Tuesday, July 1, 2008
IT USED to be the cue for collecting your free bus pass and spending more time pruning the roses.
But in an era of improved healthcare, wonder drugs and longer lives, hitting 65 is no longer synonymous with frailty and sickness.
So what does it mean? At the beginning of December 1965, when he was 22, Mick Jagger approached a microphone in a Los Angeles recording studio and, assuming the persona of a woman hooked on tranquillisers, made an announcement: what a drag it is getting old. Ironic no more! His state pension is ready for collection next month and in December the elderly citizen Keith Richards will join him in some of the other benefits that retirement age has to offer: reduced-price admission to certain entertainments, infrequent respect from the young, uncertain employment opportunities, discriminatory insurance possibilities, lengthy healing periods after regular falls, a creeping feeling that they are now an embarrassing burden on society.
Yet. the spectre of the 65-year-old rock star, so alarming to us when 'Mother's Little Helper' was released in 1966, will soon become a familiar sight. Things are changing; even at the same age, we are younger than our parents were. There is a mood of optimism, and a belated recognition from British government last week that older people have a right to everything available to their children. We have softened our belief that retirement is forced upon us at an arbitrary age. Turning 65 is not the thing it was when we were young.
Although the name is outdated, the welfare state is better able to look after us than it was when it was founded in 1948. We can detect cancer earlier, we immunise, we don't suffer plagues any more. Even the categories 'elderly' and 'old' don't mean what they did a century ago. Now we have the 'third age' and the 'fourth age', and more educated views on what benefits older people can bring to the workforce and family life, even as we continue to deny them fundamental human dignities. For instance, in the past 35 years, the population of the United Kingdom aged over 65 has grown by 31 per cent, from 7.4 to 9.7 million, and the Office for UK National Statistics predicts this figure will double in the next 20 years and treble in the next 30. We now know that nothing actually happens at the age of 60 or 65 to prevent anyone participating in extreme sports or attending gigs performed by people they went to school with. Last month the burdens we have to bear were the focus of a conference organised by Help The Aged in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament in London. I sat at a table where men and women in their seventies and eighties spoke of defeating ageism, of endless problems on public transport, of mixed-sex hospital wards and being confined to their rooms in care homes. In the other nation, growing older is "primarily about loss: of work and the stimulation it offers; of income and the needs it can meet; of health; of friends and loved ones; and of dignity". When the meeting was over, Help the Aged's newest Spotlight Report, its annual survey, was presented to MPs. The ICM survey of 1,000 people aged 65 and over found almost a quarter would sometimes not heat a bedroom or living room because of the cost; 10 per cent said they were always or often lonely; for all the talk of silver surfers, more than 70 per cent had never used the internet. The report also found that more than half believed they were discriminated against because of their age.
Recent campaigns by Help the Aged and Age Concern might have had some effect. The best news may be that the elderly are not a passive, disorganised group any more. In her new book, Not Dead Yet, Julia Neuberger issues a "manifesto for old age", a call to arms with such chapter titles as "Don't treat me like I'm not worth repairing" and "Don't assume I'm not enjoying life, give me a chance".
Observer
But in an era of improved healthcare, wonder drugs and longer lives, hitting 65 is no longer synonymous with frailty and sickness.
So what does it mean? At the beginning of December 1965, when he was 22, Mick Jagger approached a microphone in a Los Angeles recording studio and, assuming the persona of a woman hooked on tranquillisers, made an announcement: what a drag it is getting old. Ironic no more! His state pension is ready for collection next month and in December the elderly citizen Keith Richards will join him in some of the other benefits that retirement age has to offer: reduced-price admission to certain entertainments, infrequent respect from the young, uncertain employment opportunities, discriminatory insurance possibilities, lengthy healing periods after regular falls, a creeping feeling that they are now an embarrassing burden on society.
Yet. the spectre of the 65-year-old rock star, so alarming to us when 'Mother's Little Helper' was released in 1966, will soon become a familiar sight. Things are changing; even at the same age, we are younger than our parents were. There is a mood of optimism, and a belated recognition from British government last week that older people have a right to everything available to their children. We have softened our belief that retirement is forced upon us at an arbitrary age. Turning 65 is not the thing it was when we were young.
Although the name is outdated, the welfare state is better able to look after us than it was when it was founded in 1948. We can detect cancer earlier, we immunise, we don't suffer plagues any more. Even the categories 'elderly' and 'old' don't mean what they did a century ago. Now we have the 'third age' and the 'fourth age', and more educated views on what benefits older people can bring to the workforce and family life, even as we continue to deny them fundamental human dignities. For instance, in the past 35 years, the population of the United Kingdom aged over 65 has grown by 31 per cent, from 7.4 to 9.7 million, and the Office for UK National Statistics predicts this figure will double in the next 20 years and treble in the next 30. We now know that nothing actually happens at the age of 60 or 65 to prevent anyone participating in extreme sports or attending gigs performed by people they went to school with. Last month the burdens we have to bear were the focus of a conference organised by Help The Aged in the shadow of the Houses of Parliament in London. I sat at a table where men and women in their seventies and eighties spoke of defeating ageism, of endless problems on public transport, of mixed-sex hospital wards and being confined to their rooms in care homes. In the other nation, growing older is "primarily about loss: of work and the stimulation it offers; of income and the needs it can meet; of health; of friends and loved ones; and of dignity". When the meeting was over, Help the Aged's newest Spotlight Report, its annual survey, was presented to MPs. The ICM survey of 1,000 people aged 65 and over found almost a quarter would sometimes not heat a bedroom or living room because of the cost; 10 per cent said they were always or often lonely; for all the talk of silver surfers, more than 70 per cent had never used the internet. The report also found that more than half believed they were discriminated against because of their age.
Recent campaigns by Help the Aged and Age Concern might have had some effect. The best news may be that the elderly are not a passive, disorganised group any more. In her new book, Not Dead Yet, Julia Neuberger issues a "manifesto for old age", a call to arms with such chapter titles as "Don't treat me like I'm not worth repairing" and "Don't assume I'm not enjoying life, give me a chance".
Observer