In Scotland, “grey power” campaigners, led by John Swinburne, MSP for the clumsily named Scottish Senior Citizens’ Unity party (SSCUP), are in full Greek tragedy mode, telling us that Scots will have to work until they drop to avoid poverty in an old age not adequately provided for by either company pensions or the state. It’s shocking, he maintains, to think of Scots working past 60 (women) or 65 (men).
But is it? The rhetoric assumes two things: that all Scots hate work and want to give it up at the first opportunity, and that once you reach 60 or 65, your ability to do anything at all automatically diminishes. Neither is true.
One of the complaint growth areas, in Scotland as in the rest of the world, is ageism. Older workers are fed up with being portrayed as has-beens, “vulnerable” wrinklies or exploited victims.
In between paragliding in the Andes and taking up the pipes, they often want to retain the niche in the workplace that they spent years trying to attain. In this desire they are supported by both Age Concern Scotland and Help the Aged, who, over the past few years, have become loud in their condemnation of the kind of age discrimination that pushes older people into retirement. While thrusting young bucks may groan when the EU regulations on age discrimination come into force in 2006, many Scots will think “and not before time”.
Nor is this desire to carry on limited to professionals. There are certainly manual workers who can hardly wait to finish their farewell drink before chucking out their overalls, but there are just as many who do not want to lose not just the money but the focus and the working community.
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Our elderly childminder was so upset when we once suggested she should be taking it easy that when the children finally grew too big for her services, we almost felt obliged to have another baby.
Such people do not find it helpful when the SSCUP, in order to make a perfectly valid point about pensions and pensioner poverty, perpetuates the myth that it is a scandal for anybody over 60 to be in an office or a factory. It is difficult enough to persuade employers to keep older workers on without political parties giving them the excuse they need. Perhaps the SSCUP should remind itself that, as Glasgow’s International Geographical Congress learnt this week, entrepreneurs setting up shop between the ages of 50 and 65 are among the most successful in the country.
But quite apart from what workers want, it is high time the great pensions/retirement debate was linked to modern-day life expectancy rates. The general trend in Scotland is upwards, even if, in some regions, it is still shockingly low. Pity the poor man born in Glasgow’s Shettleston, for example, who is not expected to make 65. But in the rest of the country we can expect to watch in amazement as the number of Scottish centenarians rises exponentially.
No less than 196 people, mainly women, celebrated their 100th birthday in 1996. That number rose to 235 in 1999 and will increase again in the next batch of statistics. It seems extraordinary to be forced into retirement when you probably have at least a third, and probably more, of your life left to live, and even more extraordinary for the state to be expected to pick up such a lengthy tab. Raising the retirement age would not only reflect obvious changes in health/life patterns, but will be fiscally vital when, by 2020, more than half the British population will be over 50.