One of the joys of the staycation is that you get to see the British as they really are. There, on the beaches of Devon last week, were the masses. The fish, the chips, the lager….
Apart from the insanity (it always strikes me thus on these occasions) of people exposing themselves to unhealthy doses of ultra-violet light from that rarest of things - a British summer’s day – and getting lobster red in the process, I am struck by the tattoos and obesity.
Virtually every male above the age of 45 or 50 seems to have a beer gut of disturbing proportions. It must be a class thing, because returning to the leafy part of London in which I am lucky to live, the bellies seem less swollen.
It is not that working class people are not touched by health issues or don’t care about them. In a former role, I spent quite a bit of time addressing shop stewards about such matters.
There was never such attentive silence as when one showed a power point slide of a human heart damaged by a coronary thrombosis. They care and worry alright – but acting and changing is always hard.
Somehow, seeing Britons in the raw, holidaying in their chalets and caravans, brings home the need to address a wider group of realities when we wax on about the growing desire of people to eschew retirement in favour of longer work lives. For working class people, perhaps in routine or monotonous jobs, struggling harder each year because they have aged badly, this is not the way it is.
Not everyone can look forward to a personally fulfilling job for the next n years during which they will be soldiering on and earning a living. Increasing numbers are encountering health obstacles that may make retirement seem like a blessed relief on the horizon.
An arduous job coupled with a decline in personal fitness and growing health problems would, I venture, cause many, happily carrying the banner of working beyond pension age, to think again. It behoves us to consider the mind set of the man or woman on the prom.
Returning to day to day reality I light upon the Government’s Building a society for all ages, green tinged white paper; “Working longer helps people to have financial security in their later lives,” it proclaims. About half of all those who leave work early do so because of ill health. In a well intentioned, but somehow unconvincing way, the paper promises to seek out ways of organising work to address ill-health as a barrier to working longer.
Heaven knows, we need it. The Government promises to work with the National Endowment for Science Technology and the Arts to find solutions. I am happy to see that, but surely there are enough good examples already for Government to invest real money in an imaginative programme to extend work ability and head off premature decline.
Stop at any motorway service station. Walk along the prom or through the shops at unfashionable resorts, and you can easily see the size of the problem.
A proportion of our population takes exercise, diet and health seriously. Come their 60s, they will have choices: to work or not to work. Another proportion is busy diminishing its own physical resources and so denying itself the possibility of working later.
Government and employers can do a lot, where possible working with the unions too. Until we can get across the message that the things we do today will impact on our life chances tomorrow, how can we really hope to change the ways we live and work?