Pensioners Revolt (From Croydon Guardian)

Pensioners Revolt

3:26pm Sunday 9th September 2007

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When starting a Blog I assume one owes, the readers you hope to get, an explanation for your being driven into print.
I resisted the temptation for ‘three score years and ten, plus one’.
Finally my weekly read of The Local Guardian (Staines Edition) broke my resolve.
The ‘press releases’ from the local authority and the local police force served, in my opinion, only to show what spend-thrifts those bodies were and unfortunately remain.
The ‘Letters to the Editor’ appeared every week to come from a group of three writers, two of whom clearly pushed political party lines and squabbled, week after week.

I then took to letter writing, or rather e-mailing, and had a letter or two published. Found the web-site and commented on letters. Used the ‘message Forum’. The problem is to get, more than a few, sometimes any, published responses at all. This is independent of how contentious or critical the views you express might appear to others. At least there was a break of several weeks in letters from the regular contributors. Possibly a few more contributors also appeared in print.
The disappointing thing is the difficulty, near impossibility, of raising a serious response to comments, particularly from those who have said their piece.

Another factor in starting a blog was the atitude that many in our society have towards us oldies.

From the television shows we are presented as ‘figures of fun’, ‘good for a laugh’, or rather ‘for laughing at’, but serving no other purpose.

In other societies, and once upon a time in our own, the views of their elder citizens are accorded more respect.

Despite all the technological advances, which have been made in the last two centuries or so, the fact still remains that experience matters. You can only get the knowledge that experience brings by time serving or at least listening to your elders.

Tempting as it is to ‘lay down your arms’, and ' to nurse the aches and 'pains of old age', that will not make the world, or less ambitiously one's local patch, a better place to live in.

Too many pensioners do just that I am afraid. I think they have far more to offer to society and they should make an effort.

Whilst ‘in harness’ the working population has to ‘mind it’s P’s and Q’s’ and ‘keep it’s nose clean’.

The Pensioner has no such excuse and can speak his or her mind ,(just like the little boy in the fairy story of the King’s New Clothes).

This blog is a part of my attempt to make my contribution to our society.

I have looked about and I do not like what I see. Those who profess to ‘serve’ us are not making a very good job of it.

If not the time for another ‘Peasants' Revolt’, it is, I suggest time for a ‘Pensioners' Revolt”.

Having set the pitch let the game commence.