The idea that Menzies Campbell (in photo) was fair game for abuse because he was in his 60s is a product of pernicious prejudice, comments Jackie Ashley in THE GUARDIAN. Campbell resigned on October 15.LONDON, England (The Guardian), October 22, 2007:
It's the one issue he could never have campaigned about. Sir Menzies Campbell's age was used against him in a way that one day will seem barbarous. The cartoons of toothless, withered, hunched old Ming hobbling about with his Zimmer frame, and the Commons jokes about him being hard-of-hearing and over-the-hill, were cruel. Well, politics can be cruel. But imagine the outcry if the cartoonists had gone after someone for being black, disabled or gay in the same way - anything, really but for the crime of being in his 60s?
It took the youngest MP in the House of Commons, Jo Swinson, who's just 27, to point out that the abuse Ming suffered "wouldn't be tolerated on the basis of gender, race or disability, but when it comes to age it's fair game". She's right. Imagine how you would feel if you opened the paper and found a black television star being drawn with a bone through his nose and an assegai in one hand? Or witty columnar references to a blind man needing a white stick to find his way round some issue or other; or heard that an openly gay MP faced shouts of "Where's your handbag, ducky?" when he stood up in the Commons? I assume you would be repelled, surprised, disgusted. And rightly so.
However much it's sneered at, "political correctness"- plus anti-discrimination legislation - has softened some of the rougher edges of modern life. In a complicated, many-coloured, multi-religion society, which believes in doing something to redress general imbalances of power, old prejudices are constantly challenged and changing. People have the right not to be refused work because of the colour of their skin, or the faith they were born into; people using wheelchairs expect to be able to use buses and restaurants and loos; people born gay demand to be treated with respect. Yet all these expectations and social rights are quite new. In 1950s Britain, they would have seemed, in varying degrees, a bit odd, a bit pushy.
One day the last great discrimination will go too. Yet for now, it remains absolutely fine, apparently, to discriminate against someone on the basis of their age. You can mock the old, push the old to one side, insist that the old retire from useful work, and in this hurrying, imperious, self-regarding youth-cult culture, that's completely acceptable. Everyone who works in the media knows how much pressure there is to keep wrinkly faces and grey hair tucked away from readers or viewers or, most important, advertisers.
At its most extreme, our irritable disdain for older people helps produce the cruelty and abuse found in some care homes, and hospitals. Caring for the old is a poverty-wages, bottom-rung trade. Yes, there are heroines and heroes in it, but there are also angry, resentful people who feel unvalued and pass on their anger to their helpless charges. It should be no surprise that Britain's most deadly serial killer by far was Harold Shipman. If they're old ladies, nobody cares. But even at a far less extreme level, the youth obsession of the mass media and the poverty of so many pensioners are irrefutable signs of a society prepared to look away.
It's very odd, though, isn't it? Because if we are lucky, we will all be old. We won't all be Asian or lesbian or lose the use of our legs, but we will be old. This is a discrimination almost every one of us will feel. Perhaps ageism is the desperate cry of denial of the middle-aged majority. But as our whole society ages, it becomes an increasingly silly and futile cry. And to many cultures, notably Asian ones, the notion that a 60-something is not fit to be listened to, or seen as a leader, while a 30-something, lacking those decades of experience, is, would seem completely barking.
The issue is hard-edged. A recent Age Concern consultation found more adults (29%) complaining of age discrimination than any other kind. Numerous surveys of attitudes to older people tell a bleakly coherent story. In the same consultation, one-third of people responding said they viewed the over-70s as incompetent and incapable. The Department of Health itself admits that there are deep-rooted negative attitudes to old people, and that these are at the heart of failures to provide better services.
Statistics are one thing. But this adds up to hungry old people having their food taken away before they can finish it; to rudeness and patronising attitudes to older patients; to people being left in cold, stinking, soiled beds; to people over 65 being less likely to be referred to cardiologists; to older women not getting the kind of breast cancer service younger ones take for granted. Over the next decade, the number of over-65s will go up by 15%. If you push ahead to 2040, more than one-third of the population will be over 60. We simply won't be able to manage if people are not allowed to work past 65, or are refused even voluntary work because of the insurance costs, or are not allowed to upgrade their skills. A health service that then treats old people as a problem, won't be any kind of health service at all. Yet the discrimination is in key ways getting worse, not better.
A few months ago the government published its proposals for a new single equality bill, bringing together the nine current pieces of legislation on gender, race, disability and so on, all in the same piece of legislation. But there's no sign yet that age discrimination will be treated as seriously as other types of discrimination. As one member of Age Concern puts it: "This government just isn't as serious about age discrimination as it is about other areas of equality law." The government's green paper admits that ageist attitudes are "deeply entrenched", covering healthcare of all kinds, employment law, housing, banking, insurance and much else. Yet only by applying the kind of missionary zeal the government has brought to other inequalities can these attitudes be changed.
There is no excuse for fudging or delay. To expect to live to a ripe old age is our scientifically enhanced, rich-world fate. It is, as almost everyone says, better than the alternative. But we have to start to adjust to that. We need to be a country in which people who feel fit can keep working, and keep paying tax; and where those who suffer the ailments of age are treated with respect by others.
Then, one day, we might stop sneering at, and patronising, the multitude of older Britons all around us. It is not polite. But more important still, since we are all on the way to join them, it is rather short-sighted, I'd say. Ming was dumped because his party thought he was the past. The truth is, of course, he's all of our futures.
By Jackie Ashley
© Guardian News and Media Limited 2007
____________________________________________________________________________
Ravissant Adds:
The extent of media coverage and the public reaction to the easing out of a senior politician in the UK on grounds of age is good evidence that AGE DISCRIMINATION is a fact of our life and has to be put in the proper perspective. Comments to the article in the GUARDIAN are also published here - though SENIORS WORLD CHRONICLE does not any publish any reader reactions.
Comments
timetomoveon
October 22, 2007 1:54 AM
Though I thoroughly endorse the article's attack on ageism and particularly the treatment meted out in the press to Menzies Campbell, think of all those discriminatory cartoons, I'd disagree on the comment about the 1950s as for many of us two men or women living together, racial or religous affiliations were simply aspects of life. Attitudes to those who differed from the average in society wee mostly a product of lack of respect for others, education and of course manners.
Unfortunately a class of poorly mannered individuals, lacking in respect for others, seems to have emerged to dominate mainstream life giving rise to success of smutty TV shows with unusual rewards to their principals as a more obvious example.
Ageism is rife in the NHS not only in the treatment of patients, my GP telling me that over 50 years the NHS tends not to support rehabilitation to full mobility, private medicine helps, but also in the treatment of older staff many better trained and of a different calibre to their younger managers whose managerial skills are rarely apparent. Calling older nurses 'dinosaurs' is even beyond 'The Office' in management abilities. This is of couse NuLabor's world supported absolutely if the reports of Mr Edward Balls' interchange with outgoing Mr Tony Blair are correct- typically bullying rude and needing his comeuppance- not unusual but more extreme than most of his generation- all to often experienced by older people.
The only immediate cure is financial penalty all they understand but longer term it's through parental education though on that I'm not hopeful.
Meanwhile a larger older generation will have political clout and if it's misused they'll be a war for diminishing resources mirroring the war being conducted by the USA & UK for oil and other ra resources.
ArthurFKing
October 22, 2007 2:15 AM
People don't want to get old because consumer society is based on the manipulation of hope, youthful desire and the promise of orgiastic sexual and material fulfilment. The old are just a painful reminder of the corpse we will all become and not sexually valuable. With the inevitable rise of genetic engineering the war on age and death will be advanced further until the old become a source of outright horror.
It doesn't matter a jot whether people don't like Huxley's Brave New World in theory where people remain relatively young until they are liquidated peacefully. That world is the one we are desperately trying to create in nearly every aspect predicted by Huxley and everyone craves it. What else was the Blair phenomenon about ? Youth culture. Cool Britannia. New Britain. People want youth and dreams of being forever young, sexy and loved.
Having never evolved into maturity or placed the aquisition of wisdom as the goal of life, it follows that the old are utterly expedable. The same will happen to other unfortunates when cloning and genetic engineering become standard realities. It's only a question of time and by then I'll be a decayed corpse and not even a memory. I'm still just 32 but already totally terrified of ageing in a society like this where the old are shoved into homes because they are boring, reminders of death and have no erotic value.
Global warming will also help finish off whole swathes of old people in the future just as in France in 2003. That's the society created by the liberal left and the 1960s generation of whom the average Guardianista is a typical specimen.
richp
October 22, 2007 2:37 AM
Old people are massively over represented in British (and most other countries) political life. The average age of a UK MP is 51, against 39 for the general population.
And it's clear that older people mostly (obviously not exclusively) have an agenda that tends towards social conservatism, amongst other things.
To me that's a perfectly good reason for a liberal political party to want a leader nearer 40 than 60?
lamunus
October 22, 2007 3:32 AM
Good call, richp. For whatever reasons, the young tend to vote less than the old, which means issues that affects older voters (pensions, perceptions of criminal teenage gangs etc) have much more political import than those affecting the young (chronic housing shortage, media demonisation, £18000 university fees.)
The fact is, Ming has had cancer, which has aged him beyond his years. That's hardly more fair than discrimination based on age, but while 64 obviously isn't too old to hold high office, the age he appears probably would be. I don't wish to be unkind, but I dare say Ming could pass for 85. That's the real reason Ming faired so poorly as party leader; on a snap subconscious judgement, he looks like he wouldn't be out of place in a wheelchair with a warm tartan blanket wrapped round him.
PeteSeptum
October 22, 2007 4:27 AM
Not to put too fine a point into Jackie Ashley's contribution: but if it be that there's something rotten in the state of Denmark why should Jackie Ashley be shocked and outraged by agism in the media in Britain in the 21st century?
Agism every which way you care to look at it has become increasingly endemic in all western countries since the end of WW2 at the least. And where age is valued in the West, exactly the same as with women, young people, lesbians, gay men, black peoples, asian peoples, whites, heterosexuals, disabled people, mixed race peoples, whatever label we put on groups of individuals, that value quickly becomes corrupted and rotten because it always sets up have nots against have nots. I believe the name of the game is divide and rule.
So Jackie Ashley, not to put too fine a second point into your contribution:
"all comparisons are odious, but some comparisons are more odious than others."
Isanuzi
October 22, 2007 6:09 AM
A rather good article, which draws attention to everyone's secret nightmare:- that we are - most of us - going to grow old one day. I look at our current Foreign Secretary, for instance, and I see a callow youth, a young man who cannot possibly possess the balance and perspective and knowledge of multi-faceted international issues and affairs that an elder statesman might be hoped to possess. Along with the commentator, I deplore mindless, gut-reaction ageism. However, in my daily round, I come across a number of old people, and I must be honest and confess that so many of the over seventies are . . . rather dim, rather slow, and plain downright irritating ! That admitted, I remember with huge affection and love my own grandparents, and unlike most of the New Labour Generation, I command enough of a knowledge of history to know that many of Britain's greatest statesmen were well over 65 years old when they were called upon to guide our country from the brink of disaster.
WoollyMindedLiberal
October 22, 2007 6:30 AM
Well spoken Jackie, but why are you telling us? The Guardian's own Steve Bell was one of the worst ageists in the media wolfpack and surely your remarks should be addressed to him.
Longmoor66
October 22, 2007 7:20 AM
An excellent article with an series of excellent posts.
At the age of 71 I can truly say that I have not - so far - found ageism in the NHS. Quite the reverse, the care and concern I have received at our local hospital has been outstanding.
Politcally, my concern is not so much with the fact that we have a Foreign Secretary who is "only" 37, but that he seems emblematic of a trend towards politicians who have never done anything other than politics.
Theories need the occasional contact with reality.
RedScot
October 22, 2007 7:47 AM
A fine article addressing a major source of discrimination throughout the developed world with the possible exception of Japan.
Unfortunately ageism began with the very generation who are experiencing it now; the teenagers of the youth revolution of the 50s/60s.
It was they who eagerly embraced the phantasmagorical illusion of 'yoof kultur' which, despite the good music, in the end gave us nothing but re-born conservatism.
Their anthem could be said to be The Who's 'Hope I die before I get old' (or whatever the title was) and it has been their fate to see this wish become social reality cos if you are old and, more importantly, poor then you are probably better off dead than expect compassion from the mob running the joint now.
ChrisDanes
October 22, 2007 8:27 AM
Jackie, this was a marvelous article. Thank you. As for myself, I long ago decided that despite the health fascists and moralisers, there is absolutely no point in giving up any enjoyable vice in order to live another ten years or so in one of our appalling nusing homes. There are worse fates than snuffing it.
Briar
October 22, 2007 8:32 AM
An excellent article (and it is grand to hear someone defend political correctness as a means of humanising an often inhumane culture). To add injury to insult, the government and the entire economic consensus is now also for depriving older people of their pensions. Corporations are allowed to renege on pension contracts and substitute far less fair ones or none at all. The government wishes to put back retirement age further and further and condemn those in "sub prime" jobs (not media professionals of course) to a future consisting of work till the grace. Going by the contempt heaped on Ming (one year younger than Cliff Richard, interestingly) for his age, the jobs gifted on us when we reach our final years will be low status, and very low paid. We will be stripped of the less than generous state pension and forced instead to work for a pittance till we drop. And the glamorous young with their designer babies will carefully look only on other beautiful things and ignore our plight as we accept or contribute to the current indignities visited on the old.
Thorrun
October 22, 2007 8:38 AM
Whatever the politics of Sir Menzies Campbell, political belief is the very last thing he is identified for by the media today. The newspapers and cheap laugh comedians are currently practising out and out ageism in a time when the country is strangled by political correctness when many ordinary citizens have been and are still being castigated for less blatant infraction.
Since retirement, now in the seventh year, still mobile and active I am made increasingly aware that I am considered and treated as a second class citizen, by politicians seeking easy answers to problems they have caused or ignored, by the national health service because I am no longer worthy of their limited funds, by the media because it's fashionable, and by the rest of society not yet within that age category because the consequences of increasing age will not hit them until they get there. The sharpest knife of all is wielded in general by everyone under fifty and contempt increases pro rata down the age scale.
Whilst I do understand that there are many within my category who should recognise they are unable to safely control a motor vehicle today, why are all grey-haireds considered unfit to drive when the problem should really be attributed to motor manufacturers producing racing car passenger vehicles able to be let loose upon unsuitable suburban highways. Even more importantly the lack of road traffic enforcement officers essential to control the drunk, the drugged, and the brainless that may be seen every day all over the country. Politicians seem to think a good appeasement for the carnage on the roads is to first hit the older driver, who may have untold years accident free history, and second to increase the driving age requirement.
The latter may well provide a politicians plaster to satisfy public opinion in order to stop the bleeding when the real solution (not easily found) is to distinguish not a physical age but a mental one.
But to return to ageism, I am almost ready to accept that the country into which I was born seventy two years ago is no longer my country. I have a great deal more understanding of the position of being stateless. I am very fortunate that when my spouse of forty-two years died I found another partner who has taken me into a world six thousand miles away where even street begging children have the greatest respect for their elders. The political system is not perfect (which one is) and shunned by "democratic" society today but in a few short years of observation the improvement in the lifestyle for the average citizen is dramatic.
Back to Sir Menzies, Britain's Greatest Englishman, Sir Winston Churchill brought the country through oppression from Nazi ideology at the age of sixty-five plus, could today's 'yoof' be relied upon to answer the call?
AGEISM: Sadly will only be experienced when you get there
SUMMARY: Did my grandfather, WW1 and Uncle, WW2 die in vain?
Lionel
October 22, 2007 9:09 AM
"And to many cultures, notably Asian ones, the notion that a 60-something is not fit to be listened to, or seen as a leader, while a 30-something, lacking those decades of experience, is, would seem completely barking."
Absolutely. Wisdom could more reasonably be expected from Ming than from a man as young as e.g. David Cameron. On the other hand it would sometimes seem, at least in the West, that politicians do not get wiser as they age. Consider Tony Blair's recent speech in New York, for example. Maybe wisdom in maturity is precluded by the same chromosomal defect that results in a pathological obsession with power.
MichaelBulley
October 22, 2007 9:14 AM
How disappointing! I had thought the Guardian had acknowledged previous misuses of "we" and was not going to repeat the mistake. The article argues against discrimination against old people. Yet in the title there is "we" and "the old". The implication is that the two are distinct. How is a reader of the article who is old to react? There were plenty of other ways in which the title could have been written, but it seems the Guardian can't let go of its abuse of the first person plural.
Amadeus37
October 22, 2007 9:24 AM
As Churchill would have said, age is something "up with which, we have to put."
I find it is the middle aged who are the worst offenders; where is their imagination?
JakarOctober 22, 2007 9:28 AM
yep yep to all that, but
Ming is the same age as former Tory leader Michael Howard.
Although Michael Howard's politics are rubbish, his leadership was not affected by his age. Ming on the other hand, looks old. He has great energy and a great mind, but he has that old turtle thing going on. He dresses grey and has that 'different generation' way about him. Like a solicitor in a small Scottish market town.
peithaOctober 22, 2007 9:31 AM
Richp's comment about the average age of MP's being 51 and that that shows a bias against the young is almost beyond parody. Could it be because the experience, maturity and judgement which accrues with age are valuable qualities in MP's? If one looks at how Parliament has been damaged since MP's starting getting younger with less experience outside politics, in other words how the growth of politics as a career choice rather than something one does after succeeding in the real world, the argument that it would be beneficial if MP's became a bit older with broader experience would be worth making. Indeed, it can be argued that it is the growth of the young career politician, with the innate dependency on senior patronage and lack of independent judgement that has reduced the Commons to a rump at the whim of the executive.
Ask yourself this, if you were on a plane in trouble, who would you prefer to be flying the plane, a 50 year old with 30 years experience flying or a 25 year old with 5 years experience. I know which I'd prefer!
happyhippo
October 22, 2007 9:33 AM
Very interesting article and I fully agress. However it fails to mention the other side of the coin- the ageism that young people face. Everyday young people are demonised by the media and people assume that they are all dangerous, violent and abusive.
Even people out of their teens and in their 20s can face similar predjudices. In a survey of my friends, mostly female and in their mid-20s, we have all faced the assumption that because of our youth (and posssibly our gender) that we are not capable of being responsible. For a short while I worked in a managerial role- Not only did I have to work hard to gain the respect of my team as many too exception to someone younger than themselves coming in as the boss. But I also found that customer sometimes treated me differently. One woman came in to complain and spoke to me. When I explained company policy on this matter, she came out with 'How dare a girl like you speak to me like that'. Similarly a friend working with vulnerable people has been told by people in need that she could not help them as she was too young to understand.
antifrank
October 22, 2007 10:14 AM
Ming Campbell suffered from some age discrimination. David Cameron suffers from a fair bit of inverted snobbishness. Gordon Brown gets a lot of jibes about his Scottishness. Curiously enough, David Cameron and Gordon Brown are still in position, while Ming Campbell is toast after 19 months. Might it be that Ming Campbell was a poor public speaker with not enough interesting things to say or any coherent strategy that did for him? I ask simply in a spirit of enquiry.
sidc
October 22, 2007 10:17 AM
As I was saying only yesterday, the thing about political correctness that people often overlook is that it is correct.
LizStockeraswas
October 22, 2007 10:54 AM
You know you're old when......
You realise that if you have an accident the local paper will report 'Pensioner run over by bus'
You go into hospital for a run-of-the-mill set of non-age-related tests and find you're on the geriatric ward.
Your own offspring develop this sweetly patient and totally deaf expression when you are having a perfectly logical rant about Gordon Brown. You may find the thought 'You're not to old to be put over my knee' flash through your mind.
A bit of spring-cleaning that used to take a day now takes several weeks.
You find that many other old people have become miserable old gits .... whereas you are an expert in black humour.
You dread the loss of your independence even more than you dread death. By and large you want to stay alive but it is harder by the day to see how you can have a realistic expectation of actually enjoying it......
You think Ming Campbell DID look older than you, even tho' he wasn't and feel he might have made a bit more effort .....
Young people maunder on about being misunderstood and you struggle not to say 'Get used to it, it's the human condition'
Well, hell, you are made to feel, in so many subtle ways that you are surplus to requirements that it is a daily act of sheer bolshiness to keep breathing. Do so. It still works.
MeltonMowbray
October 22, 2007 10:59 AM
I think antifrank has a point. Campbell's age was a secondary issue: for a QC his speaking style was so anodyne, so sensitive to the least interruption that it was hard to imagine that he had survived in the law for so long (I don't know what his speciality was). Contrast him with Denis Healey at the same age and ageism vanishes from the agenda.
More generally, I'm not sure why age in itself is deserving of respect. Some elderly people I know have views which the average Nazi would find a little over the top. The aim ought to be to respect people of any age. Nursing homes and their failures is a separate issue.
Fawkirk
October 22, 2007 11:23 AM
richp and others
The old are more socially conservative? And politically conservative?
Where's the evidence for this?
I see lots of shallow materialism in some young people.
I see lots of jingoism in young sports fans.
I see a willingness to launch military adventures by younger politicians. Those who have experienced war tend to be much more reluctant to kill others - Ming for example?
Of course, pacifism is a kind of conservatism isn't it?
Today's young - are they as radical as the young of the 60s?
zavaell
October 22, 2007 11:54 AM
Good article about old age. I'm not sure that Ming went because he was too old - although I do believe that he did not have the full leadership potential required for PM.
bass46
October 22, 2007 11:57 AM
Contrast this with the stampede to empower youth. Although it has not happened yet, people are happy to discuss giving children the vote, whilst politicians queue for hours to "listen" to young people. The fact is that despite having seemingly endless energy and a great deal of creativity most teens and early twenties (and beyond in many cases) can't find their own navel and have a small range of experience which means they largely talk out of their arses... except if you're in their peer group (or a politician) when it's all vital, cutting edge stuff.
It'd be nice if our society could end the cult of youth and learn to listen to it's senior members (which sometimes takes more time than our now now now world allows). Banning anyone under.. say... 25, from opening their mouths in public on anything other than music or sport.
How about a curfew for the under 18's? They'd be allowed to work or school or on an errand for their mum or dad, but if out after dark without a permit it'd mean a good beating. Push the driving age up to 21. Can't vote until 21 unless you're in the forces. Can't get credit until 21. No booze in public until 21. No serious panel show appearances with the word "expert" under your name if you're under 30.
Just a thought.
Fawkirk
October 22, 2007 12:30 PM
zavaell
Leadership qualities? You mean like Blair had?
Ming only has, wisdom, compassion, knowledge of history, knowledge of the world.
Blair had...? Vanity, ignorance, selfishness
Principe
October 22, 2007 12:59 PM
Isn't 85% of the private wealth in the UK in the hands of the over 55s? While we do treat the very elderly dreadfully in this country, let's not prented the late middle-aged/early old-aged (Ming's age) are suffering. Many of them, in fact, are swamped with equity, about to buy a flat in the Algarve, then off on a Swan Helenic cruise, they make up judges, CEOs and all sorts. They have the worst carbon footprints, generationally, too - all those weekend breaks and Jaguars. Ming's sodding big house in central Edinburgh didn't suggest he was anyone's victim.
Yes, as I say, the very old get a raw deal, but is it the youth-obsessed culture, or their own middle-aged children, we should be asking questions of?
WoollyMindedLiberal
October 22, 2007 1:25 PM
It seems to me that British politics has become like a Hollywood film. To be acceptable to the Guardian as leader of a political party these days is like being an accepted Lead Role in a movie, i.e. young and pretty. People over 60 or of less than perfect appearance are fine as 'supporting actor' or 'character actor' but will be ridiculed mercilessly if they dare to take a major role. The BBC and Guardian reacted in just this way to Campbell; fine as an elder stateman figure, a wise adviser or potential Foreign Secretary but they cannot contain their incredulity at the notion of him as a potential leader.
Experience, wisdom, judgement are no longer seen as "leadership" qualities in the Guardian or anywhere else it seems. I don't subscribe to the notion that there is a minimum age for being taken seriously and that the current Foreign Secretary is too young. If you're good enough then you are old enough I always say. It is a crying shame, that with the sole honourable exception of Ashley, the reverse does not apply in the media.
Surely if you are good enough then you should be young enough no matter what Steve Bell's nasty prejudices might be.
ThomasReturns
October 22, 2007 2:04 PM
Ming's a pretty fortunate fellow. From what I've seen on television, he's reasonably wealthy, and has a caring family to look after him in late retirement. Whereas, for many people reading this (or more probably, at least half of them), they will have little to look forward to in old age, but twenty years of silence and loneliness, before being admitted into a home against their wishes, where no-one cares.
Or, as a girlfriend once put it to me... "You will grow old and lonely, rocking yourself to sleep in a rickety old chair in a cold dark room, with nothing and no-one to keep you company, but a handful of bitter and twisted memories!" ;o)
GerryL
October 22, 2007 2:20 PM
Does no-one remember that Winston Churchill led the country in the most momentous war in history when he was older than Ming Campbell?
Gerry Lewis
yeractual
October 22, 2007 2:22 PM
I think some of you are being rather fragile in your reaction to Steve Bell's political cartoons. The role of the cartoon is to hold up a mirror to society, and to lampoon the absurdities of the political and societal zeitgeist.
A cartoon can often draw attention to such absurdities, to the heart of an issue, more immediately and successfully than most other means.
To suggest that Steve Bell is himself ageist, is a rather sad sad and naieve way of sidestepping the very issues he is highlighting.
But then, as Oscar Wilde said, I am not young enough to know everything.
WoollyMindedLiberal
October 22, 2007 2:50 PM
yeractual : "I think some of you are being rather fragile in your reaction to Steve Bell's political cartoons. The role of the cartoon is to hold up a mirror to society, and to lampoon the absurdities of the political and societal zeitgeist.
A cartoon can often draw attention to such absurdities, to the heart of an issue, more immediately and successfully than most other means.
To suggest that Steve Bell is himself ageist, is a rather sad sad and naieve way of sidestepping the very issues he is highlighting."
In the same way that Bernard Manning holds up a mirror to society and that Jim Davidson draws attention to absurdities you mean? Is calling them racist a "sad sad and naieve way of sidestepping the very issues"?
I've read some tortured 'logic' and evasive defences of the indefensible in my time but this must be on the short-list for an award in that category.
yeractual
October 22, 2007 3:32 PM
Don't be silly, Woolly.
I was pointing out the nature of the political cartoon. I'm not sure that this calls for the accusation of "tortured 'logic' and evasive defences of the indefensible", and the comparison with Manning or Davidson is either naive (this time spelled properly) or just plain silliness.
wader
October 22, 2007 4:13 PM
When the elderly of Britain wake up to the fact that the only way impress any political party is to refuse to vote in any elections. It is the only weapon they possess, may not impress many people, but is there any other way? Protesting on the streets are ignored, but when millions refuse to take part in voting, then suddenly things are pulled out of the hat.
It may also help to bring about a better old age pension, something like the most of Europe have. Will Brown give this right now we are one in Europe? I doubt that, we can have the bad parts of European Treaty, but certianly not the good bits.
toonbasedmanc
October 22, 2007 4:23 PM
Ming was pushed out not because he was old per se but because he behaved like an out of touch dodderer from a previous century! He was only 66 for god's sake - so why did he act as though he was 94?
Lowdowner
October 22, 2007 4:36 PM
He wasn't shot seven times in the head with dum-dum bullets.
or am I wrong there?
serac
October 22, 2007 6:34 PM
A great article, Jackie! Hopefully there'll be many more like this as people realise this is true discrimination.Why do so few people take this on board? Why aren't people out there demonstrating? I've often wondered how they get away with subsidies of all sorts, such as rail ones for young people irrespective of their incomes.I don't know about in the U.K but, here in Spain, there are housing subsidies for the young which people outside the age-range can't apply for...even if they're poor.I accept subsidies for children or those on low incomes...but for all those below 26? Why? Has anyone ever given us a reasonable explanation why a 26-year-old lawyer should qualify, for instance, but not a 45-year-old unemployed person?
Purchas
October 22, 2007 6:51 PM
Ming was impressive as the Liberal spokesman on foreign affairs. That was his level. He lacks the charisma, rhinoceros-hide skin and sheer brass to be a party leader. Put simply, he was over-promoted. Maybe- to be kinder- he is just too decent and human to flourish at the top. Politics is a rough business and opponents and satirists will seize on any weakness and worry at it till they bring the quarry down. Ming gets attacked for being doddery, Cameron for being callow. If the first is ageism the second must be reverse ageism. In fact both are pure opportunism. Every politician can expected to be attacked this way- personally, unfairly and without mercy. It's how our democracy works. Cameron seems to have what it takes to weather the abuse, Ming didn't.
misteruseless
October 22, 2007 7:25 PM
in the future middle aged hoodies will drive by shoot the oldies in order to keep the numbers down - half starved children will stone them - if you are reading this it is likely to be your fate
evolute
October 22, 2007 7:51 PM
Very good article Jackie.
Yeractual - The humour is clearly designed to come from laughing AT Ming as an old man. The morning chuckle will have been generated from seeing dear old Ming ascending to the podium in his stairlift or toddling along with his zimmer frame. Not from ridiculing the ageism itself. Partly it's the difference between gag and satire. Bell (and others) repeatedly chose the former. Not once did I see a cartoon that sought to ridicule the ageism itself. If this ever was the intention, then it was poorly executed. I'm quite well aware of the role of the cartoonist as I'm sure is Woolly. But the parallels Woolly makes with Davidson and Manning are, unfortunately, spot on, and I fear it is you who is being naive on this one.
MichaelBulley - I assumed the "we" in the title "The way we treat the old..." referred to us as society. I didn't take it to mean those of us who aren't old. It's possible you may have interpreted it the wrong way. Possibly.
