"Disconnected" UKIP Voters

Labour's Chuka Umunna (a potential future Labour leader) claims that
‘a lot’ of people who voted for UKIP in its European elections victory were not computer literate and did not have basic online skills.
Judging by friends in my age group, this statement demonstrates the total disconnect of Umunna from the older population!

All my friends have computers or iPads and certainly know how to send e-mails and search the internet. It seems likely they are probably more clued up on the news that many younger people simply because they have time to read, not only the news on-line, but also various blogs of their choice. It is probably because of this, and the fact that they are so well informed, that they voted UKIP, not because they were disconnected!
My wife is interested in Family History Research and now does much of it on line, both for herself and friends. She also uses Facebook to keep an eye on what more distant members of the family and friends are up to. Most of our friends also seem to be capable of using Skype to keep in touch with their families in far flung places, we are an exception simply because both our daughters live locally. Another friend, who recently had a fall and is unable to drive for the time being, summoned her grandson to come and teach her about on-line shopping and has become totally converted to it, particularly when it comes to her weekly supermarket shop which is delivered to her kitchen door.
The one thing that most of us oldies are wary about is on-line banking; there is so much in the media about hacking that we'd rather be safe than sorry.

An aside,
We've just been looking at my teenage great-niece's Facebook page. It would appear that having a Great Aunt is considered to be far more prestigious than a Grandmother, of which she has both. I must remind my sister next time I see her!

Let's Tell the World!

As I remarked in my previous blog, I've just returned from a couple of week's holiday. As usual, we only told people who had a "need to know" that we would be away.

Going for my daily stroll in the nearby woods, I met an acquaintance who lives a couple of streets away, and who, by co-incidence, had also just returned from a holiday. The difference was that he returned home to find that both his and his neighbour's houses had been burgled in their absence.
It seems that his teenage daughter had used Facebook, or something similar, to tell all her "friends" that she was going for two weeks holiday abroad and that she'd just been with mum to take the cat to the cattery as the neighbour who usually fed her would also be away at the same time! Even so, he seemed very reluctant to accept that this could be the reason why the burglar chose these two particular houses.

It seems that Common Sense is a commodity that is in short supply these days, and not only amongst teenagers.