Wednesday, August 20, 2003

Oldie - bad. Retired persons over 50 - OK?

An article appeared in the FT on 8th August about ‘coaching the ceo’. With fees charged at 15% of the executive’s salary, for about 45 hours work, it sound good work if you can get it.

One statement caught my eye ‘It is incredibly difficult to change behaviour in people over 50. They've got to have enough of their working life ahead of them to want to do it. You can change 32-year-olds brilliantly, and 38-year-olds OK, but 45 is getting difficult, and 50 impossible’. Sounds like an open minded sort of person, then again they are 54 so what do you expect!

As you can imagine this article prompted a few letters to be written to the FT. Barry Harpham’s letter on the 12th August did a good job of rebutting this proposition. He concluded his letter ‘so don’t write off us oldies’. This prompted a letter today from Mr Clive Burton (Campaigns Unit, Association of Retired and Persons over 50) who objected to the term 'oldies'. He said ‘Age is an attitude of mind, and acceptance of such a pejorative description can only serve to embed the currency of ageism deeper in the nation's consciousness’

This is a rather long-winded way of getting to my main point. What are the acceptable and unacceptable terms for the 50+? Is ‘grey market’ OK? What about ‘silver surfers’? It would be really useful to have a list of OK words and phrases. All suggestions gratefully received.


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