A VOICE FROM THE STREET

28th July 2026
 
Extra, extra, read all about it!

Don't Stop Calling Me an OAP – But Stop Whinging


By David Selves


I recently read comments objecting to the description of a two yachtsmen, (or should that be yachters?)  in the English Channel as "OAPs" after an encounter involving Russian forces. Apparently, some people found the term offensive, patronising or outdated.

As someone who is almost 77, I have a confession to make: I couldn't care less.

Technically, I qualify as an Old Age Pensioner. That's a fact, not an insult. But here's another fact: I'm still working, still thinking, still creating and still paying my way. I haven't retired into a life of slippers, daytime television and bingo halls – whoops didn’t mean to upset anyone! If I were inclined to be offended – and frankly I haven't got time – it would be by being called a "retiree", because that simply isn't true. Nor are many of my contemporaries. The idea that everyone over state pension age is somehow frail, idle or irrelevant belongs in a museum is out of date. It is not the term OAP that is out of date, but the mental image we attach to it.

What puzzles me is our modern obsession with taking offence at perfectly ordinary words. Every description seems to require a committee meeting before it can be uttered. "Senior citizen" becomes "older adult", which becomes "person of advanced years", which no doubt will soon be replaced by something even more linguistically sanitised. In my musical Woke! The Opera, the central character, an advertising agency owner Eric, exasperated, breaking into gallows humour, says, “ All I know is I used to sell dreams. Now I sell disclaimers. Health and safety disclaimers, bloody WPA disclaimers. Next campaign brief’ll read: “Please ensure advert contains no men, women, children, or animals. Avoid air, water, earth and fire. And no jokes. Ever.” 

Then there are job titles. Once upon a time we had dustmen. Honest, useful men who collected the bins and kept our streets clean. Now they're liable to be described as "waste management operatives" or "refuse disposal officers". Good luck fitting that into a folk song. What would Lonnie Donegan have sung – My Old Man's a Refuse Disposal Officer? It doesn't exactly trip off the tongue.

Meanwhile, life goes on.

The same trend infects our fascination with generational labels. Baby Boomers, Generation X, Millennials, Generation Z, Generation Alpha – we're forever pigeonholing people by the decade in which they happened to be born. It's become a substitute for thought. If you're a Boomer, you're blamed for house prices and climate change. If you're Gen Z, you're supposedly glued to your phone and offended by everything. Most people, in reality, are simply trying to get through the week.

Every generation has produced heroes, fools, innovators, moaners, hard workers and layabouts. Birth certificates do not determine character.

I'm perfectly happy for words to acquire new meanings. That's how language evolves. Shakespeare coined words, dictionaries grow thicker, and slang comes and goes. But don't tell me I can no longer use a perfectly respectable word in the sense in which it has been understood for decades simply because somebody has decided it's now off limits to use it in its traditional sense because it's been given a new meaning. Adding meanings is one thing; banning old ones is quite another.

When I was a child, Noddy was just a happy little chap in a blue hat with a bell on it – colourful, cheerful, innocent and full of optimism, summed up in one word, gay. Would Enid Blyton have been upset by gay taking on a completely different meaning?  Nobody searched for hidden meanings or reasons to be offended. Sometimes a story was just a story, and a character was just a character.

Perhaps the biggest problem is that we have become addicted to outrage. Someone uses an old-fashioned phrase and social media erupts. A journalist chooses shorthand and commentators demand apologies. A harmless label becomes a moral crisis.

Wouldn't it be healthier if we all developed a slightly thicker skin?

Being described as an OAP does not diminish my experience or achievements. Equally, being called a Baby Boomer tells you nothing useful about me beyond the year I was born. I'd rather be judged by what I do than by which demographic marketing department has filed me under.

So, here's a modest proposal. Less agonising over labels. Less generational finger-pointing. Less performative indignation over words that were never intended to wound.
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And perhaps—just perhaps—it's time for some people to get a life and stop whinging. But as I write this on POETS day, maybe I’ve missed what OAP really means in the new world, On another planet! Suddenly that makes me want to jump up, punch the air and cheer! Ah, but isn’t that meant to be an insult? Get a life!

​The world has enough real problems without inventing new ones every time someone reaches for a convenient description.