Probe call on the elderly in Scotland !

[Papaumau]

I do understand that you feel strongly about this subject - as I do - but to get support from your fellow crinkleys you have to persuade and not badger people.

If you think that I am patronising you here I am sorry but we really have to all stick together around this subject and not get bogged down by niggly details.

We ARE a force to be reckoned with and the quicker that the recalcitrant and apathetic ones get to know this the better for all of us.

[Ivanhoe]

Papaumau, With all due respect, pensioners need to unite at grass roots level, but they are not doing this because they are devided by among other things political affiliation.

Where I live ive spoken to pensioners groups in the past, some 10 years ago and more, but theese groups died a death in numbers because of infighting and boredom, I know because I was told.

And I say again, 12 million pensioner in a 60 million population wont make a dent in the politicians mindset, because the politicans know that some pensioners can be brought off with means tested handouts, and some pensioners can be made to feel grateful, particularly following the Thatcher/Major years when all this started, alost 30 years ago.

[Papaumau]

Ahhhh the committee-system !

I think that you will find that any bunch of people that come together - at any age - that have personal axes to grind will very quickly get bogged down with detail and this almost always stops these committees from being effective in any group setting.

I have already agreed with you - and I think John agrees too - that the elderly are inclined to be tightly attached to tradional values and because of this they seldom think in any radical ways. Having said that there ARE still a few of us that are willing to lead the sheep into believing new things and even thinking the unthinkable on occasion.

The more we have discussions like these the more many wise pensioners will start to see that maybe the old ways are not always the best ways and once they eventually get that pencil in their hand and they are about to lay that little cross they will allow sensible persuasion to change their direction.

It IS true that when polling day comes it is the elderly ones - more than the superficially-thinking youngsters -  that will get off their tushies and get out to the polling stations. The political parties know this and they are terrified that we might start to lay our little crosses where we might not have traditionally laid them in the past.

If we can help to persuade the set-in-their-ways oldsters to do this then all of this effort might be worth while.

[Ivanhoe]

You have more faith that I have, 20 years in the pensioners corner has taght me much about this generation.

Infact sometimes and I loathe saying this, I wonder how we won the war ??

[Papaumau]

I think you will find that in adversity the Brits - of any age - will always come up trumps. All they need is to feel threatened and when they are I am sure that that wartime spirit will quickly come to the fore when needed again.

Using another "leftish" analogy I feel that people are always at their best in solidarity with others who think the same and while the powers-that-be can manage to keep them divided they will be weak and ineffectual in standing up for and getting their rights.

My old Irish grannie had a saying about this: "If someone is foolish enough to try to bury their head in the sand  they - by doing this - leave their arrases exposed for people who need to park their bikes !" 

[Ivanhoe]

I totally disagree with that.

This country is a mass of apathy and political ignorance, any solidarity we ever might have had has gone.

[Papaumau]

Now you are beginning to depress me Ivanhoe !

I just hope that yours is not an example of the opinions of the mass of the elderly people in Britain today as if it is we - who do care - are going to be wasting our time.

If I - like you - thought this I would just stay in bed and have a duvet day every day.

Thankfully I don't feel the need to do that and the ones that - like me - do care don't either !

WE are much larger in number than you may realise !

[Ivanhoe]

I dont know how long you have been fighting the cause for pensioners Papaumau, but im telling you that this is a depressing issue, not least because the media refuse to cover it, but also because pensioners are not consolidated.

I started my campaigning 20 years ago, and I joined the Labour party as an activist in 1987, because I believed in core Labour values.

When Blair took Labour to the right, I withdrew my membership, but have carried on campaigning in others ways,
including standing as an Independent for Parliament in 2005.

I would never have believed that the old peopple of Britain could be ignored for almost 30 years by the British at large, by rich pensioners with other income, who in  my view could not give a damn, and by the British media who also couldnt give a damn.

This is my experience over 20 years, what's yours ?

[Papaumau]

That kind of defeatist attitude is what is at the core of what is wrong in Britain today.

We MUST NOT fall out with each other, we MUST keep on fighting for our rights in as many ways as we can.

Believe me, there are pensioners and older-people groups out there in every town and city and region and what needs to happen is the defeatists like you need to join them and find out JUST how powerful we are when aroused.

The up-and-coming general election will show that many of us are fed up with being abused and that we are just not going to stand for it any longer.

I say ignore the apathetic recalcitrants and get together with the ones that DO care about the future of Britain and how it treats it's elderly people.

I do and I have !

[Ivanhoe]

Papaumau, Unless ive missed something, how can you call me a defeatest when ive done all that I have, and am still doing. ?

Also, please tell me what you are doing ?

[Ivanhoe]

""That kind of defeatist attitude is what is at the core of what is wrong in Britain today""

The core of what is wrong in Britain today is a politically docile working class, and apathy.  Im neither.

[Themurf]

""That kind of defeatist attitude is what is at the core of what is wrong in Britain today""

The core of what is wrong in Britain today is a politically docile working class, and apathy.  Im neither.

I heard you were on here michael.

Still trotting out the same old claptrap. Why don't you tell the few people on here why you have chosen not to work for a living for the past 20 years, but you're happy to send your wife out to work whilst you pkay on the computer.

[Papaumau]

Hi "Themurf".....

I hope you are not just here to flame old Ivanhoe as even if he does have the ability to rub people up the wrong way he does also have some very valid points.

I would'nt call it "claptrap" to say that Britain suffers from "apathy and a docile working class" as it is abundantly true that this IS the case.

What I try to get across to Ivanhoe is that there ARE a lot of activists out there that are prepared to fight TOGETHER for a decent living for the pensioners and the poor in Britain and that he is not just a class warrior doing it all on his lonesome.

Our job is to wind up the apathetic ones so that they get angry at the situation and not at each-other and then we may start to get valued for what we are; the backbone of the power in this fast-asleep country.