The Lighthouse

A watch on events

Barbara Millar

I found the inappropriateness of the juxtaposition quite shocking. In The Times magazine, a lavishly illustrated feature of well-kent people offering kernels of insight under the title: 'The Wisdom of the Over-65s.' In the news pages of the same edition, under the headline: 'Old and Insecure', a story and photo of 'cutting-edge adult nappy technology'. It took my breath away. Facing a developed-world phenomenon of vastly increasing numbers of elderly people, what is going to be our response to them? To listen to the wisdom accrued by older generations, to pay heed to sage advice from those such as Nelson Mandela: 'Overcoming poverty is not an act of charity, it is an act of justice', or Madeleine Albright: 'It is essential to care about human rights – that ultimately is the basis of our existence', or Henry Kissinger: 'Don't be too ambitious. Do the most important thing you can think of doing every year and your career will take care of itself'. Or are we going to infantilise our older people, creating, as the Japanese are currently doing, a huge industry out of 'nappy couture', developing over 400 adult nappy designs, allegedly to meet the needs of an over-65s population that comprises more than a fifth of that country? We have long marginalised our older people and continue to do so. Despite the introduction of age discrimination legislation, only last week, in a test case brought by Age Concern, the European Court of Justice ruled that forcing people to retire at 65 was not illegal. Currently, in the UK, around 25,000 older people are compelled to leave their jobs every year – experienced, productive people, worth nothing more than to be peremptorily discarded. In fact, the much-lauded legislation also enables employers to continue to refuse job applications of people over or within six months of retirement age. 'It's quite amazing how you actually do need affirmation,' says Archbishop Desmond Tutu in The Times. 'You blossom when you have that and wilt when it disappears.' We're sanguinely condemning far too many older people to that latter fate.

As the bells continue to toll, announcing the demise of still more banks this week, anyone at or approaching retirement age has even more to worry about. Latterly, along with many others and despite the fact that I'm still some way off retirement, the ongoing world financial turmoil means I have become pre-occupied with my pension, or rather, the prospective paucity of it. As BusinessScotsman.com points out, most people now have a pension in which the fund is stock market based. After years of self-employment, naively entrusting my hard-earned pennies – through the mediation of a succession of untried, untested 'independent financial advisers' – to a variety of unaccountable organisations, with which to speculate as they saw fit, I am faced with an almost laughably minute pensions pot. Unlike those working for the government or any other state-backed organisation, I have no tax-funded inflation-proof deal to cushion me in my dotage. I will need to work in order to survive.

It is hardly any surprise, then, to read in The Herald the results of a survey of 2,000 people, which reveal that almost half of those questioned are 'dreading the ageing process'. Just 3% are looking forward to old age and only one in 10 wants to reach the age of 100. What's to anticipate – being kicked out of your job, receiving a pittance of a pension, being ignored and undermined by the wider society. If the only bright spot is an unlimited choice of designer incontinence wear, then forgive me if I pass.