Not quite an ‘older person’ – but getting close

So yesterday was International Day Of Older People – 1st October. I had to google (other search engines are available) whether at 59 years and 2 months I qualified or not. Not yet was the answer – the usual age bracket starts at 65. I think I was relieved and then I got AI to age my website photo by 5 years and this was the result. Not too shabby if that turns out to be true. Can’t imagine I’ll have a beard though.

Anyway unless you’re living under a stone you will have noticed that older people have featured in the news quite a lot this week. Every political party I can recall over the last 5-10 years has described the ‘pensions triple lock’ as unsustainable. Burnham is the first to both then propose an alternative model which looks to me like a 2 1/2 lock but a fairly modest adjustment that will save billions over the coming years as we continue to age as a population. In that context and really because everyone knows it has to change I suspect the current furore will soon pass.

It is though an interesting case – pensioner poverty for some (many) is real but as a group we fare much better than younger people. So the change and attempt to address some of the intergenerational inequity i perhaps as symbolically important as it is financially astute.

Of course what is really unsustainable economically is industrial scale tax avoidance by corporations and billionaires.

The apocalyptic summer seems now to have passed although here we are in October and I’m about to walk the dog in shorts and a tee shirt having just applied sun screen. Yet another gift we are bequeathing our younger generations is trying to avert the climate catastropes that we all know are coming but are wilfully ignoring. I don’t know whether we have gone beyond a tipping point or not – but none of this looks or feels ‘normal’ and we still have the El Nino effect to come. So yes I understand my own hypocrisy having pointlessly used AI to generate an image of me that is only moderately amusing at best.

Mind you if some of the tech bros are to be believed AI will wipe us all out before the climate disaster does.

We also lived through anther depressing summer of racism dominating the news agenda – whether it’s the hounding to death of a young black academic, to vile chants about the desired deaths of migrants at sea to increasing racist and anti-semitic violence within our communities. Of course all of this has helpfully knocked off the news agenda the talk about Farridge (the Bin Beater) and his £5m…..

In all of this one of the mot powerful things I read was Lee Jasper’s Substack post following Jamaica’s petition calling on King Charles to open an inquiry into our involvement in the slave trade and as an adjunct the case for reparations.

In my world of work – one cannot but be moved yet again by the published drug death figures in Scotland. Not can I fail but to feel frustrated by the sector’s response about the ‘tragedy’, that all these deaths are preventable and commitments to remain ‘focused’ while calling for increased investment. These are doubtless genuine concerns and the case for resources is obvious. But what was again deafeningly silent was the commitment to do anything different, to challenge their own orthodoxies or operating models, to commit to partnerships that tackle poverty and promote social action. Just continuing to chip away at the edges of a narrowly focused system cannot deliver the changes we need.

In other work related musings – we are coming towards the end of an engagement reviewing a local authorities Homelessness Prevention and Housing Support Programme Strategy where again the interfaces between homelessness, poverty, poor health, inter-generational disadvantage and alcohol and drug use can mix in toxic quantities.

It does mean we’ll have some capacity within the next few weeks to take on some further work – or edge this older person that little bit closer to retirement.

Curiously I have had two conversations with recruiters over the summer about jobs – one permanent and one interim. I hadn’t really thought about being employed again for ages and both were quite tempting in their own ways. I think it was probably the long term effects of sunstroke mind – had a good nights sleep after each and didn’t take either conversation forward.

In a curious way this though elegantly ends the blog where I started. on the cusp.

Not quite an older person…. still got stuff to offer…. still fired up by the state of things but the option of opting out or stepping back seems quite attractive.