Wonga in the wronga

I have posted before about ageism, and how it's apparently hilarious to make jokes about zimmer frames/deafness/ blindness/confusion/ short-sightedness etc etc because the old dears can't fight back, can they? Well, this old dear has had enough, and the Wonga advertisements are just about the last straw. Some can be found here.

They aren't funny or clever, but deeply patronising, and just plain horrible. No-one would be allowed to parody the handicapped or an ethnic minority (for example) in this way, so why they elderly? Being old is bad enough without this kind of thing.

Come to think of it, I can't even remember what exactly Wonga is; I'm usually so occupied in ranting that I never get to see the denouement of these adverts. Do tell me what I've missed...?

Stats and being wary of elderly people

While horses playing ping pong are moving steadily up the charts (as are Knickers and Naturists. Ts ts) "Beware of Elderly People" is close on the heels of "In Love with a Horse" (my all-time winner).

WHY, for goodness sake? What have elderly people done to deserve this kind of treatment? My original post was about that awful sign (you know the one; two bent figures hobbling along together), but presumably someone, somewhere, is trying to Google ways of avoiding the elderly.

And we do that anyway, don't we? We herd them together into institutions, we diminish and neglect them, we marginalise them, we ignore the huge contributions they have made. We hate the idea of them having sex (which they do; I have a nearly-80-year-old friend who has the kind of sex most people can only dream about). Avoiding elderly people is what we're good at. We don't need to search Google for advice.

I've just found an entire website devoted to (mostly offensive) "jokes" about the elderly. But to end on a lighter note (and because, being on the verge of elderly myself, I need to show that we elderly people can laugh at ourselves), I did rather like this one:


Two elderly couples were enjoying friendly conversation when one of the men asked the other, "Fred, how was the memory clinic you went to last month?"

"Outstanding," Fred replied. "They taught us all the latest psychological techiniques-visulization, association-it made a huge difference for me."

"That's great! What was the name of the clinic?"

Fred went blank He thought and thought, but couldn't remember.

Then a smile broke across his face and he asked, "What do you call that flower with the long stem and thorns?"

"You mean a rose?"

"Yes, that's it!" He turned to his wife. . ."Rose, what was the name of that clinic?"


(The image above was helpfully labeled "Upbeat smiling elderly couple". So that's all right then.)