Jeremy Hunt and Retirement Myths

 

Yes, I know. We all know already that Conservative politicians are out of touch with reality. We all know that they have no idea what life is like for the rest of us and have patronising views of us. Yet a recent quote by Jeremy Hunt reads like that of someone who is either on hallucinogenic substances or simply a charlatan. As the Chancellor of Exchequer for this week at least, Mr Hunt has outlined his fantastic plans - perhaps better described as fantasies - for boosting the British economy. A key component of Mr Hunt's vision is to raise the retirement age to 68 which, says LBC:.. "would add millions into the UK economy, according to Treasury analysis." In addition to this, he wants to entice retired workers back into the workplace.

"He told the Times: "Many of those people who decide to retire in their fifties will have a life expectancy well beyond 80.
That is a very long time in which a rich and happy life could be one in which work plays a very important part.”

Of particular annoyance to me, though, was this gem: "The Chancellor said that life "doesn’t just have to be about going to the golf course" for people in their 50s."

As a retiree myself, and I know that I speak for very many others, I found this quip ignorant, condescending and offensive. He is clearly unaware that many retired pensioners can hardly afford to heat their homes and most retirees certainly could never meet the cost of golf club fees. He obviously thinks that retirees spend their time idly indulging themselves, which is an insult to those retirees who do voluntary work or care for sick relatives. His remarks bear no relation to the nature of retirement life in this country, but they need to be countered because so many of Mr Hunt's ilk believe him to be speaking the truth and confirming their own reactionary prejudices.

Fortunately, Mr Hunt's vapouring has drawn criticism from a number of sources. One surprising voice of dissent is found in The Telegraph, where Tom Haynes raises the obvious objection that most retirees are not working for health reasons. As he says: 

"Half of over-50s who have dropped out of the workforce are jobless because of long-term sickness or disability, new analysis shows, in a blow to Jeremy Hunt’s ambitions to lure more of this group back into employment."

These figures, please note, are given by the Office of National Statistics (ONS). Mr Hunt clearly did not think it worth consulting any relevant data.

Nor did Mr Hunt allow for subjective factors. Many retirees would not consider returning to work if it meant going back to their old jobs. Why, for instance. would a policeman or NHS worker who has been assaulted while doing their jobs wish to return, after events that could have traumatised or even disabled them? I know that these will be dismissed as extreme examples, but that is the point: many retired people have left jobs that became increasingly unpleasant over the years, were grateful to escape from them and would never consider going back.

An added factor that I encountered in my latter years of teaching was the fact that many headteachers and other senior staff were overly keen to be rid of older staff. They knew they had legal restraints, but it was quite plain what their intentions were in their dealings with staff over 50. I remember being asked bluntly by one head (no names) in a personnel interview: "When are you going to retire?". Other modes of pressure included monitoring and questioning the sick absences of school staff. As the same head said to me: "Older staff have high rates of sickness absence". Other, more unpleasant forms of "persuasion" to get older staff to leave include giving them difficult classes and failing to properly support them with violent or abusive pupils. That did not happen to me, but I know it to have happened. At least one Local Education Authority(LEA) I knew of had very few teachers over 55. There were other methods, of course, and I have no doubt that similar things happen in other occupations and industries. Mr Hunt should take note: why should retired workers try to return to workplaces that only recently wanted to be rid of them?

This badly thought-out initiative will founder for the reasons above and also the fact that even retired people who want (or need) to return to work are not being given incentives, such as an alternative career structure. As The Telegraph article says:

"Kim Chaplain, of the Centre for Ageing Better, a charity, said many of the retirees highlighted by the data were “currently stuck within, or outside, of an employment support system that does not work for them.”

These are my thoughts, but, perhaps I should not have been surprised. Mr Hunt has a reputation that goes before him. Back in 2019, the Scottish National Party (SNP) drew up a list of Hunt's 10 greatest mistakes. After some thought, I insert them here, as printed in The National:

"In 2005, Hunt co-authored a paper calling for the NHS to be dismantled and replaced by a personal health accounts system.
In 2009, he was forced to repay £9500 for falsely charging taxpayers on his expenses to kit out his ‘second home’.
In 2010, Hunt accused innocent football fans of hooliganism – suggesting they played a part in the death of the 96 people at the Hillsborough disaster – he was forced to apologise to the city of Liverpool the families of those killed.
In 2012, Hunt called for the abortion limit to be halved from 24 weeks to 12 weeks – a view described as "insulting to women" by medical professionals.
In 2018, Jeremy Hunt breached anti-money laundering rules for failing to declare a multi-million pound purchase of seven luxury flats.
Last year, a group of leading health professionals won the right to sue for Hunt’s "backdoor privatisation of the NHS".
In 2019, Jeremy Hunt said he agreed "150%" with a tweet from Donald Trump that described London as "Londonistan" under Mayor Sadiq Khan.
Last month, Jeremy Hunt has suggested that he will block any future independence referendum regardless of the outcome of the Scottish Parliament elections in 2021.
As health secretary Hunt ran the NHS – forcing junior doctors to go on strike for the first time in 40 years, while the British Red Cross declared a "humanitarian crisis" in 2017 following record-low A&E waiting times."

The SNP said that Hunt had a "track record of extreme views, dodgy dealings and ministerial failings".

Did this qualify him for the post of Chancellor of the Exchequer?

Competition Time!!! - as you can see, the book cover featuring Jeremy Hunt is titled "Greatest People"? Can you think of a word to replace "People"?

Prince Harry and Unintended Consequences

 

During the Brexit Referendum (and since) opinions in the UK divided into two main camps: Leavers and Remainers. The whole Harry/Meghan/Royal family saga has split us three ways into three broad based camps: pro-Harry and Meghan, anti- Harry and Meghan and those of us who are sick to death of the whole matter and wish it would end.

With reservations, I align with the latter body of opinion. To me, it is little more than yet another welcome distraction for the Conservative government, who must be delighted at seeing us argue about the merits and demerits of a wealthy family washing their dirty linen in public - and the world's public at that. Such acrimony deflects attention from government handling of the economy and so much else. My only reservations lie in the fact that Harry has not thought out the full consequences of his recent book publication for himself and others. However, while I refuse to take sides in what should be a private affair between families, the fact that the right-wing tabloids have declared themselves so openly against Harry and his wife does inspire some sympathy in me for the royal couple. Anyone that the Daily Mail vilifies in over ten pages in one issue can't be all bad. There is nothing new about this antipathy. It dates back to the tabloid fury over the interview the couple gave to Oprah Winfrey back in 2021. As James O'Brien has said on LBC several times, this is the same press that lied about Brexit, defended Boris Johnson and vilified asylum seekers.

All well and good, and, as all of us who watched the Tom Bradby interview with Harry on ITV know, the prince makes repeated attacks upon the British press for their negative reporting of his wife. Some of these attacks, such as that made by Jeremy Clarkson, are exercises in vileness and I don't blame Harry for being angry about that. Having said that, I believe that he deserves criticism for a number of things he said, without (apparently) thinking of the consequences. 

For someone who considers himself to be a victim of a hostile press, he has placed his neck squarely between their eager jaws.  The very fact that Harry is seen to be betraying his family by revealing so many deeply personal secrets has made him an easy and, I think, justifiable to some extent, target for attack. And the tabloids have seized upon this move by Harry with a relish:

King Charles pleaded with his warring sons William and Harry not to make his 'final years a misery' at meeting following death of Prince Philip;
Harry called his therapist before his wife Meghan after being 'knocked to the floor' by his brother;
Duke of Sussex claims William and Kate told him to wear a Nazi uniform to a fancy dress party;
Princes Harry and William refer to each other as 'Willy' and 'Harold';
King Charles allegedly told Harry's mother Princess Diana on the day that he was born: 'Wonderful! Now you've given me an heir and a spare – my work is done".

All this is a family matter, but the most serious consequences could flow from Harry's claim that he killed 25 Taliban during his service in Afghanistan. I was initially surprised at how Harry could be so precise about the numbers he killed, but, as The Guardian says: 
"Harry writes that “in the era of Apaches and laptops” it was possible to establish “with exactness how many enemy combatants I had killed. And it seemed to me essential not to be afraid of that number. So my number is 25. It’s not a number that fills me with satisfaction, but nor does it embarrass me.”

This revelation drew condemnation from a wide variety of people - from senior military and ex-military figures in the UK to the Taliban themselves. The Guardian again:

"The retired army veteran Col Tim Collins, best known for delivering a rousing speech before the start of the Iraq war in 2003, said the prince’s kill-count talk was crass and “we don’t do notches on the rifle butt”.

According to Sky News, a Taliban spokesperson said:

"Responding to revelations in Harry's new memoir that he killed 25 Taliban fighters, Anas Haqqani, a senior aide to the interior minister, tweeted: "Mr Harry! The ones you killed were not chess pieces, they were humans; they had families who were waiting for their return."

Now, of course, the Taliban's condemning Harry for what they claim elsewhere as a war crime, is rather like having a major bank robber condemn a man or woman for shoplifting. But they do have a point, even if it is rather blunt and ineffectual - not to mention disgustingly hypocritical.

Now, as we know, Harry has been most put out by the accusations of boasting made against him on this issue. As the BBC says:

 

"The prince has been criticised for discussing killings in Spare, with some military figures saying it was wrong to refer to the dead as "chess pieces". But on US TV, Harry accused the press of taking his words out of context and said the spin endangered his family."

I am trying to be charitable here, but I marvel at Harry's apparent surprise. I find it very difficult to believe that the Prince and his advisers were unable to foresee the reaction that has ensued. By his claim in the book, boasting or not, he has not only endangered his and his family's safety, but also just about any major (or minor) military personality who fought in Afghanistan. Kevin Maguire, associate editor of the Daily Mirror, posted this image on Twitter:

 Maguire thought this in slightly bad taste, but I'm not too sure. The Taliban will studiously avoid sending their own operatives on a revenge mission - but that won't stop their sympathisers.

So, what's the prime motivation behind Harry's actions? Well, the respected writer, Yasmine Alibhai Brown has said that she sees Harry as a "hurt little boy", and, indeed, while watching the Tom Bradby interview on ITV, there did seem something childlike about the candour of Harry - or was it the outpourings of a patient to his therapist? There is, I believe, another prime motivation.

 As Hello magazine puts it:

"In figures released by the book's publisher, Penguin Random House, it was revealed that the memoir had broken their personal record largest first-day sales total for any nonfiction book in its history, with nearly one and a half million copies being shifted across the United Kingdom, United States and Canada".

Cash registers are singing, not ringing, and as The Standard says:

"The book is part of a three-title deal worth £36.8 million, and the Duke was reportedly paid an £18.4m advance for the three books. Penguin Random House did not disclose financial terms but noted that Harry will be donating his profits to charity – though it’s not been confirmed whether this includes his sizable advance, and is believed to relate to royalties".

The Book of Ecclesiastes in the Old Testament, 10:19 says that "money answereth all things" and it is not difficult to discern another motive for this book's having been written.

Whether we discern monetary motives or not, there are two final unforeseen consequences that could well flow from Harry's decision to reveal so much of his family's trauma.

The first is the fact that this matter has, for the very first time to my knowledge, led to the anti-monarchist pressure group, Republic being quoted in the national media. In fact, the group sees Harry as a possible anti-monarchist campaigner. As they say on their website:

"Campaigners have today called on Prince Harry to step up and call for the abolition of the monarchy, following comments he made about the damaging impact of growing up as a royal.
Graham Smith, speaking for the group Republic, said today:
"Harry is clearly not interested in the royal life, and wants a better upbringing for his children than the one he was given by Charles."
"When he quotes Meghan saying 'You don’t need to be a princess, you can create the life that will be better than any princess', that's a democratic, republican sentiment. That's a call to bring the monarchy to a close."

The second, and final, consequence lies in what may happen to the Royal children, be they of Wills and Kate, or Harry and Meghan. Both sets of children, be they in London or California, will have to grow up with the fallout of these revelations. They could (very) well become targets of insults and abuse. They may go to the most exclusive schools, but their lives could be made a misery. Rich kids can be every bit as nasty as their poorer contemporaries.

Now, why did no-one think of that?