On solving the economic crisis

I set someone the task yesterday of giving me a topic to rant about - 'baths versus showers' was the outcome of that conversation, and I tried valiantly to feel passionately about either but frankly failed. So I'm sorry, this is going to be on something totally different.

We are constantly informed in various television programmes that death is nigh for the majority of us. 'You are what you eat' exists to find clinically obese people to slim down with a diet of ghastly looking vegetable juices and nut roasts, while, 'Celebrity Fit Club' (can never remember if is 'Fit' or 'Fat' in there) rounds up a host of blubbery minor celebs to be put through an 'arduous' training regime to make them lose weight practically before our eyes. While I'm mentioning this programme, can I also mention the ridiculous nature of it: someone who is over twenty stone being set the task of losing three pounds in a week, it isn't exactly much to ask is it. (Another total aside: on 'You are what you eat' recently, a guy lost four stone in eight weeks. That equates to an average of seven pounds a week. If he'd been on 'Celebrity Fit Club' he'd have been told off for losing weight too fast. Huh). A recent episode of the Celebrity Blubber Fest saw one man being informed that he was so overweight, so lacking in nutrients, that the presenter's computer programme had worked out he was actually dead. Which goes to show a few things, including that those packages are totally pointless.

Anyway, this is my point. Every day on the news there is some ghastly story about the increasing rates of, oh I don't know, lesser-spotted cancer of the ear lobe, and how we should all be watching out for it. And yet today, the BBC reliably informs me that a recent study suggests we're all living so long that by the year 2050 retirement age will have to be set at 85years of age.

Yes - that's right. Take a step back and read it again. Your average university graduate (and since by 2050 the government will have worked it so that EVERYONE goes to university) will be working for 64 years. They'll then have two days to look heavenwards, say, phew! I need a rest after that - and promptly get whisked off to a Higher Place. (Anyone who doesn't get rewarded by going to Heaven after working that long, it seems to me the system is a bit screwed).

This is ridiculous. On the one hand, it is apparently a minor miracle any of us make it past forty, and on the other hand we're being punished for living too long. Someone is getting their facts mixed up...

I'd also like to point out a few further problems with people working until they are 85. For one, I would say the majority of new mothers rely on their own parents to help look after the newborn whippersnapper. This wont be possible under legislation to have both mother and grandmother slogging away full-time. Family bonds will break down even further as a result, and nobody will have any time to see the child. We'll breed a new generation of socially inept individuals (and men who will constantly be on the look-out for a 'mother figure' in their girlfriend. That just isn't healthy).

Another issue with this: you'll have a few 95year olds in residential care homes, being looked after by a gang of hip-replaced, incontinent workers who themselves need an afternoon nap just to get through the day.

Here is my solution to the problem. Get rid of all these 'labour-saving devices' that exist in all shops, factories and businesses these days - get everyone employed again. Those that genuinely can't work can of course get benefits, and once you hit 65, as is now, your pension starts popping through the door. If you want to carry on working, by all means go ahead - and no discrimination. This will all have a few effects: one, all those lazy sods who never intend getting a job but prefer to live off the government - well they wont be able to do that anymore and they wont be able to use the excuse there 'are no jobs'. (Maybe, just maybe, there will be an element of 'pride' and 'self respect' creeping back into the country as well). Two, everything will slow down a wee bit, this is true - but that is a good thing. (Refer to post of a few days ago where I asked, 'where did the time go to just stop and smell the flowers?'). Three, with everyone working and everyone paying some portion of tax, the government will have an awful lot of spare money kicking around. This can go towards a few useful things such as, heck, pensions for those over 65. Who on earth wants to spend their entire life on a treadmill?