This from Darby and Joan...
Senior Railcard holders have just received this e-mail:
Dear Darby
We’re offering you the chance to win £100 worth of travel vouchers by simply answering a few questions about your friendships, for a piece of research we are undertaking.
We’re keen to find out how often you keep in touch with your friends, whether you use Facebook and Twitter to do this and how long your average friendships last.
To complete the survey click here.
All completed surveys will be entered into the free prize draw to win £100 worth of travel vouchers to spend on UK rail travel.
Closing date for completed surveys is Thursday 30 September 2010. Terms and conditions apply.
Whipper Snapper
Senior Railcard
What a sad indictment of our society that ATOC's wet-behind-the-ears railcard team assumes that older people only keep in touch with friends by Twitter and Facebook and that their friendships are so ephemeral that enough fail to last the course for an 'average' period to be calculated.
Even worse, given the demographic being addressed, recipients of this e-mail are at a time of life when you find long standing friends shuffling off this mortal coil in increasing numbers.
So it's not exactly a sensitive request for information.
And if the grim reaper spares your friends, you can't see them as often as you like because of the complex structure of prohibitively high fares, increasingly hedged around with restrictions - even for those with Senior Rail cards.
