Mike Priestley: Who's Counting?

We know that, don't we? The Who's Counting? crowd are well enough aware that it's the over-50s - and more often the over-60s in full retirement - who keep communities ticking over.

They're far away from the stereotype of grannies and granddads pottering about the garden or sitting, nodding, by the fire.

Many of them have boundless energy and enthusiasm and are keen to be involved. They sit on committees. They organise events. They have experience and wisdom. They're fit and physically active and deeply resent being written off - as they have been for too long by a society which has failed to show age the respect it deserves.

But all that's changing, it seems. Faced with a growth in the number of older people and the cost to younger generations of supporting them, politicians are now looking at ways in which seniors can be encouraged to continue to play a useful social role after retiring from the world of orthodox work.

Actually, it's not the seniors who need the encouragement. It's the ageist attitudes of society in general which need to be changed.

David Blunkett, the Education and Employment Secretary, has come up with an admirable idea to help to achieve this: summer schools, where people who are retiring can learn new skills and acquire new interests. He also proposes as an alternative that people nearing retirement should be allowed a weekly "day release" from their job with the same aim.

His view is that the initiative would be good "because it does keep people active and healthy, and draws on their talent. If they can put something back into the system then everyone gains".

He is keen to see more retired men and women working in the classroom as volunteers helping children to read - which is an excellent idea because it will bring the young, who often these days don't have grandparents living close by, into regular close contact with the old and hopefully teach them to like and respect them.

And he would like to link families to older people who, having raised their own families, are in a position to offer advice to those who are going through that most difficult of jobs for the first time.

David Blunkett says: "We are an ageing society and we've got to stop that ageing process becoming a disadvantage and turn it into an opportunity so that people are not written off as pensioners."

And so say all of us!

I Don't Believe It!

Well, it hasn't been readers' grumbles I've been hearing this week. It's been the grumbles of Mike Priestley and his colleagues at the T&A. They've been kept busy fielding lots of telephone calls from readers advising of the whereabouts of typewriter ribbons that Sid Brown was asking about in last week's column.

They're talking about forcing me to go into the office for the next couple of days if I ever make a request like that again, to cope with the response myself. I don't know what Mrs Mildew would think of that. She's edgy enough when I go in there for the one afternoon it takes me to write this column. I don't know what she fancies I might get up to once I'm out of her sight!

However, back to typewriter ribbons. There are more of them around, it seems, than are dreamed of in Sid's philosophy! They're not obsolete after all if you know where to go in search of them.

Personally, I think it's wonderful that enough of you cared enough to take the trouble to ring with information and offers of ribbons. And one kind lady was even so good as to drop a couple of them off at the T&A office. I've kept one for myself, in case the ribbon on my seldom-used portable has dried up, and am sending the other to Sid.

Thank you all very much. It's helped to restore my mildewed view of human nature. And it's helped Sid Brown to keep his 1935 Olympia portable in business.

Actually, it isn't only Sid - and myself, of course - who have benefited from this flow of information. The people at the T&A were able to put a couple of other readers in Sid's situation in touch with suppliers as a result of the telephone calls.

Here are some of the suggestions received and passed on to me by Priestley & Co: the Stationery Centre, Market Street, Shipley; Osbaldiston's, Fox Corner, Shipley; Probyns opposite the bottom of Ivegate, Bradford; Lidgett Hill stationers, Pudsey; Sovereign 2000, Robin Mills, Greengates (Bradford 620627); Regency Rolls, Leeds (0113 250 3313); a shop "up Whetley Lane on the right-hand side by the traffic lights"; Richard & Sykes or Alan Baxter (in same premises) in Heckmondwike, "in main Dewsbury road, opposite Wormald Street"; mail-order from Viking Direct in Leicester (Freephone 0800 424444).

There was also a call from Mrs Riley in Boroughbridge to tell Sid that if ever he's in that part of the world, typewriter ribbons are sold at Harrison's in Ripon Market Square.

This T&A gets all over the place, doesn't it?

Anyway, thanks again to all of you for sorting out Sid. Back to the usual grumbles next week.

If you have a gripe about anything, drop a line to me, Hector Mildew, c/o Newsroom, T&A, Hall Ings, Bradford BD1 1JR, email me or leave any messages for me with Mike Priestley on (44) 0 1274 729511.

Yours Expectantly,

Hector Mildew

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