Statistics have recently been released showing the average age of the population at 79.9 years and the average age for good health at 68.7 years. This means that our life expectancy at 65 is 15 years, not the 20 to22 years, we are all being told incessantly, also we can expect on average only three and a half years of healthy living.
This contradicts all the hype on living longer so work longer, changes to retirement age just reduce the healthy time we can enjoy it or deny us it altogether, of course it saves the State money and gets extra tax and NI revenue.
We are all living longer, mainly from birth, which increases the chance of reaching 65, but after that medical effort is concentrating on improving quality rather than quantity and quite rightly so. There is little point in living to 90 if you don’t know you are.
There is confusion between the increasing numbers reaching 65, that is the population flow and increased longevity. If the numbers double, then the numbers above 80 also double, you are not living longer just your chances of reaching 80 have doubled.
Things like the Flu vaccine, better care, heating, and diet, plus physical and mental activity do reduce death rates, increasing the chances of living longer, but not to the extent we are led to believe and being forced to change our lifestyle to accommodate.
It should be a question of choice and adequate pension provision and planning, not the poverty scrimping at present being practised and not very effectively.
It is not just for pensioners that planning is lacking; the birth rate is at its highest level of some 800,00 births per year, yet we have just discovered that there are not enough primary school places, in fact a shortage of some 25%. It was only a few years ago that we were shutting schools, because of too few numbers of pupils and this is still happening.
Even squirrels store nuts away to survive the winter, perhaps we should elect them instead, they could not do any worse than our successive improvident counterparts.
Surprise, surprise, the Budget offered lots of goodies, which can’t be opened until just before the next general election, do they really believe that we are idiot enough not to realise this. It is the same with the blame game on the previous Government, repeated many times in the speech.
They have had three years to put things right and in spite of all the misery and hardship being experienced by the electorate, things have hardly changed. The budget deficiency has changed little and will not do so, growth is negligible and the Banks absorb all the money poured into them to cover their losses, without lending to improve matters.
In the past, the only way found to recover from a deep recession was to spend, spend, spend; it sounds daft but appears to work, providing you plan carefully, where to spend. We are obsessed with welfare and overwhelmed with its cost, it has got to be reduced, but not by starving its recipients, but in a positive manner.
Get people into work and promote growth, there is a lot needs doing in this Country in infrastructure alone, just replacing worn out Victorian excellence. The billions put into the Banks could have built affordable housing reducing the large housing benefit, which is money wasted and it would have given work to many on benefit and not paying taxes. To be continued.
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