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Jayne Dawson: I reckon it's Joan's fault you'll work until you drop
I've decided to blame it on Joan Collins. It's definitely all her fault.
She started it, with her refusal to age at a normal rate and everything.
There she was in the 1950s with her teeny tiny, 10-inch waist and her permed hair, in the 60s with her legs on show and her eyes all doe-like, and in the 70s with everything on show, for they were her saucy films years when she starred, often unclothed, in the screen version of her sister Jackie's racy novels.
By any normal measure it should have ended right there, right then. But no. Joan refused to let it go. She strode on into the shoulder pad years of Dynasty and the 1980s, then she refused to give up her glamour even when, horrors, the Labour Party took control of the country.
So here we are, washed up on the beach of 2010, starting the decade with no credible name, and still Joan won't look old and won't retire. Did I mention she's 77?
Anyway, there she is, constantly popping up on Loose Women, looking good and full of, ooh I don't know, but she's kind of cool these days, isn't she? A sort of very British version of Mae West.
She even popped up on election night, straight from a dinner party, and firmly in the blue corner. Most people think that was a bit strange, Joan doing politics. But not me.
I think Joan has had a huge influence on policy in this country. Specifically, I think Joan is the reason none of us are ever going to be allowed to retire.
Face
It's her face that does it. Not since Cleopatra has a woman's face had such an influence on the affairs of a nation. You might not think so, but I'm here to tell you you're mistaken.
Because Joan sums up a whole generation of non-ageing. Joan, I am prepared to argue, is the reason we are all having our pensions snatched away from us in such a sneaky manner.
Politicians look at her, and all the non-ageing celebrities who followed her, and feel emboldened to argue that we are all so youthful for so long these days that it would be a punishment to make us retire at those unreasonably early ages set post-war.
In those days, they say, a woman of 60 was a crumbling wreck of a thing, destroyed by years of childbirth, floor scrubbing and pinny-wearing. As for her husband, he barely managed a weekend down at the allotment after his retirement on the Friday aged 65, before he conveniently died and saved us all some cash.
But not now, they say. Now everyone wants to work. In fact, it would be robbing us of our rights, it would be an affront to natural justice if we weren't all allowed to use our continuing youth and vigour to go to work.
Look at Joan Collins, they might as well be saying. And Sophia Loren, and Madonna, and Clint Eastwood – he's still directing films aged 80. And Melvyn Bragg – he's still got a lovely luxurious bouffant aged 70.
But I don't know about that... I think the film star analogy is more with John Mills in Ice Cold in Alex, You know, where he's staggering across a desert, parched, dying. There's cool, cool lager somewhere in the distance, if only he can hold on until he gets there… that's what a pension is beginning to feel like, isn't. Something on the horizon, forever out of reach. A pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Or an ice-cold lager at the other side of the desert.
Every time it looks within grasp, we're told the pension age is rising, or the scheme is closing, or BP– that company in which so may pension pots have an interest – goes and leaks oil all over a wide area of America.
The situation is under review, we're told. Over the next few years the pension age will creep up. By 2016 it will be age 66. For your children it will probably be age 70.
But we're not supposed to be downhearted by that. We're meant to fell lucky. Lucky, lucky, lucky. As lucky as Kylie Minogue that we are gaining the right to work forever. Feels a bit like being given the right to starve, doesn't it?
Of course, workplaces will have to change a bit to accommodate all the oldies. We'll need special comfy chairs to cushion our crumbling hip joints, specially large type to help our failing eyes. We'll need doctors' surgeries to actually open in the evening so we can get our increasing health problems sorted out of working hours.
Because that's the thing about being youthful and vigorous, it doesn't tend to apply to people with a proper job. People who have been at the coalface constantly for more than 40 years don't usually look like Joan Collins. In fact, they often look a bit worn out. They often feel worn out, in need of a rest, a change.
They even, I would go so far as to say, have different needs, expectations and desires to their young selves, the selves who went into work every day over all those decades.
So there is a problem. We're all living longer, and there are fewer young people to earn the money to support the old people.
Things have to change, but let's not pretend it's a good thing; let's not pretend that being allowed to work longer is a joy unconfined. Let's leave the Collins factor out of it – because, just like Joan and her eternal youth, nobody's really fooled.
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Sunday 12 February 2012
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