By Virginia Low

The con­sult­ant der­ma­to­lo­gist whom I recently met qual­i­fied back in the mid 1960s, so he must be much the same age as me. Not that we men­tioned age: apart from journ­al­ists, most people in our cul­ture regard ask­ing an adult’s age as intrus­ive. People are more likely to regard increas­ing age as an embar­rass­ment than a source of pride, at least until they reach 80 and gain the status of hav­ing avoided an early death!

The con­sult­ant came to mind because the over­whelm­ing talk about older people is not about their roles as par­ti­cipants in the paid work­force but as bur­dens on health and social ser­vices, vic­tims of crime, frail and expens­ive lay­abouts on an increas­ingly slow jour­ney to their final rest­ing place.

There are, of course, out­stand­ing excep­tions such as David Attenborough, Michael Palin and the Queen. All of them are well over pen­sion­able age and still work­ing, but we don’t call them ‘eld­erly’ or even ‘older’. We admire them and accept them as excep­tional.

As an Older People’s Champion for the London Borough of Islington 2011–2012, I cam­paigned for a year about rais­ing the status of older people through a focus on the con­tri­bu­tion of older people to com­munity well­being and the eco­nomy. I argued for the need to raise the status of the volun­teer­ing so often per­formed by older people, not as a route to employ­ment, not as ‘giv­ing back’ (giv­ing what back? — not priv­ilege, wealth or power), but as a per­son­ally reward­ing and socially valu­able way of con­nect­ing people and get­ting things done. And I argued in favour of break­ing down arti­fi­cial bar­ri­ers between older people and oth­ers by open­ing up older people’s ser­vices to all like-​minded adults.

We need encour­age­ment to form rela­tion­ships between younger and older people to break down bar­ri­ers of fear and mis­un­der­stand­ing and develop a sense of com­mun­al­ity with people from other gen­er­a­tions.

In 2011 the char­ity RVS (formerly the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service) cal­cu­lated that the tax pay­ments, spend­ing power, caring respons­ib­il­it­ies and volun­teer­ing efforts of people aged 65-​plus con­trib­uted almost £40bn a year more to the UK eco­nomy than this group received in state pen­sions, wel­fare and health ser­vices, and the net con­tri­bu­tion was expec­ted to rise. Latest offi­cial fig­ures show that the num­bers of over-​65s in paid employ­ment are also on the rise.

This per­spect­ive con­trasts sharply with the focus of a recent talk by the head of Islington Council’s Housing and Social Services, in which he fore­cast an ‘Axis of Doom’: the coun­cil thrown into unsus­tain­able debt because of decreas­ing bor­ough income and increas­ing num­bers of older people need­ing ser­vices. Obviously the mes­sage about the net con­tri­bu­tion of older people had not reached him.

Social Services could be for­given for not noti­cing the big­ger bal­ance sheet, because when it comes to con­tri­bu­tion older people tend to be lumped in with every­one else. Yet by over­look­ing the spe­cific con­tri­bu­tion of older people, not chal­len­ging the mes­sage of ‘the bur­den of old age’, the bene­fits of healthy liv­ing become more obscure for younger and older people alike.

If increas­ing age means becom­ing bur­den­some to your­self and the people around you, you might as well drown thoughts of the future in drink, drugs and dough­nuts and accept the idea of an earlier demise. Meanwhile the doc­tor will prop you up with pills.

A cli­mate of defeat over­whelms incent­ives to take exer­cise, eat plenty of fruit and veg, and develop new skills and social net­works for a long life­time of well­being. Why save for the future when the future will be bleak any­way? Flat interest rates give little incent­ive to save money.

Nowadays most older people live alone, not in multi-​generational house­holds. If young people don’t even hear about the con­tri­bu­tion of the over-​65s, or meet delight­ful, inspir­a­tional, hard-​working and skilled older people — includ­ing over-​80s and 90s, and those with demen­tia — why should they want to con­trib­ute to their well­being? We need to bring people together to explore mutu­al­ity of interest, not set up arti­fi­cial bar­ri­ers that force gen­er­a­tions to feel that they must com­pete for resources.

What do you think? Comment below.…