Talking About Your Grandma's Generation (AUSTRALIA)

Talkin' about your grandma's generation

By Madonna King

22 February, 2010

It was a cartoon that summed up the feeling of a group of seniors sitting around a table at a meeting in Brisbane last week.

Published in regional Queensland, it showed the Federal Treasurer Wayne Swan riding a senior citizen, hitting him with a riding crop and saying: "And one more thing. You seniors will have to stop bludging off the rest of us!''

The group sitting around the table, representing 280 organisations in this state alone, hadn't lost their sense of humour.

But across Australia, and in the lead-up to this year's federal election, they're now preparing to draw a line at how the rest of the nation views them.

Step one begins today, when they release an appeal to politicians and the media to take specific words out of our vocabulary; words they believe are inciting a sense of blame, painting seniors as a laughing stock, and a big group of ageing bludgers.

Oldies, mouldy oldies, grumblies, grumpies, fugglies, fuddy duddies, geriatrics, the olds, the really olds, lost it, past it, and doddery are the 12 words or phrases they are focusing on.

The seniors' roundtable decided it was this list that helped blow an ill-wind in their direction, and their campaign to have them stopped is strategically placed in the run-up to this year's state and federal elections.

Mark Tucker-Evans, chief executive of the Council on the Ageing, says the nation's aged are now being seen as a "burden'' and risk being "blamed'' for economic decisions made by the Government.

He's right. The Rudd Government has been creating that perception, and the media perpetuating it, by linking the ageing of our population to potential cuts in services.

Some seniors also believe that the current blame-game debate is partly behind the increased number of calls to elder abuse units over the past year.

Certainly, much of the language used is not generated by ill-will. Some of it is just old-fashioned terms, now considered politically incorrect. For example, even the Council on the Ageing used to be called the Old People's Welfare Council.

Abridged

SOURCE:    ABC NET.AU

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