Dear Jeremy - I am still not going back to work.

[DoorstoManual]

Yours happily retired.

Dear Jeremy,

I'll return to work when the Local authority find a permanent school place for my DD who has SN and I can commit specific hours to an employer.

Please speak to the Education Secretary before you reply with a platitude.

Bonny.

Won't the minimum age be 57 in 2028? Or does that not affect NHS pensions?

I would love to have a part time job that isnt physically demanding or stressful. Sadly that is all I could cope with now. I'm 59, only have experience in a very niche area, I had to give up my registration due to ill health, and no one wants to employ a disabled 59 year old woman whose been out of the job market for over a year, and would need training from the ground up in pretty much anything. And I can't say I blame them, I'm hardly a catch!

Yeah Jeremy, I second this. Who's going to wipe YOUR bot bot for that pittance?

I thought the comment about going back himself was funny but then he lost the plot by bringing in measured that (apart from the doctor/pension thing) don't apply to people like him - and me, and many more of us.

We don't need training or mature apprenticeships. We can work and there are plenty of opportunities for us to walk straight into if we wished to. For many individual reasons we don't want to.

Same!!

Alright Jez?

just wanted you to know I see through this pathetic sham and will never vote Tory in my life. Lucky for you by the time you retire there’ll be a government in power that supports the NHS and makes caring a viable long term profession. PPS: if you were thinking of doing I’m a celeb- I wouldn’t….

Ali85 not if you have special class status. I too can take most of my NHS pension and lump sum at 55 with no penalty. Four years to go although I too, think about jumping ship early every month.

Dear Jeremy

If all the retired people go back to work then who is going to do all the valuable voluntary roles they currently carry out free of charge eg manning the much in demand foodbanks?

Yeah you just come across as quite smug and insulting to those who can't afford to retire.

I'm interested in doing some reading around quantitative statistics - time permitting- to understand more about why he's focusing on this demographic in particular. 'Economically inactive' people are obviously an addition to the talent pool who may for whatever reason have chosen to leave it. But what's happening to the younger demographic, the trades (anyone who's tried to employ a plumber or joiner lately will know what I'm talking about) and the graduate market?

Dear Jeremy,

Go and look after five toddlers simultaneously and then decide if you'd do it for minimum wage.

Hit enter too soon. What about the reasons people have chosen to retire: health, disability, caring responsibilities? How many young graduates are choosing to emigrate (anecdotally, I know of a lot). That's without all the industries, leisure and hospitality in particular not to mention the dying high street) which have suffered as a result of this government's lockdown policies?

Many of the people who have left the workplace for these reasons might justifiably feel they owe the country nothing.

This also smacks of a desperate move by a desperate government.

👏

I'm disappointed that I'm still years off retirement given the unholy mess of the UK HE sector in which I work. The Tories have systematically wrecked higher education.

@BootsTrapBootsTrap

I apologised after seven minutes, once I realised how it could be read, but if you venting at me on an anonymous forum improves your days go for it and knock yourself. Happy to have helped.

I don’t think some of us will ever get to retire. They’ve already raised the age a fair bit from what it originally was for women and keep talking about raising it further.

Give over

Dear Jeremy,

Our local provider is struggling and now will no longer viable due to not enough of a raise in the funding you plan to provide.

The leader, earning not much more than minimum wage will retire as the raise in taxable pension is of no use to her at all.

I suppose I could have stayed in work and outsourced what support I gave my husband who had cancer, daughter and grandchildren who left an abusive man, mum who had dementia and dad who had a stroke. Strangely I preferred to do that myself as much as I was able and no paying job I can think of would have allowed me to do that.

I know I one of thousands/millions? who have caring responsibilites incompatible with paid work. It's not like the government wants to step in and help vulnerable family members like mine.

Didn't he say something about making it harder for disabled people to claim benefits? (I couldn't listen properly because I was driving my grandchildren to soft play, while their mum worked and the teachers were on strike).

It’s now gone up to £10,000 a year from the £4,000.

Pay and the number of opportunities in commercial roles within the SW are lacking. I'm not working for a minimum wage role and I'm not working for the really crap people managers I've had as bosses, who are also so incredibly biased towards younger workers.

Same!! By the time the 30 hours comes in mine will be entitled to the free hours anyway. Is it bad I’m envious of the people who will take advantage of this?

I feel like I’ve missed out on a whole career I could have had if both mine went to childcare full time (we cannot afford this then or now). And I still can’t. I work at night, DH works in the day, I’m part time. I would bloody love a job where I don’t walk in the house at night after being with the youngest all day but I have no other option.

so yeah, I’m happy, but I’m jealous that this won’t make a blind bit of difference to me.

Dear Jez you already raised my bloody retirement age by 7 years . I'm 58 and knackered so you can therefore bog off

I do appreciate that this has the potential to be taken badly, but it is genuinely just for debate rather than to be contentious.

I would also personally very much like the retirement age for women to be 60, and fully accept that the lack of any Government's will to raise it incrementally over the years is also a huge issue, but those issues aside - why shouldn't men and women retire at the same age?

There seems to be such a call for equality, but on this issue equality seems to happily be thrown out the window. (I believe men also statistically die earlier, so if anything it should probably go in the opposite direction, although clearly I won't be campaigning for that.😆)

As I say, speaking personally, 60 would be great - but I certainly couldn't reasonably justify that preference in any way!