AIBU to Think MNHQ needs to tackle the ageism on this site?

[LastGoldenDaysOfSummer]

The venom and hate aimed at older people on some of the Covid threads is disgusting. If the same was aimed at disabled, TW or BAME people then the posts would be deleted immediately, and rightly so.

But because it's the elderly it's left to stand, even after being reported. This isn't new, MNHQ has always been a hotbed of ageism but it's usually dealt with when reported.

But not any more. Should they be doing more?

As an older person I see it on here. The Covid threads have an undercurrent of ageism and ableism. And some of the discussions about conceiving after 40 can be unpleasant.

@RainingBatsAndFrogs

I can’t stand the ageist generalisations, usually the ‘older generation’ (when they are talking about 60 yo MIL) are racist / sexist etc.

It’s so stupid: your grandmother’s generation invented the Equal Pay Act, the Sex Discrimination Act, your Mum was probably Rocking Against Racism and wearing an Anti Nazi League badge.

Well said!

Yanbu op.
Some posts on this thread have proved your point very nicely.
Exactly like similar threads started about the disabled/vulnerable.
My parents are no longer alive but they worked hard all their lives and lived in council house squalor. The house I grew up in was damp and I now have asthma/bronchitis.
Like another poster my Irish immigrant father worked with asbestos and ended his life struggling to breathe.
They had no spare money to pay into a pension or a mortgage. Hell some weeks they ran out of food.
They never voted Tory and neither have I or my siblings.
My baby boomer WASPI sibling worked from age 16, never had dc and spend her last 5 years before receiving her state pension on JSA. It was a miserable existance. She still had to pay council tax but people with dc were exempt.
Really not sure how prople like this have ruined anyone's future.
Never voted for BREXIT either

I hate the threads that say that all grandparents should step up and provide childcare. It would seem that many young adults today feel entitled and believe their parents shouldn’t have a life.

MayYouLiveInInterestingTimes and as I carry on working until I am 66 or 67, my taxes are paying towards the free childcare hours that I missed out on, the free meals in primary that we didn’t get.

It is absolutely clear though that housing is far harder for the new generations and the whole global situation is tougher. But the crash of 2008, recession, etc are hardly all down to upholding pensions.

I think young and old can come together. Parent love their adult children and want to help them and vice versa.

Shakespeare put it well although I am sure someone will come along and say the sonnet is ageist.

Crabbed Age and Youth
Cannot live together:
Youth is full of pleasance,
Age is full of care;
Youth like summer morn,
Age like winter weather;
Youth like summer brave,
Age like winter bare:
Youth is full of sports,
Age's breath is short,
Youth is nimble, Age is lame:
Youth is hot and bold,
Age is weak and cold,
Youth is wild, and Age is tame:-
Age, I do abhor thee;
Youth, I do adore thee;
O! my Love, my Love is young!
Age, I do defy thee-
O sweet shepherd, hie thee,
For methinks thou stay'st too long.

Isn’t Shakespeare just saying it’s really crap being old and fab being young? Or am I missing the point of Madrigal?

I think the local shepherd called by to gossip, but Bill needed to get on with his chores.

😂

@SheepandCow - you’re just saying the same thing again and again. There are and were poor people in every generation. That doesn’t mean there isn’t generational inequality.

Your parents may or may not have been struggling compared to others. But you’ve already said they had opportunity (a council house and right to buy) that are no longer available to the vast majority of young people.

Again no one is saying the boomers are all rich. But they had financial benefits that the younger generation won’t have which are now being paid for by them.

@Xenia - what about people who don’t have wealthy parents?

But they had financial benefits that the younger generation won’t have which are now being paid for by them

It works both ways. Younger generations are benefiting from free childcare and school meals paid for by older generations who didn’t have them. It’s swings and roundabouts.

@LeaveMyDamnJam

Those who have an issue with older people need to remember that it will be them one day who are over 50 and past it 😉. Time passes bloody quickly.

I'm 58 and am certainly not past it ! I'm not a grandad yet either !

@mrsswayze

I didn't realise I'd be banished to grans net at 50 my youngest will be 7 😂 I have noticed the ageism as well on her especially on COVID threads . If some posters had there way I'd be forced to isolated , how would I be able to do my job as a nurse though 🤔 Mumsnet need to sort this out as it's very obviousl

I'm 58 and am a student nurse. How would I be able to help patients if I was told to isolate?

@RainingBatsAndFrogs - there has been huge house price inflation over a long period of time and a failure to build enough affordable housing. Pensions are by far the most expensive part of the welfare budget but while austerity cut everything else, pensions were actually raised. Childcare for 3-5 year olds has a tiny cost in comparison to elderly care. The younger generations do have benefits older people didn’t which is to be expected as things change. Overall though the young have definitely done very badly out of it.

Yes. The affluent middle-class cohort. Then there's the rest of their generation. The majority. Who didn't go to university. They left school at 14, 15, or at a push 16. Straight into work.

Part of the issue is that those jobs for 16 year olds just don’t exist any more - working class kids went into industry, often following their parents into the work place and we don’t have a significant manufacturing/industrial sector now. It means that young people for whom university wasn’t the best option have very few opportunities for secure employment and university education is the default position. Add in the lack of workplace routes into careers like nursing and social work and you exclude many young people who would thrive in those professions but don’t want to or have the means to go to university.

I worked from the age of 14, part time while at school, went into an office junior role at 18 and have never been unemployed - I now have two professional qualifications and a Masters, but the route into work that I followed just isn’t there in an age of zero hours contracts.

That’s not the fault of boomers, thats an erosion of low skilled, secure employment, the inflation of the apparent value of university education and everyone wanting everything as cheaply as possible.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@SheepandCow - you’re just saying the same thing again and again. There are and were poor people in every generation. That doesn’t mean there isn’t generational inequality.

Your parents may or may not have been struggling compared to others. But you’ve already said they had opportunity (a council house and right to buy) that are no longer available to the vast majority of young people.

Again no one is saying the boomers are all rich. But they had financial benefits that the younger generation won’t have which are now being paid for by them.[/quote]
The younger generation have had 30 hours of free childcare, free school meals in KS1, some have had the benefit of Sure Start and other initiatives, their children have had the benefit of sports clubs, dance lessons, music lessons and lots of other things that were not available to the older generation. It was Brownies/Cubs or Guides/Scouts and nothing else. The only generation the current over 50s have had it better than are the generations that experienced WW1/WW2.

Each generation has it's advantages, though it's hard to see what they were for people who lived through the wars. Covid is a PITA but it's nothing compared to a world war or the civil wars and famines experienced in the developing world or the genocide and conflict in parts of Eastern Europe a few decades ago.

@VinylDetective -1. those are children’s benefits

1. The cost of free nursery and infant school meals is a tiny drop in the ocean in comparison to things like 1. universal state pensions paid at 60, 2. Available Council housing and right to buy 3. Free university education 4. Workplace final salary pensions, and so on.

@nighttrains see above. And what a weird claim that there were no music lessons for the boomer generation!

But you’d need to go much older than over 50s for those things. I’m 50 next year, I don’t retire til I’m at least 67, I didn’t get free university education and workplace final salary pensions are a complete myth for my peers unless in the public sector. I know many older people (65/70) who had no workplace pension because the pension pot was raised by company owners.

Free childcare might benefit children but surely those parents reap the financial benefit of not paying for childcare costs? Which can then be used for other household costs/savings.

Your comments might apply to those over mid 60s but not in my age bracket by a long stretch.

How awful and small minded to resent the benefits of a previous generation.

They’re not children’s benefits. Free childcare enables parents to go to work. Free school meals saves parents money on their food bill. Having seen what people report paying for childcare, I can’t agree that it’s a drop in the ocean. Thirty hours care for one child costs considerably more than a week’s state pension - unless child care costs £5.30 ph.

The generation you insist is costing those still working a fortune have a contract with the state which is a life time of paying previous generations’ pensions with the expectation that those payments will in turn entitle them to their own pension. The middle class pensioners you despise continue to pay tax.

You have a point in relation to housing but successive governments and a national obsession with home ownership are to blame for that.

It is very hard to compare generations fairly, We sold property t a loss in 1990 in London and I doubt any Government is going to give me back those property losses! Others will be sitting on massive equity gains and plenty never had and never will buy who are my age just like my granny (she always rented).

It is very hard to compare generations fairly

It depends what you are trying to compare surely? Our grannies and grandad's brought up their families often in rented accommodation because the system was not set up for wider home ownership then. Most property was owned by a smaller number of 'new money' families where wealth was created in manufacturing post the Industrial Revolution and handed down. Successive forms of taxation resulted in a lot of that wealth going to the state and then Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson set about encouraging home ownership, probably too quickly such that from 1988 homes became commodities. Losses on properties were common in 1990-1993 following the highest interest rates in my memory. But over the longer term we have had time to recover - if you can call the booms of 20% rises in property per annum in 2002 and 2003 'recovery'. Pretty shaky foundations in my view. Point is I do not know of anybody who lost money in the early 1990's on a property where the average price was about £55,000 who has not made substantial gains since.

The old adage that money makes money is very true. Those who saved £3,000 per annum into the old Personal Equity Plans through to the replacement ISAs with its £20,000 annual limit over just the last 20 years will often have accrued £1m (there are many 'ISA millionaires' out there).

De-regulation, the Big Bang and now the Internet have been game changers. Looking back at what advantages some people had then compared to oneself now is pointless. You will always find someone worse so just what is the point.

What matters is looking at the advantages and opportunities out there today and using them.

[quote CayrolBaaaskin]@SheepandCow - you’re just saying the same thing again and again. There are and were poor people in every generation. That doesn’t mean there isn’t generational inequality.

Your parents may or may not have been struggling compared to others. But you’ve already said they had opportunity (a council house and right to buy) that are no longer available to the vast majority of young people.

Again no one is saying the boomers are all rich. But they had financial benefits that the younger generation won’t have which are now being paid for by them.[/quote]
I obviously need to keep saying it...you clearly didn't read what I said.

It was my grandparents, not my parents, who declined right to buy on their council home - turned down for moral reasons...you know, to give opportunities of housing for the younger generation.

Like I said, my grandparents don't represent their whole generation. Everyone is an individual. Many of their generation were not lucky enough to get council homes.

I keep referring you to Shelter. Their website has good info on the history of housing. Lots of the older generation lived in private rented slums. The inequality within a generation has always existed.

You've also, like many, overlooked the forgotten middle group - the middle-aged. Like I said they're really fucked. The fastest rising group in private renting - with no light at the end of the tunnel. No taxpayer funded Help to Buy schemes for them.

Some of the older generation had benefits that some of the younger generation don't have. And vice versa....Some of the younger generation have benefits that some of the older generation never had.