Careless talk costs lives

Today's title was a war time slogan warning citizens to be careful in their conversations not to give away helpful information to potential enemies.

At jobs.telegraph.co.uk we are warned "carefree talk online can cost your job". Basing his lead article on "Killer Web Content" by Gerry McGovern journalist Richard Tyler advises that jobseekers should think twice before posting their thoughts online as employers are starting to vet potential employees by searching the web. Companies, it seems, have become wary of self-publicists and will even fire staff for comments made in their personal online diaries. Before the web denial could be used in self defence if something said or written was suddenly deemed not politically correct but now the web has become a global memory bank available always and everfywhere. Political figures, Church leaders, and Ordinary citizens have been caught out recently and payed a heavy price for their "indiscretions". Even out of hours blogging, it seems, can be hazardous. Many companies veto such activity in work time or on working systems.

Does any of this inhibit a silver serfer like myself? I'm not sure but it is something to keep at the back of one's mind whilst practising what one had previously assumed to be a harmless retirement activity.

Perhaps a more socially active use of one's time is called for like the group(average age over 80)
featured in last night's Channel 4 Young@Heart for more than two hours. It was moving and inspiring. Billing themselves as "Pensioners behaving badly", Young@Heart revealed themselves as a chorus like no other. In place of Gilbert and Sullivan this group of OAPs, which includes a 93 year old blitz surviving GI bride and a 75 year old who suffers from acute spinal problems, perform punk, hip hop, and miserablist indie rock to packed houses whereever they go (not only in America but many other aprts of the world too). The TV documentary last night was dedicated to 3 members who died during the making of the programme and who featured heavily in it - "the show must go on" was the attitude. It was an amusing and moving couple of hours which captured the emotional impact of the group's necessarily constant state of change.
They achieve an amazing reception as they perform before the inmates of a local prison immediately after being informed of the death of one of their number who was due to sing solo at the concert. Even the member featured prominently on the poster of the climatic community concert was dead and awaiting burial as they got on with the show and just about brought the house down at the end. There's something about the human spirit in adversity. It was good to see unashamed open acknowledgement of the part that faith played in many of these lives.