IT’S not a new opinion that today we just don’t properly value older people in the UK.

You go to any supermarket, or just walk along a busy town centre street, and you will see older people suffering from a lack of interest by others and, sometimes, downright rudeness.

I’ve seen older people bumped into by some younger person and the older one will apologise to them. What on earth for? They are not the discourteous ones.

The elderly are also regularly penalised for being older, as respected actress Sheila Hancock discovered when, at an amazingly sprightly 82, she tried to renew her car insurance - only to find it had leapt from £873 to £2,246. This in spite of her being a member of the Institute of Advanced Motorists and plainly not a boy racer.

Older people’s opinions are often patronisingly dismissed, presumably on the fact-defying basis that the younger you are the more you know. And individuals are routinely expected to leave jobs once they reach a certain age simply because of numbers on their birth certificate rather than their actual value to the company.

All of this crossed my mind, and set the teeth (my own) gnashing, this week as I read about the very practical Bolton News’ campaign urging us to donate £1 to support a new scheme. This would raise £200,000 for local dementia sufferers to pay for more “dementia friendly” wards at the Royal Bolton Hospital.

The scheme, involving specialist equipment and services, would make a genuine difference to the lives of thousands of dementia patients for whom a hospital stay is a particularly stressful and frightening experience.

It may sound trite to say that if dementia were an illness linked to youth or middle age, it’s very likely we would now be close to a cure. It probably feels that way because dementia patients are often cared for at home, out of sight, by individuals who are themselves older and who save the country millions of pounds in care costs.

Certainly, there is no NHS money available for extra services and training that take dementia patients’ feelings into account.

As well as donating to this campaign, perhaps the time is also right for more people to re-assess their general views of the value of older people. And, like many other cultures do, to celebrate their experience and knowledge instead of dismissing it uncaringly.