Don’t tell us oldies how to behave, Dave, I’ll do the job
DOWN in cornwall at the weekend, the sun finally shone and the pub where I stayed was full of happy walkers — the vast majority the same age as me, with not a stick or walking frame in sight.
I was celebrating my friend Katharine’s 65th birthday — we met on our first day at college back in 1965.
Katharine, like me, has no intention of retiring. A qualified architect and head of a department at a prestigious university, she has worked all her life.
We drank a lot of wine, loafed about under the blue sky and went for a stroll across the fields in the early evening.
I didn’t want to spoil my pal’s day by telling her that Dame Joan Bakewell — the unelected busybody designated Tsarina for the elderly by Gordon Brown — has been investigating binge drinking pensioners for a forthcoming edition of Panorama.
This bit of news makes me so cross I can barely type. If you can’t behave badly, let your hair down and drink when you’re old, what is there left to look forward to in life?
Joan told a reporter: ‘There are a lot more over-65s in rehab these days, and I have been talking to them all . . .’
A lot more than when, exactly? Rehab didn’t really exist when my mum and dad were around; it’s a relatively new industry.
Alcoholism, like dependency on drugs, is a dreadful disease, but I don’t believe for one minute that my generation of baby boomers have suddenly morphed into a bunch of addicts.
The vast majority are wellbalanced, normal, busy and fulfilled. But I’ve noticed that a cottage industry in baby boomer-bashing, led by politicians resentful of our sheer numbers, is growing fast.
David cameron’s former Big Society advisor Lord Wei has just written a report for the Gulbenkian Foundation proposing a ‘national retirement service’ aimed at helped us avoid boredom once we stop work.
Do you know any bored pensioners? I don’t. My pals are busy on the internet, haggling over bargains, selling their unwanted stuff, talking to their mates all over the world on Skype and comparing the prices of B&Bs from Llandudno to Lausanne.
The highest number of over-65s are working (many because their pensions have plummeted in value) since records began in 1992. Others are learning new skills at Open University or another language at evening classes.
Lord Wei, like Dame Joan, is a well-meaning busybody, and he’s just 35, so what he knows or understands about old age does not interest me in the slightest.
he thinks older people should be working part-time, volunteering for charities or sharing their knowledge about business with young entrepreneurs — which already happens in an informal way.
He PROPOSeS we should be forming local networks and be helping older people in nursing homes. Why can’t the thousands of young people who can’t get jobs do that? It would teach them social skills and give them valuable experience in social care.
If I was 90, I’d rather be talking to a livewire of 25 than another old codger moaning about the price of Ovaltine and the rubbish on telly.
Nick hurd, the Minister for civil Society, is another baby boomer-basher. he says that retirees should be volunteering instead of playing golf.
The Government’s recent White Paper on social care did not go into detail about where the money would come from to look after an ageing population.
economist Andrew Dilnot had already suggested each of us should cough up between £25,000 and £50,000, capped according to means (costing the Government around £2 billion a year, easily found by cancelling foreign aid), but that is too sensible a solution for this Government to grasp.
Instead, some experts want the elderly to lose travel concessions and heating allowances, and pay more tax, even though we have spent our entire lives paying tax and National Insurance at the unavoidable rate, unlike bankers and top businessmen.
David cameron is thinking of appointing a Minister for the elderly, according to Steve Webb, the Pensions Minister. Give me the job, Dave, and ignore the baby boomer-bashers.