Emma Soames Residents of Congresbury, near Bristol, are fed up with the volume of traffic jamming up their village. They are threatening to emulate pensioner Tony Fuller, who brought traffic to a standstill in Chideok, Dorset, by repeatedly pressing the button at a pedestrian crossing. The Congresbury rebels have formed a campaigning group called RATS (Residents Against Traffic Snarl-ups) and woe betide the local council if it fails to heed their protests.
Elsewhere, near Blackpool, the residents of Harrowside in South Shore protested vigorously for many months after their local bus service was abolished, leaving them stranded a three-quarter hour walk to the nearest bus stop. The service is to be reinstated as a direct result.
Of course it isn’t just pensioners who benefit from local services, but the retired have the time to organise and implement protests and do the legwork on behalf of local people. Over the next few months local communities need to be watchful of cuts and ready to pick up the placards.
I am not suggesting that we should protest against any and every cut: there was fat on the bone, and as George Osborne says, we are all in this together. But when a key service is threatened, it is pensioners who have the numbers and the time and, yes, the power, to keep local authorities sensitive and accountable. We have the power to protect our local communities and we need to use it.
And if – or when – you launch your protest group and need to drum up support, don’t confine yourself to networks like parish magazines that are largely only used by your own generation in your own village. Break out.
Betty White, the fabulous 88-year-old American comedienne, was much loved for her role in that seminal series, the Golden Girls. She is now enjoying a surge in popularity in the USA, largely thanks to a campaign led by a 29-year-old fan on Facebook. As a result, White was chosen as a compere for the MTV awards, the celebrity fest that celebrates the music industry. She is also, say American TV critics, the best thing about a new, otherwise mediocre sitcom, Hot in Cleveland. And if that weren’t enough to keep her diary full she was also invited to host the cult TV chat show Saturday Night Live. Call it tokenism if you must – one 88-year-old doesn’t fix ageism across the entertainment world – but talent doesn’t die.
And from that let us learn this: while Saga Zone is the place to go to spread your messages within our demographic, Facebook rocks for intergenerational hustle.
Another older woman smashing through the age ceiling and breaking stereotypes is Ruth Flowers. For many years a wife and mother leading a blameless life, Flowers is now a DJ, Mamy Rock. This is a job I thought was confined to undergraduates and childults.
She became one through a series of lucky breaks and coincidences, but her Damascene moment of decision was when she went to a disco given by one of her grandchildren. Now her website lists a diary of gigs from Rimini to Cannes, where she hosted the decks during the Film Festival.
With a shock of white hair and a fine line in green satin jackets, (note to self: green satin looks great with grey hair), Flowers has completely reinvented herself and now has an EP coming out – Mamy rocks. You’ll love the single, Still Rocking, not to mention her fabulously groovy website.
Unlike Betty White, Flowers is being a little coy about her age – she’s been 69 for ages now. But hey, the audiences just love the rocking grandmother. Will someone please get her a gig in this country?
Flowers is living proof of the idiocy of the default retirement age. The Government has already announced that the retirement age is to extend to 66 for men in 2016, with that for women to follow thereafter (it is currently 61).
This has to be good news for some people in their late fifties who are deeply worried about their pensions, as it gives them an extra year of guaranteed work – and saving.
However, the sooner the default retirement age is abolished completely, the better that will be for the thousands of older people who wish to carry on working, perhaps part-time, until they, rather than their employers, decide that it is time to hang up their boots.