Baby boomers: not all ready for the Stannah

I read the article on the over-50s and the internet (MW June 29) with great interest, being “over the hill” myself, at 54 .

Oh, for those dim and distant days when I was in my 40s and you could buy a pint of beer, have a fish and chip supper and still have change from a &£20 note. The younger generation today, I don’t know. Think they invented computers, they do. I know they won’t believe it but we used to fill in computer cards and these would be sent off over night and printed television schedules would come back the following day. Then Steve Jobs (age 51) at Apple, and Alan Sugar (age 59) of Amstrad, showed us that we could all have a computer, and Bill Gates (age 50) made sure we all did. Tim Berners-Lee (age 51) invented the World Wide Web so we could download songs by Mick Jagger (age 62)â¦

All I’m saying is: it’s a mistake to think that you can categorise all over-50s in the same way, and while I don’t mind being put in the same target group as my friends’ parents, it doesn’t make much marketing sense to lump us all together. The over-70s, possibly, who didn’t grow up with computers, but not those of us who were in the business when the first computers became available and are still at it now, when they’ve become omnipresent.

Must go, I need to get back to checking out those ads for stairlifts.

Barry Took

Managing director

Total Media North

Hatton

Warwick