The Age Page

Blade running...

 

Seventy-one year old retired youth worker Geoff Dornan  from Southport, Merseyside was dismayed after magistrates found him guilty of endangering pedestrians by rollerblading in the town centre and imposed a fine of £300 and court costs of almost £1,800 having seen CCTV footage which showed Mr Dornan rollerblading in the shopping area.

Mr Dornan, told the court he was always very careful to avoid pedestrians and only rollerbladed to keep up his general level of fitness, adding "the reason I do the skating is primarily for my health benefit. I think people suspect that I am more dangerous than I am."

Although the footage showed Mr Dornan rollerblading along the pavement, dodging and weaving between pedestrians, none of the people walking appeared to take any evasive action to avoid his path, nor break their step.

Mr Dornan said that since the police had confiscated his rollerblades, he was shocked to discover how swiftly his health had deteriorated.

He said, "At the time of my arrest, I was as fit as a flea, and entirely free of pain. Yet by Christmas, I found myself confined to bed with severe back trouble. I'm bewildered at the guilty verdict and but I'm going to look for another town centre where I skate without the risk of being arrested. I refuse to believe rollerblading is dangerous and I won't let them bully me into giving up my skates."

Apart from the amusement value of the story, Mr Dornan does have point, although my own children found that even in the 350-acre Hyde Park, the Fun-Spoiling Authorities were very quick to ban rollerblading from all but two areas on the grounds of safety.

I'm no expert, but think that perhaps Mr Dornan's biggest problem may be his skating style - I notice from the videos that he does lean forward rather. Perhaps if he were to come down south, he could get lessons that are now on offer in the Park, and thus be able to practice skating in a more upright position... 

Meanwhile, I wish him well and hope he'll continue to stay fit, mobile and speedy for as long as possible.

you can see the video here

Bridging the Generation Gap

One of the reasons that the Many Happy Returns 1940s reminiscence cards work so well, it seems, is because they bridge the generation gap. 

There are acres of books and articles about the major generational groups in the western world, eg. Traditionalists – the ‘Radio Generation’, born 1920 - 1943; ‘Baby-boomers’ born 1943 - 1960; Generation X born 1960 – 1980; and the ‘Y’ (Why) Generation, Millennials, ‘Nexters’ or as they have recently been described by the magazine AdBusters, Generation 'O' (Obama) born 1980 - 2000.

The challenges – and potentialities – of working in environments where different groups may work alongside one another with all their attendant prejudices which come from their early life and peer group experiences, are becoming increasingly recognised and documented. 

Many, if not most businesses will have at least three generations working alongside each other, and the ability to communicate effectively is critical to business success. By looking at the value systems and emotional 'need states' of the different groups and their outlooks, companies can create a more productive working and learning environment. 

Of course, although there are many dimensions of diversity such as race, sex, sexual orientation, geographic location and so on which shape who we are and how we behave, it is possible to generalise about the values of different generations. How they communicate and inter-relate is also changed by and predicated on their formative experiences.

Thus, at one end of the spectrum, growing up at the end of WW1 and losing their youth to WW2, these harsh experiences mean that Traditionalists value hard work, trust, formality, authority and institutional leadership, social order and their possessions. Sometimes referred to also as the ‘Silent generation’ they cherish honesty, privacy and discretion.

At the other end, the ‘Y’ generation growing up with the hi-tech revolution and a time of relative financial comfort, they value their autonomy, positive attitudes, ethnic diversity, their technology and their money – and spending it; and seek action, constant feedback, and want fun in their life. The growth of online social networks has been largely driven by this group.

And in the middle sits the ‘Sandwich Generation’ – the baby-boomers…  about whom more has been written than could be deemed either feasible or appropriate, (and often by this group itself of course) but this is the generation that demands to be heard – and not only because it is a huge, powerful, if ramshackle cohort. The boomers have had the ‘good life’, they have been very influential in the development of both media and ‘youth’ culture. And they hate rules and regulations, and like to fight for a cause. The social revolution of the 1960s is central to this group.

So what does this prove, if anything? Well, as the late, great, Douglas Adams said in the Hitch-hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy,

 “Anything that is in the world when you were born is normal and ordinary and is just a natural way the world works; anything that is invented between the time when you are 15 to 35 is new, revolutionary and exciting and you can possibly get a career in it and anything invented after you are 35 is against the natural order of things”. 

The Many Happy Returns cards have been designed with people's differing generational, attitudinal behaviours in mind, as well as the National Curriculum, for the next generation growing up – however they will be described by social psychologists.

The cards seem to help younger generations with their differing value systems and attitudes to relate to people over the age of 75 years. They help the younger generations to empathise with them by demonstrating what was so very different then – and perhaps more surprisingly, what is oddly similar. And they allow people to exchange stories and histories allowing them to share in each other's lives in a unique and valuable way. 

Image: Thanks to Flickr.com ImageMakers57

 

Want to avoid dementia? Be outgoing, happy, and chilled...

Personality and lifestyle in relation to the incidence of dementia
is discussed in the January 09 edition of Dementia News (Alzheimer's Australia).

It seems that those who are outgoing, who have active and integrated social lives and are not stressed seem to be less at risk of developing dementia than those who are highly anxious and socially isolated.

Whether or not aspects of personality really do put individuals at risk of developing dementia is one of the questions being addressed in a long-term population study by a Swedish research team led by Dr Wang from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm.

The researchers wanted to determine whether there was an association between personality type, lifestyle, and the risk of developing dementia. They studied data from a group of 506 older people who had been taking part in the project for a number of years. Each had been categorised into personality type through the Eysenck Personality Inventory*.
 

Dr Wang and his team found that some personality types appeared to be at lower risk of developing dementia than others...

They found that people who were either highly neurotic or introverted were at low risk, as were those who were inactive or socially isolated but who had low levels of neuroticism. Highly extraverted people with low levels of neuroticism were at less risk than people who were both highly extraverted and highly neurotic.

Apparently, both introverted people with low levels of neuroticism, and introverted people with high levels of neuroticism were at greater risk than highly neurotic and highly extraverted people.

Of all personality types, those people who were highly extraverted with low levels of neuroticism had the lowest risk of developing dementia.

As dementia is a complex set of conditions influenced by many factors, the findings in Dr Wang’s study will need further testing in larger study populations to try to discover how personality traits act at the physiological level to increase or decrease an individual’s risk of developing dementia. And as they say, it would also be good to explore this question using methods other than the Eysenck Personality Inventory to determine personality traits.

 * The Eysenck model characterises extroversion as:

“a tendency to be socially outgoing and to express feelings and impulses freely”. Introversion is characterised by a preference for solitary activities and a tendency to inhibit impulses. Neuroticism is characterised by traits such as nervousness, moodiness, and oversensitivity to negative stimuli.

Different combinations of extraversion/introversion/neuroticism or lack of neuroticism make up different personality types. For example, an introverted–neurotic personality is characterised by moodiness, anxiety, rigidity, sobriety, pessimism, reserve, quietness, and antisocial feelings; while an extroverted–neurotic personality is characterised by touchiness, restlessness, aggression, excitability, changeability, impulsiveness, optimism, and activeness.

Source: Alzheimer's Australia