The Soapbox

Retirement

Provoked - and how - by the government's plans to raise the retirement age - and initially stealing 5 years of my retirement when I was in what might be considered the last third of my expected working life, with the prospects of taking even more. As it was and still is, I didn't see myself being able to afford to retire anyway and had considered aloud the possibility that one day I would keel over on my market stall and be disposed of along with my stock in a funeral pyre of paperback books. 

My father was fortunate in managing to retire early, which he always wanted, giving him time to pursue his interests and more time with my mother. Working many years longer might have killed him.

My friend’s father retired at the normal age with every intention of catching up with his hobbies but died just a year later.  He didn’t get the chance.

There are others who, forced to retire when they wanted to work on, die soon after and working many years longer might have saved them.

The government is proposing to move the goalpost once and maybe more times afterwards. Already women under a certain age have to adjust to an extra 5 years of working life before they can retire, men are about to get an extra two, and everyone might have to accept 68 or even 70 as normal.

Now however essential this is to balance the treasury’s books and ease the cost of the rising numbers of pensioners, this is not going to influence the emotive reaction we experience.

It is not about shirking duty or making less contributions to society by way of national insurance etc. It has more to do with being cheated out of whatever it was you have been waiting for all your life and removing your personal choice.

The young may feel a passing and slight indignation about this but I doubt they will feel more given that before a certain age, old age as such seems so remote as to be unreal. Young people have hardly got used to working never mind started to anticipate (with pleasure or dread) retirement.

But the middle aged and the nearly elderly have been thinking about this for some time, and planning for it too, both practically and financially. The older you get, the less time you have left, and the less you take it all for granted, and the more unwilling you are to surrender whatever you hold dear given that opportunities for everything are narrowing down. All of this too without the shadow of deteriorating physical or mental health which might sneak in and steal your plans independently of any government action.

So maybe you have a career, not much life outside work, see it as a way of keeping young and lively to carry on working. Maybe you have knowledge and skills which long experience have produced and should be used to the full.

Maybe you just need the money and would retire like a shot if you could afford to (but that is another story).

Maybe you can’t wait to get the time to relax, to fulfil dreams, enjoy company and activities which you have been denied, the freedom which a work regime does not permit. Maybe you want to make the most of your health just in case. Why would you not mind suddenly having all that stolen from under your nose and having to work 5 or even 2 years longer than you thought you would?

Now you may die before you retire, not even just after, your pension and financial affairs may be all wrong due to the timing now, your family may be the wrong ages to suit your plans of retiring together with a partner or spending time with young grandchildren.

Our lives are structured from a very early age, nursery, formal education, work. Free time is a rationed commodity which occurs in measured and restricted amounts. Retirement is the prize awaiting at the end, the reward for being part of the system all your life, the right to choose, to indulge, to enjoy, to finally control your time. All perilously governed by financial and health restrictions of course. But if you are fit and healthy and financially sound, why should you not look forward to what you see as a basic human right almost, to determine to a degree how to spend the early part of your declining years before the real incursions of age and infirmity take hold? 

We abolished slavery, we ended conscription, we improved imprisonment with humanitarian ideals. What of the enforced extra working years to which all but the wealthy will have to conform?It might be possible to end work earlier than the new mandatory ages but only where income could be guaranteed privately as an alternative to state pension.

So much for the indignation and resentment and disappointment. Now to the health and even safety issues.

So even if you have to carry on working whether you like it or not, what about those for whom their profession or job is not at all suited to advanced age, and for whom 60 or 65 may not have come quite quickly enough? Physically demanding work is not necessarily advisable or even possible past a certain age and much will depend on the health and physical condition of the individual. How sensible or practical is it to insist on someone pursuing an extended occupation when their health does not support that and may deteriorate further because of the extended activity? Will the government count that increased medical cost against the savings of not paying pensions so early? And even more unlikely, will they then start harassing the sixty somethings who need to slow down at work to go on courses and retrain, more costly schemes to fit square pegs into the round holes of non-existent jobs?

And unless more jobs are created, what of the young who already allegedly find employment hard to break into – there might not be enough money in the pot for the pensions etc but there are also more people than jobs. Freeing up by means of retiring out of the system is one way the opportunities occur for those entering a job, career or profession, and surely there will be years of decline whilst those who would have retired are obliged to stay on. We might be living longer but most of us recognise the slowing down of many processes which can render an individual less effective in terms of sight, hearing, mobility, reaction, concentration which would all have a potential impact on our employment potential and effectiveness.

We might, on paper, be living longer but averages mean nothing to someone who died before their time and didn’t even reach the ungenerous retirement age of 65, and the number cheated in this way if the age rises to 70 will also increase. We are people not statistics and those who have paid into the system all their lives from school leaving age are being made to pay the price for the financial shortfall. They are less likely to have had long periods of unemployment and will have made a greater contribution than many younger people will have done by the same age.

It’s just as wrong to make someone work past the age at which  they should be allowed to stop, as it is to prevent someone who really wants to carry on. The economics should be balanced against the humanity and morality of stealing years from those who have already a more predictably finite amount left.

This is an outrageous proposal which should be protested against in the strongest possible terms.