Letter: Facing the age of uncertainty

Letter: Facing the age of uncertainty Sir: So Polly Toynbee is out of sympathy with the aims of the Employers' Forum on Age. Ageism is not, in her view, as pernicious as discrimination on the grounds of sex, race and disability. After all, persuading employers to retain older workers must affect the number of jobs for the young.

Indeed it must. As must employing women reduce the number of jobs for men, blacks the number of jobs for whites, and the disabled the number of jobs for non-disabled persons. All forms of discrimination are iniquitous and the only criterion for employing staff should be their ability to do the job.

I wonder how old Polly Toynbee is. If she really believes what she writes, then does she not feel it is perhaps time for her to retire to make way for a younger person? She has had her turn at being young, as she puts it, and "retirement is respectable and life is full of enjoyable and useful things to do outside the world of paid work."

Alan Stewart

Luton, Bedfordshire