so will i be working until i'm 80 then?

[southeastastra]

wouldn't be surprised

unfortunately yes. It is a work till you drop policy that they are all working towards, and not just in this country. They hope it will solve their pension deficit problems.

work til you drop.
They are all the same and have been working to the same end
news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/moneybox/3047272.stm

That is my expectation as well.

i guess i better start picking a career which is based on sitting on my arse alot

yes become an MP

Or become and Exec at one of the privately run, publicly funded organisations that happily pay out millions of taxpayers money in bonuses.

I think the state retirement age should be calculated so that it is roughly 15% of the life of the average person.

At the moment female retirement age is about 60 and female life expectancy is about 80. That is, someone retiring now would expect to be retired for about a quarter of their life - too long in my opinion.

retiring earlier frees up jobs for the younger generation.

yes Maisiethemorningsidecat, that sounds like the banks. We pay them to tell us how indispensable they are.

claig I am surprised to see you taking such a statist view of the economy.

Older people are just as capable as youngsters of being entrepreneurs, of starting companies and creating new jobs. If they earn more then they buy more and provide the demand for other jobs too.

There is no fixed number of jobs.

longfngernails - good point. In the not too distant past most men retired and died about 5 years later.

I think we need to put in a place a 'crawling peg' retirement age that creeps up slowly as life expectancy gradually increases so we all get about 10 years expected pension. It would make the UK pension deficit slowly disappear over about 50 years.

Banks, and Network Rail as was reported on the news. Have these people no shame whatsoever??

I am not anti-state, for some things I want more state. I don't believe in privatising the Royal Mail and the energy companies etc. I think they know that many older people will get ill and there won't be many jobs available for them. I fully expect them to start calling these old people scroungers and then start cutting their benefits. We know that old people mainly vote for one party, and the other party will therefore abandon them and their contempt for them will become more apparent, as slipped out with that Scottish candidate who called his older constituents "coffin dodgers".

haven't heard about Network Rail. Missed that one, was watching Wimbledon.

Raising the retirement age to 66 will be unpopular but pretty uncontroversial, I think. Everyone agrees on the basics (people are living longer, the nation is bust, there is a massive black hole in our pension provision). The only dispute is when the raise is done.

The really controversial bit is companies not being able to impose compulsory retirement on people. That presumably means if they want to fire them they have to pay redundancy money, which could be very expensive, especially as redundancy is usually calculated based on length of service. You might get people unnecessarily holding on for the payout. I can't really see a good solution to this. I don't think you should be able to force people to retire if they don't want to, but at the same time if they are not up to the job because of age then it is a bit unfair all of a sudden to lump employers with this very costly extra requirement.

Move to greece - you can still retire there under 65 whilst the rest of europe **ing works for it - great!"

they will find ways to prove that the older workers are no longer fit for the job. Things like putting their office on the top floor and making sure the lifts don't work.

claig I don't think it will be a problem for any business big enough to have a top floor sufficiently high!

The biggest impact will be on small businesses.

Tesco could eat the cost of the extra redundancy bills, but a small greengrocer might not be able to.

Also this is one issue where many men are in a worse position than women.

It is much harder to do manual labour jobs into your late 60s than office based work - which disproportionately affects men.

Also men have lower life expectancy than women. At the moment they have a higher retirement age too though that is being equalised.

Generally I think there needs to be a big push on retraining later in life. Too many people lose their jobs in their 50s and just can't find alternative work.

There are areas of the country where the average life expectancy is far, far lower than 80. Parts of Glasgow have an average life expectancy for men of around 55.

Many, many people spend the last 20 years of their lives in very poor health. It's not as simple as is being made out.

there won't be many jobs available. Globalisation will destroy what was available for the masses. Jobs will shipped over to the third world, where labour is cheaper.

I expect life expectancy to drop. The virtues of GM food will be extolled.

my mum did in her late 60s i think the age of life expectancy is dropping too

SuziKettles What do you suggest then?

I am a huge fan of localism and decisions being made at local level but even I wouldn't want the state retirement age set locally.

And even in the poorest parts of Glasgow I bet the life expectancy has increased hugely.

died not did (sorry mum)