Old age and infirmity. They're not subjects those who are younger and in fine fettle care to think about. But they're very important and should concern us all.

While some people make it through their senior years in good order physically and mentally, others don't. Many are already in need of long-term care, and many more will be so in the future - up by 50 per cent by 2026 according to latest estimates. You and I might be among them.

It's the way that British society cares for such people that was the concern of the report issued this week by a consortium of 15 organisations - caring and welfare groups, insurers, think-tanks and council bodies.

Funding was one of its big concerns. Although most individuals surveyed thought the current system of means-testing unfairly penalised people who had been thrifty, rather surprisingly there was a general view that all users of care services should pay something.

What was considered more important, rightly, was the level of support available to those in need of care. As Julia Unwin, director of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, said: "At present many older people and carers feel unsupported by a system that too often seems to be working against them, rather than giving them essential support at a time of their life when they are at their most vulnerable."

Those who have tried to acquire help from the health or social services for a failing elderly relative will probably have discovered that it's about as easy as pushing a reluctant elephant up a hill.

When finally you manage to make it through the dense thicket of buck-passing, and perhaps find a place for them in a home where to your great relief they're treated with kindness and respect, such is your sense of achievement that the last thing on your mind is the finance.

Personally I have no problem with a home being sold and most savings being spent to fund an individual's care. You save up for your old age or for a rainy day. If the two coincide, you spend your money on paying for the care you need to make life as comfortable as possible for you. Well you've nothing else to spend it on, have you? Forget about the next generation's inheritance. They must look after themselves.

But it does seem unfair that some people have to spend most of their savings before the state starts to foot the bill for their care while others who have no savings or home to sell can be funded from the start. Quite how that unfairness can be eliminated has defeated wiser heads than mine.

What is clear is that while most people don't expect the Government to pay for everything, they do expect a system which provides a better quality of support than is currently available.

As a spokesman for the Alzheimer's Society said in a comment on the report, people are willing to make a financial contribution towards the cost of care but currently feel they are being "ransacked" to prop up a failing system.

So will the Government take any notice of the report? Social care minister Ivan Lewis has promised that the needs of older people and their carers is a "top priority". He'd better mean it.

There are a lot of middle-aged voters who not only have elderly relatives but are increasingly aware that before too long they will be elderly relatives themselves. They have a lot of clout when it comes to an election - enough, in fact, to deal a death blow to a government that they think isn't doing right by them.

Sentences a sick joke

What sort of a message do over-lenient sentences send out? Two teenagers, one aged 15 and the other 17, helped a 25-year-old man become senseless through drink and drugs on a Lincolnshire riverbank then set fire to his clothing and burned his face with a lighter before kicking him, urinating on him and pushing him into the river, where they watched him drown. And they recorded their vile behaviour on a mobile phone.

For this appalling crime one was given five years and the other three-and-a-half years in a youth detention centre. What they really deserved was to be strung up from lamp-posts as an example to other sadistic, evil thugs.

These two pathetic sentences, which you can probably halve for good behaviour etc., will leave similarly-inclined yobs with the impression that as this pair have virtually got away with it, so would they.

The language of sense

Once again Ann Cryer MP has been speaking common sense, this time about the Government's decision to teach English after all to various groups of immigrants.

While Mrs Cryer said she thinks the new system is "fairer", she added: "I think the families who bring over young men and women as husbands and wives for their offspring should accept the responsibility and the cost of ensuring they learn English."

So do I. And to encourage them to do so, I think that for every pound the Government spends on this costly scheme of English teaching it should knock a pound off the amount it spends on interpreters.

Poetry of a president?

Would Barack Obama make a good president? Who knows? He surely could never be worse than the present one. And for many Americans I suspect the answer is, who cares? Obama is that rare thing, an orator and poet able to inspire hopes and dreams in a country which has long been starved of such things.

He has the ability to raise the hairs on the back of a listener's neck like no-one in US politics since John F Kennedy. Whether he wins or loses, he's making this the most exciting presidential contest in decades.