"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.”
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"?
"New research from the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) suggests firms are much less open to hiring older workers than they are to bringing in younger people." - BBC news website one day ago.
ReplyDeleteI am heartily sick of rich, out-of-touch politicians pontificating to ordinary people about how to live their lives. The Cabinet comprises people for whom the cost of living crisis is personally irrelevant, but that doesn't stop them assuming that they know what's best for everyone else.
Humility is a characteristic that is utterly alien to them because they are convinced that their wealth and status are a result of their own qualities, rather than being the consequence of their privileged backgrounds.
Their resulting arrogance leads them to regard their cronyism, such as all the pandemic contracts handed to their incompetent and already wealthy mates, as a perfectly acceptable way of operating government.
It also leads to their fury when faced with the current wave of industrial action by ordinary workers - such a response is incompatible with any genuine attempt to resolve the grievances of people whose standard of living is being seriously eroded. Instead they resort to the usual Tory tactic when they don't get their own way of moving the goalposts, and consequently wish to tighten up anti-trade union legislation even further to the extent of breaking international law and infringing human rights.
Any objective analysis of this Tory regime must conclude that it exists for the benefit of itself and the privileged class from which it came - not for the welfare of the millions who make up the overwhelming majority of the UK population.