Good week/bad week

Have this week’s events brought good news or bad for older people?

Director of Policy, Simon Bottery, is dismayed by the riots that swept the country this week; Media and PR officer, Rebecca Law, counts just how many happy returns we may be in store for.

This was a bad week for, well, just about anyone who lives in one of our major cities. The rioting and looting seen in London, Manchester and elsewhere caused despair to those directly and indirectly affected. In Tottenham 89-year-old Aaron Biber saw the barbershop that he'd run for 41 years totally destroyed. Well wishers have since raised £5000 to help him back into business.

As the week progressed it turned into a bad week for some of the rioters too. Swift arrests and sentences saw many, including care workers and teaching assistants, facing the consequences of their actions. In Manchester, 30-year-old Daniel Bell pleaded guilty to stealing a Macmillan Cancer Relief collecting tin from a looted branch of Maplin, an act the judge described as 'the most despicable and contemptible I have had to deal with all day'.

Despite the gloom, anger and fear, there was some good news to be found: this was a good week for youngsters who have a penchant for birthday parties as the Department for Work and Pensions released figures highlighting that one in three girls and one in four boys born today will live to 100.

Still, the good news does bring with it more than just the issue of how to fit 100 candles on the birthday cake: Gordon Burns would have a field day with that little Krypton Factor challenge (a joke there, for those of us who are a slightly further along on our journey to 100).

I don’t mean to rain on the parade but there are some out there who have gone so far as to describe the news as a “time bomb”. It does of course bring with it issues about how we are going to support an ageing population given the current budget deficit and an already pending pensions crisis. Certainly, Andrew Dilnot’s suggestions in his report of 4 July this year already go some way in offering sensible solutions to the future funding of long-term care; so long as the Coalition is prepared to take heed – and action.

Just for a moment though, can’t we do away with the pessimism and just embrace the fact that those born today are over 40 times more likely to turn 100 than those born a century ago? Yes, we’ll need to look at how to ensure that people are not just reaching old age, but a good old age. But just think of the difference the news would have made to those only three generations before us, who counted themselves lucky to reach their fiftieth.

Officials search Whitehall for rest of Iain Duncan Smith's pensions speech to Age UK conference #af11

by Simon Bottery, Director of Fundraising, Policy and Communications

Officials are hunting all over Whitehall for the second half of Iain Duncan Smith's speech on pensions to the Age UK conference yesterday. The Work and Pensions Secretary was supposed to announce a £140 flat rate pension, heavily trailed in that morning's media. But after a promising opening to the speech, the minister simply called for an open debate on pensions reform and sat down. It is now believed that the second half of the speech was blown out of an open taxi window on the way to the conference, or was eaten by the dog, or spontaneously combusted - no one is quite sure.

Sceptics have raised other, unrealistic possibilities for the missing content. Some have said that it was spiked by the Treasury, which still isn't convinced that the proposal will cost nothing (you can see where they're coming from - administration savings are somehow supposed to pay for a 40% increase for most pensioners and a 10% increase for those currently getting the pension credit top up). Others suggest that the Chancellor loves the idea but wants to have a share of the announcement of it.

A shame. As IDS said in the half of the speech he was able to deliver, the current system is so complex that no one knows what they are going to get, which hardly encourages retirement planning. And since a third of those eligible for pension credit don't claim it, the system allows hundreds of thousands of older people to live in poverty needlessly. So the time for reform is long overdue. Looks like we may have to wait just a little longer for that speech to be found before we can see what type of reform the coalition intends.

Independent Age speaks out against the Default Retirement Age

Independent Age was quoted in a Department of Work and Pensions Report titled Review of the Retirement Age: Summary of the Stakeholder Evidence. Perhaps unsurprisingly, we do not support the default retirement age, when there are many healthy older people who want to carry on contributing in the workplace.

No one should be forced into retirement because of their date of birth--that's ageism. Our full position is up on our website here, or you can read the full government report here. (It's 61 pages--we're on page 44 and page 58.)