OLDIES of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your image. Oh yes, and your chance of a job...

Ageism is alive and well in the appointments pages. It's illegal to discriminate against anyone because of their sex, race, religion or even physical prowess. But age? That's ruled only by a voluntary code.

Which is why adverts can still specify jobs for people in their twenties or thirties. Or, more sneakily, by sort of code words. So "lively", "ambitious", "bright" and "funky" means they're looking for someone young. While "dependable" , "mature", responsible" and "reliable" means they're looking for a grown-up.

But where would that leave Zandra Rhodes? Joanna Lumley? Or Cosmopolitan founder Helen Gurley Brown, aged 81 and still flashing her long legs in fishnets in the papers at the weekend? Seems lively enough to me.

Does funkiness stop at 40? Are 50-year-olds not ambitious? Can't 60 and 70-somethings be bright and upbeat? Come to that, there are plenty of mature and responsible 20-year-olds who deserve their chance.

The Employers' Forum on Age is hunting out those weasel ads. If you spot any please send them on. And although it's tough on youngsters who don't get jobs because they're too young, at least they can grow into employment. When the oldies are rejected, they might well have missed the boat.

More importantly, their would-be employers might have missed a star.

The best workforce is a mixed work force - experience, enthusiasm, fresh ideas and boring old attention to detail, so the office that describes itself as "average age 25, so a young person would be preferable" is talking tosh. What they probably need is a few grey hairs to balance it out a bit.

But it's getting more serious than that. By 2006 there will be more 55 to 64-year-olds than 16 to 24-year-olds. There are one million fewer people in their 20s than ten years ago.

As we are all going to have to flog on till we're 70 to fund our pensions, we're going to have to find jobs for longer. And, with a growing shortage of youngsters, employers are going to have to spread their net a bit wider.

So if you are funky and 50, or upbeat and 70, then one day that job might just be yours.

l Employers' Forum on Age, 2nd Floor, Tower Building, 11 York Road, London, SE1 7NX. www.efa.org.uk.

IT'S Child Safety Week this week. Instead of panicking about murderous paedophiles - who certainly exist but are thankfully rare - it might do more for our children's safety if we took more mundane precautions and strapped them into their car seats.

Just watch the cars on the school run - mothers who say it's not safe for their children to walk to school, yet leave their little toddler siblings bouncing around unchecked in the back of the car.

Just one sudden sharp braking...

SIX out of seven women questioned in a recent survey for the Office for National Statistics said that, ideally, they would like the chance to be at home with their small children.

Contrast this with Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt's announcement recently that yet more mothers should leave their children with nurseries or minders and go back to work.

Yet another gulf between the Government and the real world.

JAMIE Whittaker, pictured below with brother Charlie, is a "designer baby", created and selected with the hope of saving his brother's life.

There are many reasons for having a baby - to save a breaking marriage, to have someone to love, because you're bored, to inherit a title and a stately home, or simply because you had far too much to drink at a party and fancied the smooth-talking stranger. Compared to some of those, having a baby to save a life seems pretty heroic. And Jamie Whittaker's chances of being loved for himself seem as high - if not higher - than those of any other baby.

THANK you for all the nice notes and e-mails from WI members. My sister was at the WI AGM last week. 3,000 delegates of whom about 2,500 had brought a packed lunch. Not permitted to spill crumbs in the Albert Hall, they all streamed across the road to Kensington Gardens to picnic there instead.

The traffic stopped to let them pass. Not even London cabbies argue with the WI en masse.

PS: A mid-afternoon power nap is as effective as a good night's sleep say researchers. Fine. Just hope your boss is convinced when he finds you snoring on your computer.