Still at the golf course? Worklessness among the over-50s hasn’t budged since Jeremy Hunt told them to put down their putters and get back to the office.
The latest figures show that 3,622,000 people aged 50 to 64 were economically inactive – neither working nor looking for work. That is up by more than 300,000 since the start of the pandemic.
This is despite the former Chancellor’s efforts to encourage more 50-somethings to return to work, saying life ‘doesn’t have to be about going to the golf course’.
I work three days a week. As of September that will reduce to two. I have enough coming in with bits and pieces of pension, plus a small legacy, to not need to grind away full time. I suspect that many of those on the golf course are in the same situation. If we are financially independent without having to work, why should we? Maybe people on the golf course are happier and more contented and don’t want to go back to the daily grind. If they don’t need to, why should they?
The chancellor can fuck off. We aren’t the property of the government and we don’t owe it anything. Besides, if they do work, Reeves and her grasping colleagues will just steal what they earn anyway.
A lot of my drivers are in their 50s. Taxation is the biggest disincentive, and they don’t do more than they have to.
You (and I) obviously do not have the the ‘correct’ attitude. We are collectively the modern day serfs being farmed for our taxes. Depriving the Government of its funding is obviously ‘wrongthink’.
Thank goodness they have not found a way to make employment compulsory.
What you get to keep for your efforts is obviously a major consideration but so is a lot of the modern regulations and workplace culture for me.
As a retired nurse why would I want to work for a medical organisation that insists on denying basic biology (eg women with a penis etc) or any of the DEI nonsense. Almost all of my ex colleagues who can have bailed because of this bollox and at the earliest opportunity. The same has been happening in the police, education, armed forces, fire services and so on.
Westminster has aided and abetted the growth of ‘woke’ in the workplace thereby creating an environment that is hostile to common sense and reality. If Reeves wants older (ie experienced and conscientious) people back in the workplace she will have to roll back much of what has passed for social ‘progress’ over the last 20 years or so.
Until then people will vote with their feet and the golf course, motorcycle (in my case), workshop, garden, countryside, camera and simply taking the time to smell the flowers will remain infinitely more attractive.
As I understand it, my erstwhile employer – Network Rail – is pretty awful in that respect. They made me redundant in 2003 and I’ve been self employed ever since (a short stint at Sainsbury’s excepted and that gave me a hint of what was happening a decade ago), so none of this affects me.
I’m not rich but I pretty much have everything that I need so why would I want to go back to work? Certain modern practices had been creeping into our workplace too. It was starting to make it a toxic environment for an old git like me. At first I started looking for employment elsewhere but as time went on I started planning my retirement and then I got out. Life is so packed full of stuff to do now I don’t know how I’d find time to go back to work anyway. Swimming, piano practice, garden, woodwork projects, no golf though.
I was medically retired when i was 55. It wasn’t that the work was hard it was the fucking awful management that made my life a misery. Work was destroying my health. After i left work my money dropped but my health improved.I vowed never to be put in the position again. I have done some casual work doing invigilation and christmas post just to keep me busy and know i could just walk away if i felt like it. I’m just glad that i had the financial resources not to go back to f/t work.
Besides, if they do work, Reeves and her grasping colleagues will just steal what they earn anyway.
But that makes no sense – there is no Laffer curve!
/s
You are Dick Murphy and I claim my £5.
Why do government bods think that what I do with my time is any of their business anyway? If someone in their fifties is on unemployment benefits I can understand it being the government’s business. If someone has sorted out their finances to the point that they no longer need to work then that is nobody’s business but their own.
Because the people attracted to being in government think that having a university degree qualifies them for telling the rest of us how to live our lives. The reality is that they are low IQ narcissistic, sociopathic parasites with a complete absence of morality or integrity.
I suspect that Osborne, and the rest of them since, thought they could import new workers, whose Tax and NI would pay for our pensions (given that there’s no hypothecation and that governments of all hues just spaff what they take, straight up the wall in the same year as they collect it.
They might just be realising that the illegals don’t work at all, and many of the legals are working cash in hand so no tax paid. (My delivery guys, just as an example, will never ring my doorbell because it’s also a camera and they are terrified of being filmed working. So they appear at my door like muggers – hoodies pulled tight round their head, face down, hammer on door with fist and run like the wind.
So nothing collected as revenue – just more benefits to pay.
As if no one could’ve predicted that…..
Interesting, that would explain a lot. I sometimes wonder why they don’t see the obvious doorbell and when I get to the door they’re already at their car perhaps pointing at the parcel on the doorstep.
I’ve cut back on overtime significantly. I barely do any now.
Why?
Because there’s more to life than work and the tax take is crazy. I already pay loads in tax and the amount they take means it isn’t worth it for me to do an extra shift.
So the shifts go unfilled and the economy suffers just that little bit (lost production, lost output).
I’m not the only one either.
What is known to the cognoscenti as “Going Galt”.
One definition of slavery is working but not retaining or enjoying the fruits of your labour. Work hard, get taxed into the ground and the government donating the tax money to “refugees” and their extended families who will neither work nor want fits that definition.
So why bother? Do the bare minimum to get by and no more is my approach to the system. I’ve gone Galt.
It’s not work that is the problem, and I doubt if a single one of these “shirkers” wouldn’t happily continue. After all, you do need money to live and who objects to earning money?
But increasingly, “woke” or however it’s described is the millstone, the soul destroying dead weight that can turn even the most interesting and fulfilling employment into a nightmare.
And it’s not just the plethora of asinine and patronising “initiatives” and the resulting sludge, sensible employers can still be fairly pragmatic about this. A sort of “you pretend to work, we’ll pretend to pay you” understanding. The issue is younger people – who can’t really see and genuinely mean well – (and I don’t really hold it against them as they have been immersed in this lunacy pretty well all their lives).
You try to mentor but they make it such hard work and they can’t even begin to understand my position. If you’ve ever had the experience you’ll know exactly what I mean.
I’m pretty lucky as I’ve not had to do very much of this and my job is such – or perhaps my employer – that the limited interacting I do is nearly all with people closer to me in age and experience.
I still like what I do and the hybrid arrangement I have suits rather well.
But, first hint of a change and I’ll be joining you, quicker than der sturmer can say “it’s not my fault”!
When the ashtrays disappeared from the workplace, so did I. No smoke, no work.
Every time some politician says I need to be a tax slave again, Kiplings ‘Chant-Pagan’ rattles through my brain.
Me that ‘ave been what I’ve been –
Me that ‘ave gone where I’ve gone –
Me that ‘ave seen what I’ve seen –
‘Ow can I ever take on
With awful old England again,
Stuff ’em. They only waste the money on foreign wars and immigrants anyway.
In the last 24 years I’ve paid over £472,000 in tax and employees NI contributions. I’m relatively well paid, but no millionaire. If the government thinks I’m working for a second longer than I have to, they can fuck the fuck off.
Just imagine if that £472,000 was in your pension pot … What have you or the Government got to show for it? Instead you (and everyone else) has ?SFA to show for it.
Can’t see it getting any better any time soon.