Tony Watts points out that Britain has latent economic power beyond the university.
Tony writes a regular newsletter for older folk (like me). My blogs this morning have been about tapping into younger rigour, but here’s Tony’s thoughts posted early!
New stats from ILC UK show that the UK economy is missing out on a potential £109 billion by not doing more to help more older people into employment.Tap into just one half of that, and the Chancellor’s purported £50 billion black hole disappears.
Achieving that, of course, will be like turning a tanker around, as it will need a major shift in attitudes amongst employers as well as sensible levels of support and incentives from the Government. But when the alternative is higher taxes, and hunting down odd wodges of money stuffed down the back of various sofas, surely it’s worth pursuing?
In related news, the House of Lords is to look at plans to bring unused pension funds and death benefits into the scope of inheritance tax; we also discover the cost of next year’s State Pension rise… and it appears that half of people heading towards retirement don’t actually know how much they’ve saved.
Also in the headlines today: UK care home deals hit a record high, indicating that investors see the sector as a growing market offering good returns. An ageing society is not all bad news for the economy…
Scientists, meanwhile, have been unravelling the mystery of the way our brain ages.
And that’s probably enough excitement for one week. I’m off to Birmingham to talk about why the nation can’t afford NOT to start ageing more healthily. Have a great weekend.
More about Tony and Age Action
Tony Watts OBE, Editor info@theageactionalliance.org
Henry – you are just a youngster. Don’t classify your self as old before your time!
“not doing more to help more older people into employment” the problem with this of course is that the helping people into employment quickly leads to an economy where people are compelled to work if they want to survive. This is exactly the same argument put forward 40+ odd years ago to “encourage women back into the workforce” giving women “the right to work”. All that’s got us is to a situation where a family with children require both parents to work regardless of whether they’d rather one of them stays at home to raise their children. Choice has been completely removed from most people. The result 40 years later is that with both parents working yields same standard of living that my parents had with one person working. Lifestyles don’t improve because more people work, it just leads to an economy where people are paid less in real terms. The compulsion to work in the name of choice then falls most heavily on those at the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum.
Thanks Oldie and Peter Wilson. I feel older than I am but am rejuvenated by Peter’s comment and Oldie’s compliment.