Joyce McMillan: Shameful state of poor elderly

OLD age is not a glamorous subject, but if you feel like spending a rich, quiet and beautiful hour meditating on the very elderly, and their place in our lives, then you might venture along to the Tron Theatre in Glasgow, next week, to see a show called Kin, by performance artist Donna Rutherford.

The show consists mainly of a series of filmed interviews with people in their 40s and 50s about their changing relationships with their ageing parents.

What makes it particularly moving, though, is that it also involves a live element, as Rutherford moves across the stage, gently dealing with all the small paraphernalia of domestic life, arranged on three small tables: the little cups of tea, slices of toast and nicely-buttered scones that are often the currency of caring, towards the end of life.

It’s not something about which we talk much, in our busy lives. Yet almost all of us, at some time, will travel through this passage of small, detailed care with someone we love. We will find it a burden, but also – in some ways – an unexpected joy; and, of course, sooner or later, we will all make that journey for ourselves – if we are lucky, with someone nearby, to care for us in turn.

If you look at this week’s headlines, though, you won’t find a word about the sheer human value of this timeless aspect of human experience. Instead, you will see a series of big, brutal headlines about the “pensions time-bomb” apparently about to burst over many major western economies.

According to the actuaries of the International Monetary Fund, we are all living too long, and expecting too much. And as soon as we reach retirement age, we become a burden, a problem, a public debt catastrophe waiting to happen; small wonder that the same newspapers also show such an uncommon interest in the debate on so-called “assisted suicide”, for people who have become an expensive nuisance to themselves and society.

Now there is no question about the public finance issues raised by the fact that people are living longer. In general, if people live longer, then it makes sense to raise the average retirement age accordingly. And as those born in the 1950s and early 60s will know, the British government has already taken some fairly sharp steps in that direction; women born in 1955, for instance, who could until recently have expected to reach pensionable age in 2015, will now have to wait five extra years, until 2020.

Yet all the same, there’s something both unpleasant and incoherent about the panicky tone of the IMF’s predictions. For one thing, they simply assume that the huge improvements we have seen in health and lifespan will continue into the future; although all around us, we see evidence that growing social inequality, combined with increased alcohol abuse, a mounting obesity crisis, a whole range of lifestyle diseases, and the declining effectiveness of antibiotic drugs, may well lead to a stabilisation or even a decline in life expectancy, over the next half century.

And even more significantly, they seem heavily influenced by the idea that the western “baby boomer” generation, now entering retirement, are all cosseted property millionaires with over-generous pensions, whose expectations need to be sharply reduced.

Yet all the evidence indicates that this is at best a gross generalisation, perpetuated by right-wing thinkers as a pretext for cutting what are already, in most cases, very modest provisions for the elderly. The truth is that some older people are well off, and others are not; and to lump them together as a “privileged generation” is the shabbiest kind of divide-and-rule manoeuvre, designed to provide a pretext for harsh treatment of people who are already often living in shameful poverty, at the most vulnerable time of their lives.

If we want to prepare our society for an age of lengthening lifespans, in other words, then we are going to have to take measures that are far more sensible, humane and creative than anything dreamt of in the IMF’s philosophy.

In the first place, we clearly need a more flexible labour market, in which older people can down-shift their professional commitments, without leaving the world of paid employment altogether.

Then secondly, we need to take a long, hard look at the whole concept of “work” in our society, and to try to find ways of valuing work which has traditionally barely been noticed. Last week, for instance, I heard an estimate that the cash value of childcare provided free by grandparents in the UK could be as high as £4 billion a year.

And given the changing shape of our workforce, the decline in secure paid employment for people of all ages, and the rise in volunteering, we should perhaps be revisiting some long-neglected ideas about social credit or a “citizen wage”, as a universal and non-bureaucratic alternative to our current byzantine system of pensions and benefits.

And finally, we need to move on from a vicious, commodifying cultural climate which ruthlessly judges people on their ability to work single mindedly in a high-powered job for 60 hours a week, while looking at all times as “hot” as George Clooney or Angelina Jolie.

Older people are always going to be marginalised, insulted and misjudged by such an ethic, because the things they have to offer – in terms of wisdom, perspective, love, family time – are much harder to value in cash terms.

Last week, though, at an Easter party, I was privileged to watch, for a while, an woman in her late-80s and a woman in her mid-20s, locked in conversation. “Never let them tell you that you haven’t got time,” said the older one. “If you’re worth anything, you’ll always have time to do the things you really care about.”

And the younger one said: “Thank you,” and leaned forward to give the old lady a big hug, and a kiss; it was one of those moments that only a fool would try to put a price on, but which contains the very stuff of human life, at its most precious.