BEING a Yorkshireman, Sir Michael Parkinson doesn’t mince his words and rarely have I see a report as bluntly condemnatory as that which came out recently from the Government’s dignity ambassador.

Older people are of a generation that can still laugh at its shortcomings. There are even best-selling books crammed with jokes about incontinence, memory loss and all the other trials and tribulations of old age. Rest assured that if similar levity was lobbed in the direction of younger people, notably those of ethnic minorities, all hell would be let loose. It’s just as well older folk retain a sense of self deprecating humour.

“If we treated young people the way we treat older people there would be an outcry,” said Parkinson. “Some care homes are little more than waiting rooms for death.”

Inexcusable and downright unacceptable, hopeless and depressing were the sort of words he used in presenting his findings after investigating care homes and hospitals across Britain and receiving letters from angry relatives who felt badly let down and failed by a system they trusted.

It does indeed defy logic to spend vast sums of money to keep people in hospitals and homes while forgetting their basic human needs. The human rights lobby seems to pack up and go home when it gets to the doors of some of these appalling establishments which are redolent of Dickens’s day rather than what one would expect of modern standards of care in a civilised society.

When will politicians learn that older people are the voters? David Cameron is busy fixing the family while Gordon Brown struggles to even fix a convincing smile on his face. They would do well to turn their attention to older people’s needs and values.

Young people these days have no interest in politics or faith in politicians. The reality is they don’t care about our hard-won democracy because they have never lived at a time when they were threatened with losing it. Older people may have equally little faith in politicians who have been more interested in lining their own pockets than serving the nation, but they turn out and vote because it’s their right and it’s a right they value. There’s votes in them thar old folk if the leading political parties did but open their eyes and realise it.

Sir Michael Parkinson’s own mother had to put up with typical stereotyping in her latter years. A proud woman, she resented being called dear and ducky. Yes, older people can be frustrating and difficult at times. But there is no excusing some of the shabby treatment, unthinking insults and mind-numbing boredom that is inflicted on many of them.

Complaints often sink without trace in what Parky calls a “bureaucratic quagmire” and a tendency to cover up shortcomings in the system.

But maybe older people are fighting back. Author P. D. James, all 89 years of her, gave BBC director general Mark Thompson a dreadful verbal thrashing recently.

Even the Beeb has now acknowledged that the public would prefer to hear its bad news from mature newsreaders and has hired Julia Somerville, Fiona Armstrong and Zeinab Badawi in its drive to recruit women presenters over 50.

It’s not just in news where the corporation has faced accusations of ageism. Thousands complained when 66-year-old Arlene Phillips was axed from Strictly Come Dancing.

Just as there are votes in older people, so the TV companies need to understand there are also viewers of a certain vintage who think that age should be no bar to talent and ability. Actor Brian Blessed will be off to climb Everest next year, at the age of 74. And you could hardly accuse Sir David Attenborough of being past it at 83 as he continues making fascinating nature films.

Until as a nation we start valuing the knowledge and commonsense of older people then they will continue to be treated with the sort of contempt that so shocked Michael Parkinson during his investigation.

We rightly rise up in horror at stories of the abuse of children. Yet vulnerable older people suffer in silence every day and there are no headlines. Surely, whether it’s abuse of young or old, it should be regarded as of equal importance and taken a lot more seriously than has plainly been the case up to now.

Britain’s treatment of its elderly is a blot on the social landscape of the country. That we still have “waiting rooms for death” should shame us all.

LOTS OF HOT AIR

THERE are those who would ring our green and pleasant Lakeland fells and fill the Solway with wind turbines. They’ve got an answer for everything. One minute we are going to be frying on the beaches of the Costa del Silloth in January. Next all this snow and ice is caused by climate change. So which one are they pinning the weight of their argument on?

Just a thought. During the recent cold weather, exactly how much power was generated by wind farms? One tenth of one per cent., that’s how much. Cold, sub-zero days on end. There wasn’t any wind. It was down to coal and gas fired powers stations to come up with 80 per cent. of our electricity.

Sometimes I think that all this preaching about the necessity for wind farms is the only hot air we are likely to get at this time of year, climate change or not.

IT’S JUST NOT COOL

POLITICIANS might try lots of ways of appealing to younger voters. But there is one clear message — don’t try to look cool.

Tony Blair invited pop stars and sports celebrities to Number 10 during his Premiership. But Cool Britannia turned into Fool Britannia when the likes of the Gallagher brothers ridiculed the whole charade and England’s Ashes-winning cricketers rolled up bleary eyed from a night on the booze.

Schools Secretary Ed Balls recently brought in rap artist Dappy of the group N-Dubz — no, I haven’t any more idea what it means than the hapless minister — to back an anti-cyber bullying campaign. However, Dappy sent texts to a woman who mocked him during a radio show saying “Your gonna die” and various expletives.

A classic example of bullying, but not in the way an embarrassed Mr. Balls intended. The result? The axe for Dappy and a minister left looking rather foolish. Once again pop and politics was shown to be an unhappily volatile mixture.

JULIA WHO?

PRINCE Charles may enjoy his vacations in the Lake District, but he’s obviously no Wainwright Walker judging by his perplexed reaction when he met the program’s presenter, Julia Bradbury, in Keswick recently.

Julia, writing in the BBC’s Countryfile magazine about her visit to Cumbria after the floods, said the Prince had no idea who she was and wondered if she was something to do with the tourists.

The pair switched on the town’s festive lights together, by which time hopefully Charles was better appraised of Julia’s celebrity status. He admitted he wasn’t a big telly watcher. Clearly Wainwright and Crimewatch aren’t on the viewing agenda when Charles and Camilla spend a quiet night in.