If, as the economist JK Galbraith asserted, pessimism is the mark of a superior intellect, we should by rights be toasting the genius of the Scots. Has there ever been a population so determined to find a cloud of squid ink in the shiniest of silver linings? Maybe it is the weather. Perhaps the reason it is never hard to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance — is there any other kind? — and a ray of sunshine is the near mythical status of the latter north of the border. I have no doubt leaving Scotland for a fortnight for a break in the Mediterranean throws the phenomenon into sharper relief, but our ability to look on the dark side of life never ceases to astound me.
This week, the Edinburgh festival — the premier cultural event in Europe beloved by people the world over — has kicked off its 70th birthday celebrations amid an ugly turf war over who has the right to colonise the gardens in St Andrew Square for the duration of the event. Those inhabitants of the capital who are making the loudest noise about Brexit and lobbying for the free movement of people are the very ones bemoaning the influx of foreign tourists and issuing dire warnings comparing Edinburgh to Venice (if only) and declaring it overrun, full up and heading for catastrophe.
As for those who escape the madding crowd in August, the Green Party is demanding they be slapped with business rates if they have the audacity tolet their properties for a few weeks on Airbnb. On Skye, where the economy is highly dependent on visitors, there is talk of a tourist tax. You would think given the dreichness of the weather, the preponderance of midges and the state of the A9, the Hebrides would welcome the intrepid souls who make it to the island with ticker-tape parades and medals.
As if happy people holidaying in Scotland for a couple of weeks and spending tourist dollars before heading home wasn’t enough of a blow, last week also brought the news that Scots are failing to die in sufficient numbers to ward off the crisis of an ageing population, prompting “Scotland’s ticking time bomb” headlines.
According to the latest figure released by registrar general Tim Ellis, the average age of Scotland’s population has continued to rise over the past decade, with the greatest population increases in older age groups. He predicts a projected increase of 28% in the number of pensioners in Scotland over the next 25 years, compared with an increase in 1% of people of working age. “This has implications for funding allocations, tax revenues, pensions, education, health and social care provision,” Ellis said.
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Several things strike me about this story. One is the accuracy of predictions in this area. It was not long ago that statisticians were predicting Scotland’s population would plummet below 3.5m just at the time it had plateaued and was starting to rise. Another is the nature of pensioners and the fluidity of working life: just what is working age these days?
Far from being a burden on the state, many over-65s — the last generation to benefit from generous final salary scheme pensions — own their own homes, pay taxes and continue to work or volunteer. Many remain economically active well beyond the traditional retirement age, acting as consultants, mentors, locums or starting businesses. After all, who wants to spend 20 to 30 years in enforced idleness?
“If we tell our older people they are a burden or a problem it is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy
These days, sixtysomethings are just as likely to be Mamils — middle-aged men in Lycra — as old fossils. Even the argument that the ageing population will place an unbearable strain on the NHS deserves greater scrutiny.
Placing a strain on the NHS is not synonymous with an inability to access healthcare. If you believe that the health service as it is currently configured does not deserve to be preserved in aspic and might benefit from a radical shake-up, which allows for more choice and flexibility, you are likely to see the longevity of the population as a cause for celebration rather than a fate worse than death.
Raymond Tallis, the celebrated gerontologist, has consistently argued that today’s pensioners are very different from their grandparents. “Morbidity compression” — delaying the onset of infirmity — means that our health span is catching up with our life span. Whether you lived to be 70 half a century ago or 90 today, your period of ill-health requiring significant intervention is likely to be similar and confined to the months before your demise.
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Advances in healthcare and the prevention of disabling illness are lengthening healthy life while shortening the average period of disability before death. Deaths from Alzheimer’s and dementia in Scotland have doubled to 5,570 a year since 2000, but the corollary is that deaths from stroke and heart attack have halved to less than 6,700 over the same period — a cause for celebration if you do the maths.
And while it is true many of the people who struggle most, financially, in Scotland are pensioners, we are richer as a nation than we have ever been and a high percentage of the nation’s disposable wealth is concentrated in the hands of the over 50s.
The biggest problem with the way the demographic statistics are often presented is that older people are depicted as a homogenous group. There are 70-year-olds who seem ancient and nonagenarians who are as spry and lively as they were in their sixties. Growing old gracefully — or disgracefully for that matter — is as much about attitude as it is about health.
Nobody wants to grow old, but then nobody wants the alternative. If we tell our older people that they are a burden or a problem or doomed to live a miserable and isolated existence, it is likely to become a self-fulfilling prophecy, in much the same way that telling teenage girls they are vulnerable and fragile is likely to result in them feeling stressed, anxious and lacking resilience.
Of course, we need and deserve the love and support of our families as we age. We may require more help and support from the state when we are older, but a 70-year-old who has enough money to maintain a reasonable standard of living, who owns a home and who has mental capacity, ought to have complete control over his or her own destiny. Too often, however, older people are patronised or led to believe they are no longer free to make their own choices about the way they live their lives.
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People are a nation’s ultimate resource and for all our doom-mongering, we Scots are inventive and practical. Humanity has made steady progress for the last three millennia. We are good at finding solutions to the inevitable issues that progress throws up.
It is the curse of a nation, marinated in fatalism, to move from dire warnings about population decline to deep concern about a growing but ageing population, with no pause in between. It is a particularly Scottish trait to believe that because we are no longer dying in high numbers, we are all doomed.