TALK TO THE HAND.

There are many people of my vintage who have made valuable contributions to Irish Society over the decades and the zenith of our educational achievements was the Primary  Certificate which was a State exam which one sat after 9 years at Primary School at about 13 years of age.
Passing it meant that one had mastered the three R s i.e reading writing and arithmetic.
With these at your disposal you were fit to take on the world and many millions did and continue to do.
Of course many fell between the cracks and are illiterate to this day.Many of my vintage could  not afford to get second level education as it had to be paid for and that was as far as we went.
Relatively few got Second level education and fewer still went to Third level.
These last two decades have seen huge advances in Technology and the State has paid to upgrade the computer skills of millions of youngsters the vast majority of whom now go to third level at least,largely on the taxes contributed by my generation.
Generally there are millions of my age and older who might as well be looking into a bush as confronting a computer screen and a  keyboard,but who can perfectly execute the three Rs in totally legible hand writing.
Instead of showing some element of appreciation towards us  for our contributions to society over the years this State and the major Financial Institutions do all in their power to victimise ,bully .penalise and intimidate those of us who can read ,write and do arithmetic but have not yet nor will master the complexities of computerisation.
Many Government Office sand Financial Institutions will not accept the written word as a valid form of communication but insist on computer text to deal with customers and even if they do reluctantly accept perfectly written text as valid severely penalise and disadvantage the writers in monetary terms.
This is callousness.ageism and discrimination of the most insidious type.
Imagine the uproar that would ensue were a defined minority,say Japanese people ,who were known to be computer deficient ,penalised in its dealing with the State and the Financial Institutions Yet this happens daily to millions of people of my vintage and older in the Ireland of today at all levels of society.
I can best illustrate the point being made by the  abominable treatment I witnessed of a person I know to be a pensioners and severely disabled  in a Pillar Bank recently.
This person subsequently nformed me that he was banking with this Bank for 40 years or more.
I was behind this man in the queue.
The Bank has a number of machines to which we were directed and told to use instead of the two tellers who were behind the counter and totally unoccupied.
The man had two things to do,he had a cheque to lodge and he wanted a cash withdrawal.Of the 6 machines there only one allowed both transactions.I strongly suspect that the Government's strong aversion to cash and its use and its desire to know what you had for breakfast is the reason for the glaringly obvious dearth of cash dispensers generally .
Not only did this man look his age but he had severe discomfort standing in the queue on a clearly lame leg.
We had the misfortune to be behind a woman who had a handbag as big as a Santa's sack on the start of his rounds and who proceeded to lodge individual cheque after individual cheque in the machine for several long minutes with no end in sight.
The life long customer ,by now visibly wilting, called a female clerk who was one of the posse of people herding us to the machines and asked would it be all right to do his business with the idle clerks behind the counter to which she replied that the female ahead of him would be finished shortly and to wait on.
Now how she could know this was beyond him  and so it proved as five minutes later yer wan was still parked in front of the machine talking to it.
On the point of collapse the old guy just turned on his heel and left.
This is what Baldy Noonan and Enda the Cromwellian ,their ilk and their devotees think of our generation.
 Bad cess to them one and all.