Scargill

Maybe I’m just getting old but I wonder if I’m right to have utterly and totally lost any faith in the British government whatsoever. As if it’s not bad enough that one of their “solutions” to the massive dept that they and what used to be called the “respectable” banking establishment have gotten us into (interestingly when renewing your PASSPORT, people in BANKING are still considered “respectable”), is to suggest that we now work until we’re 70… as if it is not bad enough that having collected massive amounts of data they keep losing it through incompetence almost daily… we now have confirmation (not that we needed it) that fiddling expenses is absolutely the done thing – £25k for home security?  Come off it. Having just read the Saturday Telegraph on the subject – I’m beginning to think we should just take all of our politicians, put them all up against a wall and have them SHOT.

The idea of working until you’re 70 is fine from a government perspective, several years LESS pensions to pay, several years more TAXES to pay… but for one thing – despite medical advances (if you call our persistent inability to handle arthritis and the flu etc  “advancement”)  there remain a lot of issues with employing people at that age – not everyone can settle down to a quiet life at the checkouts… there are not that many jobs around –  in technology-related companies  for example does anyone really think that a software company is going to take on someone at 60 or 65 for any meaningful job? People’s attitudes, desires and needs are very very different in that age-group compared  to for example someone in their 20s or 30s. That might work ok if you’re in charge or in a people-handling position – but have you noticed that most of the leading hi-tech companies employ VERY young people?  Today’s young think nothing of living in and divulging their life history into social networks that most 60+ year-olds have never heard of – and conversation is more likely to be about the latest computer game than the latest statins – I’m just not seeing this working AT ALL.

Any hope we had of pretending that this goverment are actually responsible and capable of looking after the best interests of the nation has long-since gone and we’re left with a bunch of incompetents on the take and we appear for now to be able to do very little about it but sit back and watch Britain PLC go down the toilet.  I’m sure the government was hoping that swine flu would keep us so occupied and even that’s not worked for them.

Wouldn’t it be nice to return to youth when everything seemed much more organised and simple…. it probably wasn’t – it just seemed that way – and bankers really WERE called “merchant bankers”.