Pensioners are on the warpath

DON'T be surprised next time you spot an elderly gent in a smart business suit weaving through the York traffic on a motor scooter. Don Parlabean is a busy man - and its the best way of getting around the city, he says.

"We're so bunged up with traffic you can travel three-and-a-half miles in a car just going from one jam to another. With this you can weave in and out."

Don is the former railway engineer - and one time city councillor - who sprang to prominence recently as an outspoken champion for elderly people.

As chairman of the York Older People's Assembly - a post he took on more than four weeks ago - the 67-year-old has already put the wind up a few politicians' sails.

He warned New Labour it had better start giving senior citizens a fairer deal on pensions or it could face a drubbing in York at the next election as pensioners withheld their vote.

Then he crossed swords with York MP Hugh Bayley on whether Labour has done right by pensioners since coming to power.

His verdict? A resounding No.

"This Government proudly boasts of what it is doing for the pensioner," he trumpeted. "Everything but give them a proper pension. Free eye tests are not much use if you can't afford new glasses."

He's no less forthright when you meet him. "Older people are fed up," he says. "This spring, we watched firemen asking for 40 per cent, then settling reluctantly for 16 per cent.

"Then we got a council tax rise which was just short of 14 per cent. And then we picked up our first pension of the new tax year - and found a 1.7 per cent pay rise.

"Older people were disgusted, and they've been on the warpath ever since."

Don certainly has. It genuinely angers him that successive governments did not use the money today's generation of pensioners paid in national insurance and tax to invest in their pensions.

"Imagine somebody says to you, give us £1 a week and when you retire you can go on a two week cruise in the Mediterranean, and if you top it up a bit you can have a three month cruise," he says. "Then when you do retire you get this self-catering flat in Filey for three days. You would feel devastated."

Since he took over chairmanship of the Older People's Assembly - set up a year ago to provide a voice for older people in the area - he has pledged to give it a fresh 'kick start'.

It is not a political organisation, he stresses: but politicians had better start listening.

Pensioners may not be able to go on strike like firefighters (if they withdrew their unpaid labour and refused to look after grandchildren while the parents were at work it would cost the nation a fortune, he points out, but would only harm those they love).

But they do have a vote. "About 25 per cent of the population of York are pensioners," he says. "When you take away schoolchildren under 18, that makes us about 30-40 per cent of the voting population. Take away those who go to the pub on election day, or just can't be bothered, and you're probably looking at 50 per cent of the vote coming from older people."

It is no good ministers bleating about how generously they have treated pensioners, and how the new pension credit will top up the pensions of the poorest senior citizens to a guaranteed £102.10 a week, he adds. They simply demonstrate their inability to understand the way older people think, and the sense of shame they feel about asking for handouts.

The Government's own figures, he claims, reveal more than a million pensioners will not apply for the new credit. He says that is because they feel they have to go cap-in-hand begging for it.

"Older people are too proud to do that," he says. "They are used to looking after themselves." Besides which how would most of today's working people like to try surviving on £102.10 a week?, he adds.

"It is not for a month, or a few weeks. There's no saying 'I will put in a bit of overtime this week'. There is no end to it. It is forever."

It's a compelling case. So who is this firebrand who speaks out so powerfully for the elderly?

Don Parlabean is a large, affable man whose tough-looking face breaks into a good-natured smile at the slightest excuse. Born in London, an only child, the family moved to Hornsea when he was 14. He left school at 15, worked for a grocer for a couple of years, then joined the Army as a driver.

He left after three years, and came to work at a grocer's in Spurriergate. "I fell in love with York the moment I walked along Spurriergate," he says. "I saw Ouse Bridge, and that was it."

He worked for Rowntrees for a while, then joined the railways, working in signalling and telecommunications.

Gradually, he rose up the ranks, eventually taking early retirement six years ago from his position as fault control engineer with Jarvis.

It was partly the pressure of the job and his disaffection with the railways that prompted him to retire early. He worked at the same office with the same computer for years, he jokes, but the only way he could remember who he worked for was by checking the latest company tie or mug.

But there was also family tragedy. Nine years ago his wife, Margaret, died of a brain tumour.

"You get over these things," he says, trying to make light of it: but it clearly hit him hard. By the time he retired, a few years later, he needed a couple of years just to "crash out".

It was then the former Labour councillor - he was on York City Council from 1984-1988 - began his charity work.

He started with the charity Older People's Advocacy - doing everything from accompanying older people to hospital appointments to sitting in with them in meetings with their solicitor to discuss neighbour disputes.

He still continues with this. But most of his time now is taken up with the Older People's Assembly.

It leaves him little time for the passion which is his main hobby.

In a wooden shed at the bottom of his garden is a workshop filled with model boats. There are electric powered ones, radio-controlled ones - even a couple which run on steam, all lovingly hand-built.

He only has two regrets about his hobby. First, that he can't spend more time in his shed. "Until I get the assembly up and running properly, I can more or less forget it," he says.

Second, that his two granddaughters - nine-year-old twins Hannah and Larrisa - don't like his boats more.

Being girls, they're not really into models, he says. Then he brightens. "Maybe I should try to make one with a Barbie doll inside."

His granddaughters may like that. But if it distracted him from championing the cause of older people, York's senior citizens might not be quite so keen.

Updated: 10:18 Thursday, October 30, 2003