Ageism

For a number of years I falsified my age on job applications: I had learned from bitter experience that I would otherwise be automatically not even considered for a post, let alone interviewed. I started doing this when I was in my early 40s! (I had two young children to support and a mortgage to pay). I went on doing this right up until the time I officially retired (in fact I retrained and continued to work for another decade). There was a funny side to this situation: one boss (a very nice one) who thought I was 5 years her junior (when I was in fact 5 years her senior) was constantly reminiscing about a childhood during WWII; I constantly had to bit my tongue so as not to say "yes, I know."

Has there ever been intergenerational equity? We have peaks and troughs in the economy - my grandparents didn't buy their own homes, my parents did. My MIL didn't buy hers (probably because she was widowed at an early age). It gives me no joy to realise that my house increased in value 5 times during the Blair/Brown years, and that my children have/will struggle to buy their own homes. But I still can't see how Brown's mismanagement of the economy and the banking crisis can be blamed on baby boomers in general - DH and I could see trouble coming before the crash, and we're not very financially literate. There has always been greed and a few will always take advantage of any way to make themselves rich at the expense of others, this time with dire consequences for the rest of society. But greedy bankers, MPs with their noses in the trough etc are not typical of most of us baby boomers who were just aiming to work hard to provide for some security in our lives and hoping for the same for our children.

margaretm74 Sun 19-Jan-14 23:12:35 wrote :
I think the campaign against "baby boomers" is being orchestrated by the intergenerational foundation,
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I just looked up their Web site - and this was typical of the persons involved at the top level in that organization. This supports your point, Margaretm74
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Angus Hanton, an economist and entrepreneur, became interested in the problems of intergenerational equity several years ago. A baby boomer with teenage children, he has enjoyed many of the unearned advantages of belonging to this cohort. He is acutely aware of the consequent accumulation of debts that are being passed on to younger generations today.
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Q E D ?
AAAHM

I think the campaign against "baby boomers" is being orchestrated by the intergenerational foundation, whose aim is to research "fairness between the generations" (ha ha). There is a wide range of people in every generation - greedy, poor, hardworking, feckless etc - in fact the whole spectrum of society in all age groups. But most of the people I know in my age group do not have the sense of entitlement that the generation below us seems to have; they have all worked hard (and some continue to do so).

Joan - I must have been one of the lucky ones because we drank Corporation Pop in our house.

Fully agree with your 'rant' MargaretM. I heard a discussion along similar lines on the radio a few weeks ago and couldn't believe my ears that we as 'baby boomers' were the lucky ones and the cause of all the social ills in the country, and the poor wee young ones are suffering because of us! As you said, we were born into the post war grimness that epitomised the late 40s and 50s. Make do and mend was very much an accepted way of living. In fact DH and I still tend towards this ethos!

As young parents DH and I went without holidays, evenings out, new clothes and sometimes during that awful recession in the mid 70s without much food so we could support our children. We both had 2 jobs to put them through college and make sure their loans were small. DH worked horrendously hard to establish a business which is now very successful and the money from which is supporting us, our children and grandchildren in a reasonable lifestyle. On several occasions we have saved our children from having to claim state benefits! We both pay our taxes every year and have fully paid up our NI contributions. So how, in the name of all that is wonderful, can we be regarded as parasites?

Whatever has happened to the socialist idea of supporting the vulnerable in society? Our generation took it as the norm that the state would support the elderly and infirm when they were no longer able to do so themselves.

As someone else said, the people moaning on about older people will be there themselves some day!

What people have forgotten is that our generation was the one who didn't take injustice lying down. I think the above posts clearly demonstrate this. GN RULES OK!

Rant over! Time for a

I agree, Dee, as long as you have your health and enough money to live comfortably (which many baby boomers will not have, having had their pensions decimated). I'm not moaning about my lot in life - just the fact that our generation seems to be being blamed for anything that is wrong in the lives of Generation X (Sarah Vine and her ilk). Just pointing out that as far as I can see, many of them don't have much to moan about, but they do feel hard-done-by if they can't afford the 4x4s, expensive holidays, vino every evening, the gym membership, expensive cosmetics and designer clothes for them and their offspring. We just seemed to get on with it when we were young parents without much money, such indulgences were unheard of, and I am not going to be made to feel guilty by them because I am enjoying my retirement now as best I can. I was really trying to point out that, in my opinion, constantly blaming baby boomers for all the ills of society and labelling us as selfish, self-indulgent and greedy is one of the worst forms of ageism. I also thought it was very lazy journalism on the part of Ms Vine.

I accept your point that we are better off than our own grandparents, Dee, in that they lived through two world wars, endured years of austerity after the second, and the Depression after the first, and most did not have very long retirements to enjoy.
But they're not the ones who are criticizing our generation - as margaret says, that is coming from Generation X, many of whom take for granted things like foreign holidays that simply weren't an option for many of us.
I agree also that the State Pension should be regarded as something we have earned, not a hand-out.

Good post Dee !

I think we are much more fortunate than our grandparents were, life is pretty good for us. We have free local travel and, in my area at least, a huge variety of council run leisure activities to help us stay fit and mentally active, plus organisations like U3A and for women, Growing Old Disgracefully.
Life is what you make it and if you've always been interested in learning new things and getting the most out of life there's no reason to stop just because you've reached a certain age.

I agree wholehearedly with you, Margaretm74, in your post about The Daily Mail and their campaign against baby boomers, and the vicious article by Sarah Vine (18/1/14 12.47)

I read the same thing and had the same reaction - even to having to leave grammar school to help the family, how so few people we knew were able to get to university, how interest rates nearly killed us etc.

That woman should fear grey power if she is ever in a room full of us!!!! We might have to torture her by making her eat spam and margerine sandwiches, learn to darn socks, only eat at mealtimes, drink nothing but tea or water, sleep in an unheated bedroom in the depths of winter, help with all the housework, babysit younger siblings, and compete with all the very brightest working-class kids to get accepted into the tiny percentage with good enough marks for a university place.

I reckon she'd fail every last item.

Also, regarding ageism, I remember my DMIL complaining, when we visited her in hospital, that she had been put on a ward with "old ladies". She was 85 at the time. Most of the "old ladies" were younger than her, only one was in her 90s.

Thanks, Aka, I thought I was ranting a bit, but Sarah Vine made me hopping mad. Generation X have so much more privilege than we had and also so much more opportunity to moan and blame everyone else for their perceived misfortunes - I wonder if the present generation of graduates/youngsters unable to find employment will blame their parents?

I think to be honest that we should all have a day or half day re-training/being tested every 10 years or so from when we first pass our test - we all get into bad habits, and need reminding about the correct procedure, and how many of us has a copy of the latest Highway Code Book?

Excellent post Margaretm

I think ageism does exist and will probably always exist.

Its about how we take it, I am not particularly happy to be the age that I am, especially now that I can actually see signs of aging.

But I am the age that I am, I can not change that, and so I choose to be happy about it and embrace, I am still me.

And so I feel that if I have this attitude about my age, agesim can not hurt me.

However if ageism becomes an issue when trying to find a job, then I believe that this is a completely different subject, because I do not believe it is just to refuse work/ a job to someone because of they are past a certain age, and if the job was important to me I would fight for justice till the bitter end.

Yes, Magpie1, that is another thing that is annoying - the fact that pensions are labelled "benefits". I thought I was paying into a fund for years to receive my state pension, but apparently it is considered more of a generous donation by today's working population, not a right.
I did write a few years ago to the then Pensions Secretary querying this, but received a very unsatisfactory reply. We are increasingly being looked upon as a burden by Generation X.

I agree wholeheartedly NannyBarbara! The Daily Mail in particular seems to have embarked on a campaign against baby boomers, including a vicious article by their columnist Sarah Vine in which she blamed our generation for everything that is wrong with Britain today. She is very upset that she may not be able to pay off her mortgage (this is a woman who is married to a millionaire Government minister!), that we enjoyed one long party throughout our selfish, indulgent lives etc etc, after we had all enjoyed "free education".
From my viewpoint, we were a generation who had very little in the way of material goods growing up post-war, struggled with power cuts due to the 3-day week as young adults, struggled to pay the mortgage when the interest rate went up to 15%, and in fact, if we had a family to bring up, made do and mended. We didn't indulge in daily bottles of wine, gym membership, expensive beauty treatments, holidays to Disney World.

The free education is still available up to age 18 when I last heard - and in fact, although her selfish generation assumes that we all had the opportunity to go to university on a grant, very few of us were able to (was the figure about 3%?). Even after a grammar school education, most of us took jobs or, if our parents did not require us to contribute to the family income, perhaps a course at technical college or an apprenticeship. I'm 68 and I still haven't had a gap year.
The last Labour government connived to push up house prices so that Gordon Brown could maintain the illusion that we were all well off under Labour.
It strikes me that Sarah Vine's generation are the self-absorbed, self-indulgent generation who want it all now without too much hard work (apart from my lovely children, of course!).
Rant over, thank you if you managed to read to the end of this.

Since I was twelve, I have had a pen friend in Hungary - Eszther. We have met a few times, and been in contact over the decades by letter or email through births, marriages and deaths. She is 70 now, and had been retired from her work as a civil engineer for 2 years. She used to work for the second top engineering firm in Budapest.

The very top firm just headhunted her, to be in charge of a department, mentor the young graduates do and other work. She accepted the job, as long as it is only 20 hours a week with Fridays off. She is loving it. I'm not sure if it is just that Hungary does not have age prejudice like we do, or that she had such a good professional reputation. I suspect both apply.

I have encountered age prejudice at only 42 when i tried to get back into the workforce when my youngest started school. In the end I hid my age and finally got a job after 6 months. Now, at 69, I suffer from the occasional invisibility, but not often. I dye my hair and wear clothes that don't age me when I go out.

I think we just have to fight it - refuse to settle for being ignored or patronised.

I'm just so fed up of hearing news reports on radio or TV, blaming "the ageing population" for everything that's wrong with this country - from the rising cost of everything to the fact that the NHS is struggling to survive! It makes us sound as though we are such a selfish bunch - determined to live to a ripe old age and not just curling up and dying to benefit the younger generations!

My aunt died in her eighties. She kept driving until the end, despite never having passed a driving test. She once told me she didn't know how to turn the lights on in her car, so tried to get home before dark. Fortunately she never had an accident, but I wonder if she caused any. I'm 61 and already feel more nervous driving than I did in my fifties. I think we should all be tested in our seventies. Sorry if that offends anyone.

At 72, nearly 73, I finally got referred to have my knee looked at. As part of a not very helpful discussion I was told at some point I would have to grow old gracefully. The discussion continued and I did get referred on.

When I started work back in the day part of the deductions from salaries was labelled "graduated pension". These deductions were supposedly towards a pension when retirement age came. State pensions are now labelled as "benefits" along with housing benefit, unemployment benefit etc. so that pensioners become part of the burden on the welfare state rather that people who have earned some reward for a working life during which they have contributed to the income of the country.

I refuse to accept getting older At nearly 75 I have just established an IPad tutorial service with a friend. We aim mainly at retired people who just need confidence to tackle something new and challenging
Another aid is mixing with people who are young---not only in years but attitude

Cactus I'm totally with you. I used to take advice from a Fenwicks assistant who was much older than the run of the mill counter girls. She understood older skin .. Sadly she has disappeared. We need an invisible emoticon.Deborah Ross in the Times this morning ranting on about being too old at forty. I think she has forgotten about her rant a few weeks ago at the ghastliness of old age pensioners .