In the UK, people over roughly the age of 45 are widely demonised. In a recent court case, in which Wiltshire traders were jailed, the judge expressed the view that older adults are “vulnerable”, which is often a euphemism for “not right in the head” or “gullible” or worse.

Judge Jason Taylor KC, please refrain from automatically considering all older adults easy targets for abuse and fraud from now on. That’s despicable and it actually encourages targeting of older adults.

Targeting of older adults – mocking and abusing them – has become far too accepted in the UK.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-wiltshire-65251456

On this page, there is a video in which the rogue roofers say “we’re doing some bodging”. Without explaining what bodging is, the nature of the video will largely remain hidden from anyone who does not know what “bodging” is.

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What these rogue traders were doing was targeting people who they believed were affluent. These people were living in bungalows, in a position to fork out a lot of money, interested in having a good roof over their heads and who were usually at home during the day.

There is no point in knocking on the doors of people who are not at home but at work.

Affluence often comes with age, too.

A great deal of the British prejudice against older people actually has to do with the massive inequality and widespread deep poverty here, with the resulting health issues. This plays a bigger role later in life. It’s not age that makes a lot of older adults in Britain slow and fragile. It’s poverty (lack of good nutrition) and also lack of good healthcare.

This, below, is a more balanced way of putting it, “vulnerable” likely referring to actual early dementia and mobility problems. (Why not simply say it?) Having for example mobility problems makes it hard to stand up to aggression; if you do, you risk getting beaten up. This is why I would like to see organizations like AgeConcern offer self-defense classes.