Why are older people stuck like rabbits in the headlights?

17/06/2008

Are we really as the Politicians’ and local Councillors see us: the 'greys’, 'oldies’, the 'pensioned off', 'Senior Citizens', the 'passed-its’? No - far from it. But we have to admit that the frightened rabbit 'caught in the headlights' syndrome is seen by others to be descriptive of how we are expected to react. Timidity it isn’t, but our reluctance to re-act is part of breeding, part of the era through which we have been brought-up.

Show respect, don’t make a fuss, bite your tongue. But it is of little avail when confronted with a younger generation who think that life on this planet only started when they arrived, and were shocked to find a mature generation already existed. They, the young-uns, run and control the services on which we depend - but from a point of self importance and aggressive management. Or perhaps bullying might be a more accurate description.

We are not part of the system so we have no retaliatory weapons against what we see as injustice. Except, a powerful voice, a voice that can only be brought to its full power through unity. At the moment our voice is barely heard above a whisper because it is fragmented.

If you ask a mature person if they intend to make a protest vote at the next election they will most likely say, ‘no’. Why? because they have respect for a democratic system that they struggled to establish. Even when those they voted into power show little respect for them. In the past we had a multitude of alternative parties on the ballot paper against whom we could put our protesting cross. If we insist on a true democracy then it is only right to have a box on that ballot paper marked 'protestor'.

Of course a more efficient way would be to have a’ Maturity Party’, which could count on our common vote. It wouldn’t matter if they had a manifesto or not, its purpose would be to show that we have a voice and need it - no, demand! - it to be heard.

But could it happen? I doubt it. Loyalty and entrenchment would set in and that need to show respect would re-surface. Show it - but do not expect it in return. The response might be: "But I have voted for my party for the last forty years". So, that mature voice, which has so much promise, would be reduced to a whisper, once again.

The politicians will remain, as always, meaningfully oblivious to we down here, at street level, the mature ones. They, the political elite, (forgive me for that slip of the tongue), are in pursuit of a more desirable agenda: greed.

When caught out they hide behind bland statements, as if talking to a population who have been reduced to one active brain cell, and so are completely unable to put an interpretation on their antics. ‘In the future’, ‘lessons have been learned’- the latter the lamest cliché of an excuse ever coined by intelligent Homo Sapien.

The alternative political diversion is to throw a concessionary bone. ‘Give them free swimming’, the assumption being that, being given something for nothing, it will placate the anger, whilst the younger generation can re-direct their anger at these elderly breast strokers cluttering-up their swimming baths. Politics is just an elaborate and devisive game of chess, one which the politician insists on winning, every time.

Why is it that many of us feel that we are continually being mugged? I would hate to think that it is because we are in fact, mugs. How can it be that someone, a politician, who you put into the position by your vote, can then devise a series of regulations that enable them to put their hands in your pocket without having to explain themselves.

Struggling to pay your TV licence? Cooking in a kitchen that saw its best days’ last century? Trying to make the last payments on your mortgage? Feeling ashamed because you could not recompense a relative who did a favour for you? Well politicians do not have that problem because their regulations allow you to pay for it when they want those things done.

How, I continually ask myself, can a politician, who claimed to be standing on a Socialist ticket, own several houses, each one of them worth more than a million pounds?

Twenty or thirty years ago, when we had a number of politicians who had the quality of statesmanship, if we had seen a foreign government acting in that way we would have shouted, loud and clear with a single voice: "Corruption".

But, agree or not, that is what we have got. It is here, it is now - and it doesn’t look like it is going to change. Except, perhaps, if we can find a unified voice, or as a last resort, someone switches off the headlights.

Terry Buchanan