What’s the point of digital inclusion?
Seventy per cent of people aged over 65 in the UK have never used the internet. In a time when personal communication, social networking and the supply of services is being revolutionized by technology, older people are being largely excluded. The Government is concerned enough about this to have introduced a panoply of initiatives to [...]
Networked love
Joan is a Canadian woman with a history of mental health problems. When she developed necrotising fasciitis and had to go into hospital, the people who cared about her joined an online social network so they could keep in touch with one another. That network was Tyze, which differs from more familiar sites like Facebook [...]
Anti-ageing is anti-people
If you are at all interested in ageing, your inbox quickly fills up with an awful lot of blandishments, offers and promises. There are creams, supplements, diets, hormones; you can inject yourself with Botox, or ingest cow’s colostrum, put avocado on your eyes and chocolate in your mouth. The web is bristling with rumours that [...]
The Selfish Generation
David Willetts’ book is subtitled, ‘How the baby boomers took their children’s future – and why they should give it back.’ This seems to imply a malign intention on the part of the post-war generation and, sure enough, at points in the book, Willetts talks of the ‘ultra-individualism unleashed’ by this generation, whose failure to [...]
What will the coalition do for us?
The policy agreement from the new British coalition government is a seven-page summary, put together under 11 headings, in private and under pressure. Inevitably, it’s a bit thin in places – often more a statement of shared principles than specific intentions. So what does it mean for older people? And what can we infer from [...]
The key to the big society
So Britain finally has a new government, after five days in which the news has mainly been that some men were going in or out of a building. The policy positions of the first coalition since the second world war, hammered out in those meetings, will emerge over the coming days and weeks, but it [...]
Will the old derail China’s growth?
Two-thirds of Chinese can currently look forward to a destitute old age. China faces the prospect of tens of millions of low-wage workers maturing into indigent urban elders between 2020 and 2030, with untold social and political consequences. A new report from the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, The Graying Of The Middle Kingdom [...]
Watch it and weep
A commercial that dares to show a woman ageing has had people sniffing into their sofas, moved to tears by its portrayal of modern life. The 90-second television ad for John Lewis has been watched by more than 100,000 people in a week on YouTube, and has been the subject of newspaper commentary and the [...]
The Turner Prize – why the daft age limit?
By Geraldine Bedell on 5 May, 2010
The Turner Prize shortlist has been announced, to the usual accompanying grumbles. Which is only to be expected; the prize was devised to get people talking about contemporary art and it would hardly be doing its job if it didn’t provoke controversy and complaint. Some of this year’s griping has had a rather odd flavour, [...]
Posted in Blog, Commentary, Culture | Tagged Alzheimer’s, arts editor, BBC, Booker Prize, Colombia University, Granta, Ian Jack, Joan Jeffri, Matisse, Michelangelo, Muhammed Ali, Orange Prize, Philip Hensher, prizewinners, radicalism, Titian, Turner Prize, Will Gompertz, Willem de Kooning | 2 Responses