS

worker. Crikey. What's the next one, it'll

come to me. Liberace! For the last two years they've

lived alongside each other here in Iona's home. The deal is that he

lives rent-free in return for spending around ten hours a week

helping out. You see the advert and it says, OK,

this is not going to be a flat- share with another NHS worker. This

is going to be living with an older person. Live-in carer, taking care

of the chickens, doing some shopping, mowing the lawn, a few

repairs and bits and bobs, a bit of company.

It's allowed you to stay here in your own home? Well, exactly. I

desperately wanted to stay here. I love my house, I intend to be

carried out in my coffin from here. You don't have a, it is free board

and lodging in return from some chores? You are friends. We are

friends. He has been absolutely amazing. He's given me my life. My

quality of life has risen like that. We laugh, he makes me roar with

laughter. And sometimes I make you roar with laughter. Yeah, when you

tell dirty jokes! You know, it's so nice when you see

something that clearly works as well as that does. It's not for

everybody. Clearly the older person needs to have a spare room and

their needs, I think, can't be too severe and thirdly and perhaps most

importantly the characters have to be right to get that kind of

special relationship. So it is an answer, but it's not the answer.

need an imaginative, joined-up holistic answer that mobilises and

supports families with caring, that gets the community involved, that

gets younger older people who are still active as part of the

solution. And over on the Isle of Wight, there's a unique social

experiment being piloted that aims to do just that. It's called "Care

4 Care" and, again, the idea is simple. For every hour of voluntary

care that people put in for their elderly neighbours. They build up

an hour's worth of care credit that they can keep in a time bank and

then use for their own care later in life. Hello, Pearl. How are you

today? One of the youngest of the 150 or so members who've signed up

for the pilot scheme is 36-year-old Lewis, who's been helping out 87-

year-old Pearl. I've been coming to see Pearl for about six months now.

I've notched up 20 hours and I would like to think that those

hours are banked to go towards either helping my mother or helping

myself if and when I need it. It can encourage you so much to

actually get out there and do something.

The thing is my fingers, the top joint doesn't go over, so therefore

I can't pick up things properly. I spend quite a lot of time talking

to him and he talks to me, but that's a big help to me because

people don't come. Care 4 Care is the brainchild of Professor Heinz

Woolf, who hopes it will play a key part in solving the care crisis.

hope that over the next three years or so, we will build it into quite

a large national scheme. I hope there might be a million members.

The problem is whether the next generation is sufficiently keen to

ensure safety in the own age to invest the hours which would buy

them their care pension. Here in Westminster of course, the talk is

all about cuts and austerity, not spending billions more caring for

our elderly. So the responsibility falls on wider society. On

communities, on neighbourhoods, on families, to fill that gap and help

all of us feel more confident about Go 50 years ago this week, at the

height of the Cold War, the Russians started building missiles

in Cuba. The Americans reacted and for a few weeks, the world was on

the brink of nuclear war. It was caught the Cuban missile crisis.

But if what all three had begun, it could have started in Lincolnshire,

not in Cuba! It is a summer's day at RAF

Waddington and the crowds are out for the station's annual aviation

showcase. In October 1962, it was home to the Vulcan bombers of the

RAF's V sauce. Today it is hosting the air show. We would have had

none of this if events 50 years ago Within the past week, unmistakable

evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missiles

sides is now in preparation... Cuban missile crisis was the

nearest we ever got Duke World War Three. Russia placed nuclear

weapons in Cuba and aimed them at America, and they were not scared

off by the Americas setting offers a blockade. There seemed only one

conclusion. We were potentially minutes away from nuclear war and

the first bomb of this conflict could have been launched not from

Cuba, but from Lincolnshire. In 1962, if we had launched a nuclear

bomb towards Russia, the weapon would have begun its journey in the

east of England. Lincolnshire was very important for deterrent

purposes in the Cold War and of course, the V bombers carried the

nuclear-weapons, and you also had the Thor missile complexes that

would applied from 1958 onwards -- that were deployed. It was getting

very hot towards the time of the Cuban missile crisis. A group of

aviation historians in Lincolnshire, collecting first-hand accounts of

the Cuba crisis, are finding that some of them do not quite match the

version on file. In the official record that Bomber Command were put

up to alert condition three at 1pm on Saturday afternoon, but people

say they can remember on the Thursday before, things were

already happening on the station. Attention, attention. It does not

quite tally that some of the time line seems to not go with the

official version. We are so the record say we went on alert on

Saturday but did we actually do this much earlier? We have come to

another old airfield, Newark, looking for a crew who were on duty

that week in 1962. We are at a reunion of the V force. We were

watching television. A shadow across the windows. The knock on

the door and it was the village policeman. He was sent back RAF

Waddington to hoist me out and told me to go to work. I said, what for,

constable? He said, if you don't know, I can't tell you. The ground

crew were generating a their crews as fast as they could comic loading

weapons on to the aircraft, and... I quickly got dressed in uniform, I

kissed my wife and I said, if you hear us take off, you go, take

wickets and go. And then I left. -- take the children. The UK official

accounts say Saturday but American records say two days earlier,

American ballistic weapons were being made ready in the east of

England on RAF bases. This was once Ari of Hampton in Northamptonshire.

This and Lincolnshire are the only places in the UK where there are

visible remains of the Thor nuclear missile -- RAF Harrington. These

huge blast also protected the equipment and personnel from the

actual launch, go and down here, on this concrete pad, there were some

hangars, it run on rails, and when the missile was at risk, as it were,

it lay in the hangouts. A -- hang there. The RAF controls the firing

but it cannot be blasted us without the agreement of the British and US

governments. This was a line of first defence for America. Indeed,

one of the only ways at that stage they could target missiles at

Russia. It made us very vulnerable here. Because Thor was jointly

controlled by Britain and America, when America went on alert, so did

we. Kennedy ordered the Strategic Air Command took two stages below

war, and this was without knowledge of the British public. Britain was

not consulted by President Kennedy, but my bet their ministers nor the

Premier would let that stand in their way of the statesmanlike

assessment of a crisis. By the Saturday, two days on, it was

deadlock between the Americans and the Russians and we officially went

on alert. Unbeknown to the general public, threw up the east of

England Thor and the V bomber crews were ready to 0 at five minutes'

notice. Bath attention, attention, this is the bomber Controller.

Every time the station Tannoy a wind, it would switch a bit because

the Tannoy it would click, "attention, attention, this is the

bomber controlled". We studied the targets, we knew what we had to do,

we knew that if we did have to scramble, if we did have to go to

war, the politicians would have lost control of the situation.

rejoined the aircraft to fly and I wanted to be in the Red Arrows, and

there I was in the wind and the rain arming a nuclear weapon, which

was slightly different! We were sitting quietly chatting and my

dear friend Paul got, in the V bomber, he suddenly got up and

ambled over towards the aircraft, pulled a pencil from his flying

suit pocket and go at eight CND badge on the side of the bomb, and

we said, what did you do that for? And he said, but if we have to drop

that Barber, those BEEP... The goal British people were worried about

the crisis in Cuba but still had been told nothing of how war

preparations had been made at Thames. This was a deliberate ploy

by the Prime Minister. Mick million was concerned that any overt

mobilisation would lead to walk -- Harold Macmillan. He was concerned

that the British public should not panic and therefore, although the

UK was demonstrably very vulnerable at this point, I think Harold

Macmillan felt he wanted to keep the country on the sidelines,

whereas in fact many people would have thought it really was on the

frontline. Do you think he got it right? In the event, he could argue

that he did, but had things gone desperately wrong, I am not sure

those people of the British public would have banned him for it.

the event, the gamble worked. The Russian ships were turned back and

normal court or relations were resumed between the two superpowers.

When we heard the ships had stopped and turned back, there was a very

big sigh of relief because the tension had really built up to a

big peak because we really did not know what was going to happen and

neither did the rest of the world, really. And after the Cuban missile

crisis, we rewrote the UK more books. The Thor places are already

earmarked for closure. Never again will we brought back the same level

of alert. But it is the first hand accounts of these men that will

remind us of just how close we came to war. Look at that! That is

That is all from me in Sheffield. If you have missed anything, you

can catch it on the Via player. Find it on the website. And make