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You and Yours: Living Longer

Living Longer

09/03/2015

BBC Radio 4 - You and Yours, Living Longer

Including hearing aids, digital rights, men living longer, and personal contract purchase.

Discussion on hearing aids, digital rights, men outliving women, if PCP (personal contract purchase) is driving car sales, and legal aid for bereaved families at inquests.

Hearing aids have been available on the NHS since 1948. They are accepted to be the only viable treatment for people with adult-onset hearing loss. Last week North Staffordshire Clinical Commissioning Group announced it's to stop providing aids to people with mild hearing loss and to make people with moderate hearing loss go through an eligibility test to see if they should receive them. It's believed the plans will come into effect in September 2015.

Ever checked out the reviews for the latest app and found people don't rate it and are demanding refunds? Well up until now its been up to individual app stores to decided what to do. The new Consumer Rights Bill gets its final reading in the Commons this afternoon and will give you digital rights for the first time. It is expected to get Royal Assent fairly soon after and enshrined in law in October. It simplifies and draws together a whole raft of consumer rights across eight different bits of legislation. We talk to Jo Swinson the Consumer Affairs Minister

The heart has been a symbol of our emotions since ancient times. But imagine if we could send our heartbeat to someone else using a personal device. Apple's new smart watch - widely expected to be unveiled in San Francisco today - will allow us to do just that. Using a built-in heart rate sensor, it can record and send your pulse to another person wearing the watch. The person receiving it will feel a gentle tap on the wrist and see your beating heart on screen. Just another gimmick? Or could there be psychological benefits in sending your own heartbeat to someone else?

Women have traditionally lived longer than men, but that may reverse in the next decade, and it's partly due to how we spend money. Find out why?

Buying a car on Hire Purchase is nothing new, but how about paying for a car you'll never own? PCP (Personal Contract Purchase) means you pay a deposit and then pay monthly for the car - but at the end of the contract you don't own it. This way of buying cars is the driving force behind an increase in sales. 2014 sales figures were the best for a decade with 2.5 million new cars on the roads. Seventy six percent were bought on credit, and the majority of those were PCP sales. We look at the popular ways of buying and leasing a car.

When someone dies in custody or care, an inquest is held to find out how it happened. There's no legal aid for bereaved families at inquests - unless the case is exceptional and there's a wider public interest at stake. Families must pay for themselves.

Producer: Maire Devine
Editor: Chas Watkin.

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