Today the compulsory retirement age of 65 has been abolished, it had been started in April this year but now employers cannot legally retire an employee at 65. While I agree slightly with scrapping the system of compulsory retirements I do think that it has been done for all the wrong reasons. For example, if  the majority of workers decide they are going to continue working for another 10 years, until they are 75, this is tying up jobs that would normally go to the young upcoming school leavers, so while companies can now retain some of their most experienced employees, the country will have thousands of school leavers staring at the dole office for a number of years. With unemployment rising towards the 3 million mark already, this would escalate the numbers beyond acceptable levels. Let’s be realistic the only way we have had new jobs for the youth to move into are due to retirements, with this avenue gone where are the new jobs coming from ? construction ? with rapidly rising house prices who will be able to afford a new home in a few years. Manufacturing, you’re having a laugh, Britain has ceased being a manufacturing country for years now, we priced ourselves out of that market a long time ago, plus who is going to teach the next generation the skills required to produce these products ? those people have long left the industry and no one took over the mantle. We now live in a throw away society, youngsters have the belief that if something stops functioning, gets broken or requires mending then “chuck it” and get a new one, no one, well, very few, will have either the skills, knowledge or the want to fix anything, so where will the products come from…… yeah……. imports, if we can’t build our own we’ll need to buy them, leading to higher costs, how do we pay for the higher costs ? because very few will have jobs because the oldies will not relinquish what they have for fear of lack of funds later in life, as they do now.
So this leads us onto the pension issue, at the moment we are being told we are all living too long and the pension funds don’t have enough to cope as it is, where will we be in 20 years time when we have an ageing workforce reluctant to retire due to massive cost of living costs and small pensions that would be unable to keep them. Coupled with the lack of taxes going into the coffers because we can’t get the young any jobs, this would equate to massive reductions of finance going into the treasury, and I am no accountant, where does the shortfall come from, we have two angles to cover here, one: paying benefits to those who cannot find work, and two: finding money to cover other public services due to a lack of taxation coming in due to lack of new business.
As I’m only 18 years away from retirement I do want to leave the workplace, not down to the fact that I don’t like my job, I do, I’m fortunate to be employed in a field that I’m interested in, but at the end of the day I’ve worked since leaving school and feel that I’ve earned the break, if I do manage to survive to 65 and retire at that time I will have contributed to the system for 50 years, fucking more than enough in my book. I and my predecessors have been very lucky with regards to employment, but future generations will not have the prospects we have had, and this is not down to economic or financial reasons, it’s a basic numbers game, there will not be the jobs there for anyone to do !
This is a complex issue that will no doubt cause many debates over when a person should retire, and I do agree that the person should have the ultimante decision over when they retire, but at what cost, we do have to look at the upcoming generations and make provisions for them, god forbid my grandchildren (when they arrive) would be left without a job prospect due to me not giving up working, for whatever reason, this should be an avenue that is left open to the next generation, but, and this is a big but, the next generation pensioners, namely me ! should not be left to suffer as this generation has, a vast majority do not have the means to survive winters, and some do not have offspring or other relations to assist or check they are OK during the winter months, and this is what worries me with reduced public services, reduced taxation, increased unemployment, leading to increased tensions will result in both the older and younger generations losing out. It’s not an easy situation to make a balanced decision about but I believe that this is one decision that will result in mass disruption and not too far in the future.
‘Till the next time…..
Anarchy, Peace, Freedom, Equality.
Alan Louttit 