Ageism

The old are being blamed for leaving the EU, based mainly on pre-election data.

Now, as you might well know, statistics are really easy to present in a misleading fashion. For example:

5% of people do not own a television
vs
95% of people STARE AT THE ELECTRONIC BOX IN THE CORNER NIGHT AFTER NIGHT
The statistic is the same. The context makes the difference.

So...this chart:

Firstly, the poll asked less than 1700 people. The electorate was 46.5 million people. The actual number of voters was around 33 million. 1700 people is literally nothing. 0.003% to be precise. I don't know enough about statistics to know what size of survey you would need to take for it to be statistically relevant, but I am guessing it is significantly more than 0.003%.

Second, you have to be a member of yougov to take part in their polls. Are you a member of yougov? Anyone you know? I was, but they pay fuck all for participation, so I left.

Thirdly, we are not told how many people in each age group were polled. The cohorts are unfairly sized: (6 year cohort, a 24 year cohort, a 14 year cohort and then a 25+ year cohort). They've basically taken nearly 20% of the population, asked 0.003% of them what they think of something and decided THEY ALL THINK THE SAME.

As for how many years they have had to live with decision! CHRIST! Why not just have a mass cull right now, since they'll all be dead soon anyway!

And most importantly, it was a secret ballot. We don't know WHO voted what. For all you know, I actually voted leave and am getting strange pleasure from writing pro-remain blogs (I'm not). What we do know is that over half of those who showed up to vote voted to leave, and not all of those were racist old women.

Ah, the many tales of racist old women on twitter, exhorting the line for the polls to vote to leave to 'send the buggers back'. My husband actually ended up talking to just such a racist old lady at the polls, so they definitely exist. But remember something important before casting off the entirety of the old as useless...

If anyone should have a right to vote, it's people who (just) lived through World War 2 and rationing. Nobody has earned their civic rights quite like them. The same people who voted for the only socialist government we've ever had following World War 2 also voted for us to remain in what would become the EU in 1975, by an overwhelming 67% to 33%.

I cannot abide this idea of baby boomers stealing all the wealth and leaving the young crumbs and arseholes. How many old people die alone in a freezing house every year because they can't afford to put the heating on? The reason the young are fucked is primarily because of the 2009 recession, according to the Institute for Fiscal Studies. But that's too difficult to comprehend. Far easier to blame the old, because they're easy targets. They're vulnerable. They're not contributing. They're death waiting to happen.

Youths, get a grip on yourselves. One day, you too will be old and your children will pay not one bit of attention to anything you say and call you a dinosaur. One day, you will talk about this referendum and they will yawn and say how everything's different now, LIKE YOU DON'T KNOW BECAUSE YOU ACTUALLY WATCHED IT HAPPEN. One day, you will exercise your right to vote, and people will blame you for the result because you're a shapeless grey mass of demographic with no perceived individuality. And you will be pissed off about it.