Ageism is no more tolerable than any other prejudice
Discrimination against old people is rife - and the government has the perfect chance to do something to reduce it
By Jackie Ashley
The Guardian
June 2 2008
We hear about older people quite a lot, but generally only when they are being tossed the bone of extra help with fuel payments - a useful bone, but a bone nonetheless. Westminster gets hot under the collar about all sorts of groups, from knife-wielding street thugs to migrant workers, the super-rich to the over-borrowed. Yet the way we treat that large and rising group, the elderly, is under-discussed.
It matters this week of all weeks because talks about the new equality bill are coming to a head. The issue is whether age discrimination should take its place alongside discrimination against people on the basis of religion, gender, sexuality or disability in the new bill, which will be introduced in next autumn's Queen's speech. And there is an ominous, slightly rasping clatter coming out of Whitehall: it is the noise of the backtrack.
There is already age discrimination legislation, but it covers the workplace, and is therefore much narrower than laws to protect other groups. Services ranging from health and social care to financial services are all exempt from legislation, and age discrimination is rife. Whether it's the lack of breast cancer screening for over-75s, doctors' decisions not to treat elderly patients' complaints seriously or the inability to find travel insurance, the elderly find they are not regarded as equal citizens. One Age Concern campaigner says the effect of insurance companies refusing even to give a quote to elderly people is like walking along the high street and finding eight out of 10 shops with a sign reading "no old people here".
Not all of this can be dealt with in a bill, but it would certainly help change the general atmosphere, the culture of what is and what is not acceptable. For bullying is not something that stops when you leave the playground. Being shunned and casually abused are not things suffered only by members of sexual or ethnic minorities. Indeed, ageism remains the last socially acceptable prejudice. No glamour, you see: just the wrinkled outside face of long, creative and useful lifetimes.
Abridged
SOURCE: TheGuardianUK
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