Emma Soames Suddenly, pensions are so hot a topic that everyone is piling in with big ideas. It’s a pity they didn’t do it earlier. Most people approaching retirement are having hastily to reconsider their timing, while some three million have not retired at all or have gone back to work. We are living through a perfect storm and nowhere is feeling the effects of decades of bad decisions and a sudden economic recession more than long-term savings and pensions.
It may not feel like this, but if you bought an annuity before the beginning of this year, you are one of a generation who will be regarded as wreathed in luck and showered with gold.
It isn’t really very surprising given our increased lifespan. In 1950 the average length of life after 65 was 12 years, now it’s 19 years and rising; half of the babies born in 2009 will live to see their 100th birthdays, which will bring 35 years of life after 65. Voting patterns in the next election will be affected by the way in which political parties pitch their policies on pensions, retirement ages and long-term care.
The Pensioners Convention may be on to a good idea when it suggests a universal state pension at a much higher rate: certainly older people will like the idea.
But if the state pension were much higher than it is now, how old would we have to be before we could collect it and how many benefits would be abolished to fund it? The NPC has suggested it could all come out of increased National Insurance payments, but these are already going to be increased to pay for our care in old age under new Government plans. Above all, where does this leave our children and grandchildren who, let’s face it, will end up footing the bill?
The relationship between the very old and the very young is gloriously celebrated in Up, the latest film from Pixar. In contemporary society we have ignored or largely forgotten the powerful bonds that tie these two extreme ages together as families have fragmented and so few grandparents live with their grandchildren.
The stars of the film are Mr Frederickson, a beautifully realised curmudgeon (voiced by Ed Asner) and a nine-year-old boy, Russell, all enthusiasm, innocence and energy, who relentlessly ignores the old man’s attempts to push him away. Frederickson is mourning his beloved wife and all the lost opportunities of his past. Russell is the victim of an absent father and a distracted mother. The film is based on an emotional truth just as valid but infinitely less recognised and less commercial than boy meets girl. It wrings your heart watching them together.
Apart from the memorable image of a house held aloft by thousands of helium balloons, and moments of high comedy, it is a truly brave and unexpected film to come out of Hollywood. In a world where Arlene has to give way to Alesha, and the old are considered a burden rather than an asset, the subject of Up is really unfashionable and I am not surprised that marketing the film was difficult. In the end Pixar had to rely on word of mouth about its magic qualities.
I don’t know what long-term good can come of Up, but it proves the insanity of an age in which, sadly, visiting granny and grandpa is not regarded as important and many small children do not know any old people. Do not miss this film.
I read that the dinner party is fashionable again. God help us all! Just because we can no longer afford to eat out six nights a week surely does not mean that people have started asking half the neighbourhood to dress up to watch one of their number have a nervous breakdown.
I hoped that the road accidents masquerading as casseroles, the undrinkable wines, the Mars Bar ice-creams and the horrendous bores next to whom one was pinioned in a window seat were all confined to the rubbish bin of the Seventies.
Without the lure of TV cameras in Come Dine with Me, surely no one gives dinner parties like that any more. Entertaining at home has moved on to something less structured, something much more fun and stylish. It’s called having friends round to supper in the kitchen and, put like that, I do it all the time.