Retirement of the 'youth' cult

I'm beginning to wonder exactly what we are supposed to plan for, a long, long old age with constantly fluctuating health and income, or a very short one, worn to the old bones by the final job at the final frontier of our earning capacity. Reports today suggest that by 2025 a third of the UK population will be over 55, larger than the estimated figure for those under 25. By 2025 I shall be 72 and probably won't care, or won't be able to see or hear enough to care. So the chances of us all having safe and well funded retirement pensions is looking a bit grim to say the least. If we all keep dyeing our hair, tucking our tummies and bloating those wrinkles, we'll all look the same anyway. What a thought. Maybe the teenagers and rebels of 2025 will shun their elders and so-called betters and decide that old age is the new look, don walking frames and hearing aids in mock degeneration and call for real wrinkles, greys and shaky bones. Whatever is being said now about pensions is likely to be derelict by that time. Just look at the history of the changes to pensions over the last few decades and see whether you can predict or plan a realistic future based on the behaviour of financial institutions and government schemes so far.

Only a couple of weeks back the media was laughing as one more pop idol from the sixties was granted his UK pension rights. It's hard to look back through the old footage with serious appreciation of his bouncing youth and our equally bouncy excitement, but it's even harder to look forward and consider how daft we all might be going to look with our smooth complexions, wrinkle free necks and unmentionable tucks and lifts. The look of youth does not rest well with apparent memory loss, arthritis, frozen backs and knees and an inability to drive because you can no longer see.

What are we thinking of today? Have we become so sucked into the advertising hype of the beauty market that we can no longer be real about the future, the present or past? It's all getting very confusing. How are we supposed to project a serious plan from this moment in time when we have no idea of real life values? By all accounts, the vast majority of the population cannot afford to pay for a second pension, a private or company scheme, so the state pension is going to have to expand and be paid for somehow. I moot there should be vast taxation on the beauty industry who are trying to sap us of our teeny bits of spare cash to keep us in the mode of everlasting youth and some kind of ego-based insanity. I argue too that the bankers, building society managers and financial agents that have let us down so badly with our savings and pension schemes are sent to boot camp for the socially unacceptable and morally degenerate.

I'm beginning to wonder exactly what we are supposed to plan for, a long, long old age with constantly fluctuating health and income, or a very short one, worn to the old bones by the final job at the final frontier of our earning capacity.