The Government is failing Britain's older people badly and Gordon Brown, the man poised to take over from Blair as Prime Minister without the electorate having any say in the matter, has no plans to do anything to make matters better. In fact, unless more money is put into the system things are bound to get worse.

That much is depressingly clear from this week's report from the Commission for Social Care Inspection, the Government's own watchdog which commendably showed itself willing to bite its master by drawing the public's attention to the growing injustice of the system.

Its chairman, Dame Denise Platt, pointed out that services for those who qualify for help such as home care, day care and respite care are actually improving, a diminishing number of people are qualifying.

She said that many people were being left to make their own arrangements because access to services was being tightened to include only those deemed to be in the most serious need. She added: "In some cases people rely on family and friends, in others they pay for their own care. Some people have no option but to do without."

And she pointed out that the five million people who are already classed as carers, 1.5 million of them providing more tham 20 hours of care a week, aren't getting the back-up they need from the system.

So unless you're desperate and probably half dead and those keeping an eye on you are at the end of their tether, there's no point in contacting your local cash-strapped social services department because they won't want to know. You must shop around and spend your savings on buying in help from the private sector - if you can find it, and if you can trust those providing it for profit to give a reliable service and not rip you off. Or you must try to persuade family and friends to keep on looking after you.

This crisis has come about because of a steady rise in the number of older people (and younger disabled people too) and increasing pressure to keep them in their own homes as they grow infirm rather than have them go into care or nursing homes or (heaven forbid!) into hospitals which shunt them out of beds as fast as they can.

A lot of those affected are sufferers from Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of dementia who at a fairly early stage of their illness need some support, as do the people who live with them. Without it their lives can rapidly descend into nightmare. But what do the pampered people who run our country know or care about that? Or about the confused or enfeebled elderly folk living alone and struggling with the complexities of the modern world? Where do they start to buy-in the help they need, even if they have the means to pay for it?

An additional scandal is the NHS withdrawing nursing-care funding for some people already in nursing homes and social services refusing to pick up the tab, leaving some residents without funding and their families footing the bill by eating into the cash they'll need to fund their own old age. But that's another story.

In any civilised country, taxes on those who can best afford to pay for them would rise to meet the growing demand for social and medical care. Gordon Brown obviously doesn't intend to preside over a such a country.

He and the Government he intends to lead should be ashamed.

Reflected glory!

If you want a treat, take yourself off to Cliffe Castle Museum at Keighley. It was announced this week that an amazing piece of contemporary artwork entitled Mirror, which has been attracting and impressing visitors, will only be there for another three weeks.

It uses lights, video projections and hundreds of pieces of mirror laid out on the floor to create a magical, reflective atmosphere.

But even if that isn't your thing, there's a lot more at the museum to interest and absorb. It's many years since I last paid it a visit and a great deal has been done to improve it during that time. Apart from the birds and animals in glass cases which those of us of a certain age remember from childhood visits to Cartwright Hall, where they used to be housed, there are lots of new exhibitions devoted to the geology and both natural and social history of Bradford and the Aire Valley.

On a recent visit there with grandson Sam, we were all greatly impressed by it. When you add it to the Industrial Muesum at Eccleshill and the Cartwright Hall art gallery, you realise what gems Bradford's museums are. We should cherish them.

Ruth's real sin

OK, I admit I've no time for Communities Secretary Ruth Kelly, above. She strikes me as the smug, know-it-all, know-what's-best-for-you, head-prefect type. And if that wasn't enough she's a Blair loyalite as well. But she's also a mother and as such wants her dyslexic son to have the best possible chance of overcoming his learning difficulties.

Which is why she's taken him out of his state primary school in Tower Hamlets and is spending £15,000 a year to send him to a private school. If you were on the sort of fat-cat salary that Ruth Kelly gets paid (£136,677 a year, reportedly) wouldn't you do the same for your child?

However, she does owe an apology to the British people, particularly that vast majority whose incomes don't allow them the same sort of choice. But it's not for using her privileged position to buy private education for her child.

It's for being a member, and at one time the Education Secretary, of a government which has failed the schools system so badly that the public don't feel confident that it can provide the best education for all children, whatever their abilities or problems, and has presided over a huge widening of the gap between the haves and have-nots.