Wrinklies Rise Up

Sweet old dears can kick ass!

Love it, Joan! Thanks.

Brilliant!

At my writers' group we try to do something different all the time. I've done sonnets, Pam Ayres' type stuff, short stories, murder stories, a love story, a play.....this is my attempt at slam poetry - it is supposed to be performed with gestures and such. Anyway, it was inspired by this thread.

Beware the Baby Boomers

Don’t call us elderly
Don’t call us old
Don’t think for a minute we’re sweet.
We’re still the same people
Still feisty and bold
Who rocked to the Merseyside beat.

Don’t think for a minute
We’re shocked at your deeds
Or your radical ways are so new.
We might have looked sweet
In our sandals and beads
But our ways turned the atmosphere blue.

Our parents were sure
We’d be so pure and good
As we started to grow up and date
But we smashed all the barriers
Fought and withstood
While our ways won the freedom debate.

But new generations
Have no damn idea
That their absolute right to be free
Did not come from God
And did not just appear
It was fought for by people like me.

And that spirit remains
Though we might appear strange
And you find there’s no easy connection.
But the grey power we hold
Has the power to change
The results of the next big election!

It's a bit of a rant. To be honest I do not feel hard-done-by at all, although I think that we sometimes need to remind people of our valuable contributions in voluntary work and caring for younger and older members of the family.

I have been watching 24 hours in A&E and have been so impressed by the way the elderly patients are treated with such respect and every medical help is afforded to them regardless of their age.

As someone who was of the generation before the baby boomers Butty not everyone was fortunate.My mother and father had a very hard time during the 30s and were killed during the war.I worked from 1946 with 10yrs in the forces until 1995 and in that time paid all my taxes and insurances and I object to people who have never got their hands dirty in their lives telling me that i'm a drain on the country.I now live in spain so even now I don't cost the taxpayers anything.Anything I get I paid for in blood and sweat!!!!!!

My face has grown older and shows it, and defining, collectively, the old as wrinklies just grates. I'm neither proud or otherwise of my lines - they are just there. It happens.

Grouchy this morning. [grouchy emoticon]

I agree with Movedalot

And I'm happy to be a Wrinkly. I much prefer it to Senior Citizen. I'm proud of my wrinklies - I worked hard for them! Call a spade a spade I say (can one say that now?)

I agree that Wrinklies is not a nice word. I think maybe she was trying to be 'funny'?

Yes, of course the article was over the top but that is necessary these days to make your point. A nice sensible dignified article wouldn't get published.

I agree with aka about a meritocracy. I helped a 16 year old and his 18 year old brother with their CVs and job applications a year ago and they both got really good apprenticeships which are going very well. They had no trouble getting them because they had done things with their lives. Both were in scouting, both had windsurfed at a national level and both had little jobs while they were at school. In addition neither of them thought the world owed them anything!

Yes, I know they are young people who can't get jobs despite all the above but I think they are in the minority.why should someone of 65 be put on the scrap heap just because of their age? Why should a young person be given a job just because of their age?

I am a baby boomer and don't think I have had it easy.

I didn't get NI contributions for the time I stayed home to look after my children.

No one paid me for maternity leave.
There were no nurseries to look after my children if I did want to go back to work.

We had to save with a building society for 3 years before they would consider us for a mortgage.

There was no Ikea to buy cheap furniture, we had to accept whatever we could get.

We had no central heating, no carpets.

If we ate out it was only for a special occassion, these days it seems to be because they can't be bothered to cook.

I took on the job of a man who had made a real mess of it and I was paid half as much because I was female.

No, I don't begrudge any of the above, I think they are all great and I am sure there are many more. I just get a bit fed up with all this grannybashing! We didn't have it that easy.

Where are these seventy year olds going to find the energy? Maybe employers will start providing facilities for an afternoon nap!

|I wish I could remember how to do a link to a newspaper article but I can't.

So, seems there is a report out saying that people who are in their 40s and 50s today will be compelled to work past 70 due to a) the present economic uncertainty making it difficult to save towards a pension b) problems getting on the property ladder and c) an ageing population, by which I assume they mean that by the time 40 year olds get to retirement there will be a lot of 90 year olds around who need looking after one way or another.

Ouch!

Aka
I believe that fulfilling work plays a large part of an individual's mental and physical well-being. Being able to provide for yourself and your family is an important aspect of self-esteem. Society has a duty to equip its young people with the skills and learning necessary to achieve this aim, and bring about the economic conditions which will allow jobs to be created.
Of course it is not one-sided - the individual has to take advantage of what is offered.
But large numbers of our young people are being denied that opportunity - whether they are NEETS for whom the education system has failed, or university graduates who have been persuaded that a university degree will be the passport to a career, only to find themselves in debt and with no job in sight.
If recognising that this generation has it a lot tougher than ours did, is ageist, then I make no apology for that.
Did you not consider JSP's article in any way ageist?

I also dislike the term 'Wrinklies'.

I've just read the article. I felt I was being harangued by a drum-bashing media-madam. I found it divisive, and as Petallus said, whinging.
On the whole, I think the baby-boomer generation have had a fortunate time. I would like to see more positive encouragement and thought given to the future of the younger generations.

I agree with an equal retirement age and I think it does need to be a bit higher. Those who can afford to retire usually do unless they have a particularly wonderfully fulfilling occupation - which most of us don't.

I don't think JSPs rant was self pitying at all. More indignation at the way the media and politians are turning on Wrinklies in the same way they made stay at home mums feel they weren't pulling their weight and belittling those new mums who find breast feeding next to impossible. It's part of the propaganda to standardise the population to make us easier to pigeon hole.

JS-P has written an unpleasant selfish whinging article full of unjustified self-pity IMO.

Do you really Jane? I believe in a meritocracy. Your remark is unbelievably ageist.

Moved Nearly a million 16-24 year-olds were unemployed in the first quarter of 2013 - I can't help feeling that they deserve the opportunity to work rather more than we do.

I agree with you nfk the way we are treated will be the way those who fllow us are treated. They should be set an example to show appreciation of our generation.

JSP is really annoying if you have to actually listen to her but this article is, on the whole, pretty good.

I don't think that increasing the retirement age is such a bad thing (dons hard hat) as we all all living much healthier, longer lives and I certainly feel that I could continue to work now if I hadn't been forced out of my job. I think it is as sensible way to help the economy.

I do however think we could focus more on encouraging people to limit the size of their family to the number they can afford, instead of relying on the state. When the new benefits cap was introduced in the first 2 London boroughs, I saw on the news that 80,000 families were affected and that 40,000 of them had 4 or more children. Surely if you need help to maintain your family 2 children should be enough?

I would join a march to the wrinklies even if it means I have to borrow a wheelchair to do it!

An excellent article

I agree with you Mollie. I have never had to look after aged parents as both my parents and my in-laws died young. My daughter has always managed (through a lot of juggling) to get evening jobs and now works in a school so she has never had to have child care. I suppose I am fortunate that I am now having 'my time' but can sympathise with those who are unable to do so.

I agree with all that JSP wrote including 'sod the youngsters'. I've a grandchild so of purse I worry about her future (she's only 2 so there's a lot of it to come) but when will it be my time? I've been a good daughter and supported various elderly relations, raised children alone without government or family support and paid my way as a single person only to discover my full contributions counted for nothing when I married and found myself out of work. The retirement age has been shifted so I've longer to wait but meanwhile I'm looking after an ailing mother and a grandchild so her mum can go to work. I feel I've worried enough about everyone else, now it's my turn!

Janet Street-Porter usually drives me mad to be honest but I thought this article was spot on, although I don't agree with the sod the young expression either. She has no children herself so may feel differently.

But if granny bashing becomes the norm there's less hope for our children when they reach retirement and less still for our grandchildren - if they even get to retire.
Those Wallys in Whitehall seem to have no idea how much our generation contributes unpaid as there's no real way of measuring it. I've just found out that all the years voluntaring I've done for the National Trust has been counted as I don't claim travel expenses - if money isn't involved, it doesn't count. Perhaps if we were all to keep time sheets of parent/grandchild caring and voluntary work and send them to our MPs it would be as good as a march.