Silver Surfers steal the show at Westminster

 

Bernard Featherstone accepting his awardAnyone tempted to label the over-50s as Luddites should have been at Portcullis House on October 23rd, 2008, when Bernard Featherstone of Eccles won UK Silver Surfer of the Year Award (he's shown here making his acceptance speech just a stone's throw from Big Ben). Runners-up: Judith Taylor, 80 of St Albans; Les Nicholls, 88 of Liverpool; Simbo Ogunyemi, 66, from SE London and Stuart Hill, 59, from Middlesbrough, were applauded, too.

Men in suits gave speeches of praise from the podium. Most appropriately.

Then Digital Unite, who run the Awards annually, gave the awardees mini video-gadgets and the atmosphere changed from right honourable to right entertaining. MPs and Directors and CEOs were offered surfing lessons from their elders and put on the spot with amiably tricky questions.

It's all blogged, so the debate can continue with the kind of energy that this agenda deserves. It's the vital, crucial issue of how we digitally include 8-10million currently excluded over-50s (yes, that's about a sixth of the population who've never emailed, Skyped or blogged).

McCarthy & Stone, Britain's leading retirement builders, kindly sponsored this year's Awards.

Please come or send people to our new blog, which is all about the issue of how we can help the 8-10 million over-50s currently excluded from digital activity to 'come on board'. Just reading the blog (and adding your comments) means you're doing your bit for the cause of older people online. We can't do without them - they're too interesting!

The blog address is digitalunite.com/2008/10/27/the-awards/

Gill Adams, Digital Unite