Three Cheers for the Old Folks !

Ireland is not (yet) a racist country, but we are the world champions in ageism.

More than half of our population is under 25, so once you get into the higher numbers, you are supposed to disappear and not spoil the show for the 'youth orchestra'.

Once you pass 40 they look at you with suspicion. What's he still doing here?

If you manage to hold on past the 50 line, the looks will become more annoying. Unbelievable - he's still about. Shouldn't he be well dead by now?

Anything after that is just a mixture of neglect, ignorance and hostility. Nobody takes any longer any notice of you once you pass 60, and at 65 they give you a free national travel pass and a free TV licence. That way they hope you'll either get lost on the buses up the country, or you may die of boredom in front of the dumb-box.

Seven years ago Fianna Fail was short of votes, so they decided to win over the 'grey power' by giving everyone over the age of 70 a free medical card.
The old folks liked that. They'd been ignored for decades, and now they felt that someone was in a sensible way looking after them.
But now the government wants to take these medical cards back, in order to save € 100 million a year. Apart from the fact that it's wrong to rob the elderly of their health care security, it's also a most idiotic political move. Only an imbecile of great incompetence and no political talent at all could come up with such an idea.

But the Irish are no fools, even though the government treats us like such. We are not playing ball with the little bully boy from Offaly and his piggy-bank carrier from Dublin!

Yesterday they tried to undo the damage with a 30-minute press conference that told us nothing but the fact that even the Taoiseach and some of his senior ministers have not a clue about this matter and how to get out of the hole they have dug for themselves and the country.

But then the people took over and completely sidelined the press conference at government buildings.

More than 5000 senior citizens, including quite a few sitting in wheelchairs or walking with Zimmerframes, crutches or sticks, assembled outside Leinster House and demonstrated against the government and the threat to their medical cards. On Monday 1800 elderly people had already voiced their anger at a meeting in Dublin, which was organised by 'Age Action', the 'trade union of the elderly'.

This is a level of activity the government never expected. And indeed such an amount of elderly people on a protest march was a novelty, never to be seen before in the Republic, or anywhere in Ireland.
The old folks did not just march, they also carried placards and shouted slogans. One of the large placards carried said: "Why don't you just shoot us? It would be cheaper!" And that sums up the general feeling of anger, fear, disappointment and distrust that the government has spread in the elderly population.

None of the senior government ministers had the guts to come out and face the demonstrators. Not only are they mean and cruel, they have also exposed themselves as spineless cowards.

Eventually a woman called Máire Hoctor was sent out. Nobody had ever heard of her before, but apparently she's one of four junior ministers in Mary Harney's Health Department, responsible for "older people". Not for old people, mind, but for "older people"... whatever that means.

But the angry pensioners were not in the mood to be lectured and patronised by a second class Fianna Fail apparatchik and told her to shut up. On Monday Hoctor's colleague John Maloney had a similar experience. He was sent to the meeting of 1800 eldery people in a Dublin church, but also was told to get lost when he tried to patronise the gathering. Selecting him as an official government representative to 'Age Action' Ireland was in fact an insult, as Maloney is junior minister for Mental Health and Disability, commonly known as 'minister for the mad and lame'.

The only mad people in this affair are the members of the government, which is a 'lame duck' administration without precedence in Ireland.

It needed the older people to come out and expose the government as the incompetent bunch of nitwits they are. Well done!

Let's have three cheers for the old folks!

They built this country, demonstrated against the Vietnam War and in support of the hunger strikes in the North, worked hard to survive and bring up children. They paid taxes all their lives and are the backbone of the state.
That they have shown once again with the meeting on Monday and the demonstration yesterday morning. Well done, indeed! I salute everyone who was there and showed great courage.

And well done also the 10,000 students who demonstrated two hours later in protest against the government and it's education policy. Next week there will be another march by angry teachers, and in the meantime the farmers have come out of the woodwork as well and contemplate a demonstration, too.

It's early days yet, but when the books will be written on our era, this day - October 22nd, 2008 - might be recognised as the first day of the second Irish Revolution.