Prejudice runs deep back in Blighty against the over 50s. I have just read a story about a special £2m three year partnership between the Prince of Wales’ charity, Prime (The Prince's Initiative for Mature Enterprise), and the Bank of America Charitable Foundation to help older people get back into business.

Research apparently reveals that 53% of the over 50s feel they are at a disadvantage to younger people in the job market and 81% say it is the attitude of employers to age that puts them at this disadvantage.

Prime reports there are 3.6 million people unemployed in the UK between the ages of 50-65, with the over 50s suffering the highest long-term unemployment rate. Businesses launched by people over 50 now account for 15% of all start-ups in England and Wales and whereas companies started by older people have a 70% chance of surviving the first five years, companies started by younger people have just a 28% survival rate. 

And then I come across an article in today’s Washington Post which illustrates how very different attitudes to work by the over 50s is here. It appears that  

it doesn't hurt to be well past the standard retirement age when you're traversing the halls of the Capitol.

In Washington there are plenty of oldies wielding immense power. Take Rep. Henry Waxman (aged 69) who this month unseated 82-year-old Energy and Commerce Chairman John Dingell. Or how about 88 year old Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens who has said recently he does not have any plans to step down soon.

The average age of a senator in the 110th Congress is 61.8, according to the Senate Historian's Office, and this number will only drop to 61.3 next year with the election of nine new senators. (It's worth noting that the average age of a senator in the very first Congress was 47, but Americans' life expectancy was much shorter then.) One key curve-wrecker is Robert Byrd, the oldest current senator at 91, but even he isn't the most venerable member in Senate history: The late Strom Thurmond served until the age of 100.

You have to take your hat off to Americans for superb role models for the over 50s. The UK has much to learn from this side of the Pond.

Oh I know what you're thinking! I'm about to launch into a politically correct tirade about how terrible this country is on all sorts of fronts. Wrong! However, I have been the victim of most unwelcome discrimination.

Off to Trader Joe's today for the first time. As in so very many food stores here (most unlike the UK) there were a number of tasting tables.  So I approached the wines on offer.  A young lady marched up and asked to sample one of the reds on display. The gentleman behind the array of bottles asked to see her ID before serving her.  As I have pointed out already, the rules on drinking here are severe - no alcohol is served to the under 21s.  She duly complied with some photo ID. Next up was a young man who looked to me to be in his mid to late 20s. The same happened to him before a drop was allowed to pass his lips. 

It was clearly my turn.  Up I sauntered and asked if I could taste the rather nice looking Merlot.  Not a murmur.  A plastic cup was proffered and wine immediately poured for me.  It was, as it happens, excellent!  But the indignity of not being questioned about my eligibility.  How I longed to be asked for my ID - as I reported here back in October when my husband was asked in Safeway to prove he was over 21!

It's been a long time coming. I have reported recently on the press's silence surrounding President-elect Obama's alleged dual, if not triple, citizenship and his failure to produce a proper full length birth certificate. Behind all the euphoria at his recent triumph, there are rumbles of major discontent. 

At long last a notable media outlet has woken up and grasped this nettle. NBC today is running a report on its online service about all of this.

A former opponent of Barack Obama's has come back to haunt him over questions regarding Obama's citizenship. According to a press release from the American Independent Party, former presidential candidate Alan Keyes and other members of the party have filed suit in California Superior Court in Sacramento to stop the state from giving its electoral votes to President-elect Barack Obama until documentary evidence is provided to prove Obama is indeed a natural born citizen of the United States.

 

Some conservatives have questioned Obama's citizenship in recent months. Obama says he was born in Hawaii in 1961. Keyes also ran against Obama as a Republican for the U.S. Senate seat in Illinois in 2004. Obama won that election to serve his first and only term in the U.S. Senate.

Take a look at the readers' comments running below the story. There is absolute outrage on display. Passions are running high on both sides of the argument - both for and against Mr Obama. We could be living in dangerous times! 

Here in the USA I live around the corner to a major university. Students live all around my home. I see them walking to lectures and around town morning, noon and night. I have yet to be offended by anything any of them does.  This is well-behaved American student life.  They may drink but they certainly don't do so in public and I have never once seen even one of them drunk or disorderly.

Then I get an alarming report and accompanying photograph from my student daughter back home in Blighty living in university accommodation sharing a flat on campus with three others.  She does not drink.  The others do - in huge quantities.  They get so drunk that they rampage down the corridors at all hours, hammering on doors and a group even enjoyed a raw egg fight - flinging eggs and flour at each others' doors which duly congealed overnight leaving the cleaners an almighty mess to clear up.  This photo, of empty bottles piled into the waste bin in the shared kitchen, is the product of just three days' worth of drinking by my daughter's three flatmates. 

And she tells me that this is by no means the worst of it. One of her friends reports that, in a similar flatshare on campus, one boy is taking so many hard drugs that he has run out of money. The result is that he has been stealing other people's food from the shared fridge.

A snapshot of life in a British university - debauchery, heavily subsidised by the tax payer! 

So - the election is over.  It's a New Dawn.  I am sent this letter (or is it a spoof?) - a symptom of grim reality setting in.  Not everyone is as euphoric about the winner as the newspapers, both here and across the world, would have us believe.

Change is certainly on the way! 

Fellow Business Executives:

As the CFO of this business that employees 140 people, I have resigned myself to the fact that Barrack Obama will be our next President, and that our taxes and government fees will increase in a BIG way.

To compensate for these increases, I figure that the Clients will have to see an increase in our fees to them of about 8%, but since we cannot increase our fees right now due to the dismal state of our economy, we will have to lay off six of our employees instead. This has really been eating at me for awhile, as we believe we are family here and I didn't know how to choose who will have to go.

So, this is what I did. I strolled thru our parking lot and found 8 Obama bumper stickers on our employees' cars and have decided these folks will be the first to be laid off. I can't think of a more fair way to approach this problem. These folks wanted change; I gave it to them. If you have a better idea, let me know.

Sincerely