by Les May
ACCORDING to a news report on Al Jazeera there's a storm
brewing on Twitter about how we 'old people' have denied the young a future by
voting to leave the EU.
Now the significance of this is that I learned about it on a
Freeview news channel and its on Twitter.
You see I don't 'do' Twitter and Facebook and I won't have a
smartphone. If you scan to the comments
below the original Twitter postings given below you'll see one of the reasons
why. Alternatively just look at Karen
Danczuk's Twitter postings from 2014 and 2015 for some even more compelling
reasons why.
Not being part of Twitter and Facebook, and not owning a
smartphone is I think rather more common amongst my generation than amongst the
generation of young people who are doing the complaining. So if anyone wanted to influence our views
about the EU referendum perhaps it wasn't such a good idea to base the
'official' Remain campaign around Twitter and Facebook.
I voted to remain in the EU as did my wife and some of my
friends; median age 70+. Our house had six 'Remain' posters in the
windows, but the struggle I had to get these may give a clue to why the Remain
message failed to reach so many older people.
My first port of call to get posters was the Britain
Stronger in Europe website. This offered
me the chance to 'sign up' to Facebook and Twitter. No thanks!
What about some posters?
Eventually I found a way to contact them but when I tried my computer
alerted me to the fact that nine other website wanted to run scripts on my
machine. No thank!
My wife is a Labour party member so we have a large plastic
board 'Vote Labour' which sees the light of day at every election. So my next attempt involved the Labour party
website. Yes we do posters, but we don't
have any.
A little peeved by this time I sent an e-mail to office of
my constituency MP Liz McInnes. Not hearing anything the day after I phoned and
a helpful young man expressed his surprise that the Rochdale councillor who was
supposed to be getting the posters out to people had not contacted me after
being given my details. He still hasn't.
I eventually did get both Labour and 'Remain' posters, but
only because of the young man in Liz McInnes office who 'imported' them for me.
There's a lesson here for Jeremy Corbyn. It's fine keeping Labour members up to date
with what is going on with weekly e-mails and using Twitter and Facebook to put
across Labour's message. But you've got
to find a mechanism for getting that message to those of us who 'don't do'
Twitter and Facebook.
My generation was the first to benefit from the Welfare
State which Attlee's 1945 Labour
government put in place and I am eternally grateful for the chances it gave me
in life. But I think some of my fellow
'oldies' may need an occasional reminder.
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