As Kermit so engagingly convinced us, it’s not easy being green, but it’s not all that easy being grey, either.

And I’m not talking about hair.

I use “grey” as shorthand for the demographic sector variously described as seniors, oldies, wrinklies, frugals and, famously according to one who coined the name for what many now see as his own status, silly old farts.

Whatever our age, making ends meet is a problem we all have to deal with unless we’re in the market for a Maserati, a penthouse or a trophy wife.

Once into the grey years, though, the options for bringing those elusive ends together become limited or even non-existent.

The obvious example is the glaring inadequacy of the aged and other pensions in contrast with the government’s tax take from the resources boom bonanza.

This issue is not going to go away and I sense that Kevin Rudd will find a face-saving excuse for a backflip.

An urgently requested preliminary report on the pensions review due in February, perhaps?

But pensioners aren’t the only greys tightening their belts.

There’s the little matter of lower interest rates.

Whether it’s because most journalists have mortgages, I don’t know, but invariably when interest rates go up there’s much media doomsaying and when they go down, many joyful headings.

But there’s another side to the coin, often ignored by the popular press.

Many greys depend on their savings, often accumulated through that old-fashioned practice called thrift, to keep them from being dependent, or partly so, on the pension.

For them, as they peruse their quarterly statements sprinkled with minus signs, there’s no cause for jubilation about an interest rate cut, rather the reverse.

It’s worth remembering, then, that for every one who gives up the struggle that saves the taxpayer from supporting them, there’s one more Centrelink client.
Bring back the pen and paper
I have another and less mercenary concern for the greys.

It’s about the way we are being relentlessly marginalised, and in the words of Tewantin’s KL Fielden in a featured letter to the editor (Daily, September 11) “treated by governments and corporations alike as no longer of value".

This has come about not so much through the onrush of information technology as by the way its use is being pushed on to seniors, many of whom feel overwhelmed by it.

As KL Fielden wrote, “we are being forced to accept and use on-line techniques and paraphernalia instead of old-fashioned paper".

For lots of seniors, access to a computer and the use of on-line facilities is not an option, whether for financial reasons or because the learning curve is a bit too steep at their time of life, or because they have other priorities and just don’t want to be old dogs learning new tricks.

At the other end of the scale, certainly, many greys have enthusiastically launched themselves into cyberspace.

I know myself how one’s horizons can be broadened by the internet and tedious tasks made simple by the new technology, but it would be nice if we were given a bit more consideration and choice, and not bullied on to the IT spaceship.

rich.29@bigpond.net.au