Two concurrent reports indicate the failure of neoliberalism's 'autonomous individualism' to fulfil anything outside the most trivially short-termist of selfish 'wants'.

The charity Age UK's report Older Patients Still Hungry To Be Heard confirms a raft of previous reports on the neglect of the elderly in care homes and hospitals.

Unlike members of the reserve army, and benefit 'scroungers', the elderly are a more difficult target for the neoliberal social Darwinists.

While many of us may be spared the pariah status of joining the excluded, more of us will grow old and frail and be unable to look after ourselves, and thus come to be dependent on the good-will of others, who are usually paid the miniscule wage to care.   [SCFG]

It's entirely possible, of course, that compulsory euthanasia - like the Nazi's Aktion T4 programme - will one day be drafted in to sort this particular unsustainable burden.

However, this is as yet a step too far for the current Davos elite to even contemplate while vestiges of older ethical systems - which contest the current dystopic individualism - still have a voice.  

The second set of reports centre around the Cancun climate conference.

Climate 'chaos' is entwined with resource depletion - such as peak oil - and it's concomittant nightmare scenario: the end of growth.

For the current globalised economy is dependent on exponential growth. As Gordon Brown told The Economist:

My view of the world economy is that it will probably double over the next fifteen or twenty years.

By 2030 we’ll have an economy that’s twice as big.   [Econ]

He did not say where the oil was coming from to facilitate the doubling of the just-in-time system of global transport, or what the effect of such an expansion would be on CO2 emissions.

Short-term considerations are much more profitable.

Inquiry call over Mark and Helen Mullins deaths

A charity worker has called for a full investigation into the deaths of a vulnerable couple whose bodies were found in their Warwickshire home.

The deaths of Mark and Helen Mullins, from Bedworth, last Thursday, are being treated as "unexplained" by police.

Kervin Julien, from the Christian charity Anesis, knew the couple and said they struggled to get benefits.

He has called on the authorities to find out what happened so it does not happen to others in need.

He said the couple walked every Sunday to a soup kitchen in Coventry almost 12 miles away in order to have something to eat and pick up food bags ...

BBC NEWS  09 November 2011    'Unsustainable Burdens'

RIP Helen and Mark