“Get outta here”, as my American colleague Joe Bono might say. It seems from today’s press that the latest thing is “Grey Pride”. “Esther Rantzen seeks a ‘Grey Minister’ for the elderly” screams a Telegraph headline. (Funny — I thought most of them were grey?).
They just don’t get it, do they? We live (or thought we did) in a democracy. We have the rule of law, free markets, property rights, enforceable contracts. Above all as free men and women we have equality under the law. Never mind if we’re male or female; old or young; black or white (or somewhere in between); indigenous or (legal) immigrant; gay or straight — we all have the same rights.
We already have Czars and champions for all sorts of minorities, and much good they do us (and much money the cost us). We have the formidable Joan Bakewell, the noble Baroness, appointed in 2008 as “a voice for older people”. If we are not careful we shall have citizens vying with one another to be recognised as members of minorities, under the mistaken impression (at least, I hope it is mistaken) that minorities always receive privileges denied to the lumpen masses.
There are already reports that the British white working class feels a sense of deprivation and exclusion, in the belief (rightly of wrongly) that minorities always come head of the queue.
Speaking as an older person myself (though not quite as old as Joan Bakewell or Esther Rantzen), let me say that I don’t want to be treated as a privileged minority (well, only my older person’s Rail Card). Nor do I want a “Grey Minister” to represent my supposed special interests in parliament. I am happy to rely on the MPs we have already elected — old and young. Mind you I might prefer it if some of the Conservative Ministers in the current administration were a little more — well — conservative.
And guess who she is hoping the grey minister will be?
What is it that Esther Rantzen doesn’t like about Joan Bakewell? That could shape up into an inter-ministerial dispute, so loved by the BBC. It could run and run.
You’re so right (again) Mr H. What next a Minister for Mediatrics? – to cover all those trials and terrors experienced by the middle-aged.
This was a prescient piece. Today we read that Ministers are indeed proposing a “Tsar” for the elderly, to go with the Children’s Commissioners. This process won’t end until every minority — indeed every citizen — has a personal Tsar at their elbow to protect their interests.