It’s great news! The institutionalised discrimination of kicking people out of work at 65 will have to stop. The plan is to phase the new world into play from 1 April 2011.  Removal of the DRA will begin then with transitional arrangements covering the period until 1 October.

The problem is, of course, you can work hard to get things right but on a day when the oven has a mind of its own and the milk is off, it doesn’t work out as well. Instant whip makes neither the best dessert, nor…

The Coalition is moving forward with gusto to cut the costs of benefits by pushing people from inactive to active benefits. Not everyone likes this of course.

The Work Programme will replace all other back to work support programmes, like the New Deal and Pathways to Work. It will be delivered by large private sector providers…

It was all announced last week at a presentation given by Secretary of State Iain Duncan Smith and Steve Webb, the new Minister for Pensions.

The expectation is that SPA will be raised by 2016.  George Osborne has already said so, but the government is to review the date on which it “starts to rise to 66.” I can’t see them wanting to do it…

Employment of mature workers is of course an issue of growing interest to political leaders too. Now ten years old, Age Platform Europe is lobbying to get the interests of older people properly reflected in the new economic plan that will be used to gauge and stimulate…

The Sunday Times Magazine last week gave one version of how it is, with a feature containing a series of studies of people in their 60s who “never intend to retire”. Working 9 to 70 was the heading. The glossy pictures said it all!

Some nice TAEN case studies appeared alongside mentions of Meryl Streep, Catherine Deneuve and Sophia Loren!

A reality check is in order however. Good looks and…

I am interested to see some of the members of the new Government team slotting into place. At the Department for Work and Pensions we have Iain Duncan Smith as the new Secretary of State.

Readers will remember IDS’s tenure as leader of…

Spare a thought then for the Greeks, currently struggling with their backs against the wall and the International Monetary Fund camped on their door step.

With Eurozone Ministers granting a 110 billion euro rescue package, the Greek government will have to find budget cuts worth 13 per cent of their gross…

Actually, the timing was coincidental - Joan was no more swayed in her departure by anything I or TAEN might have said about her than she was interested in us whilst in the role.

Now that sounds a bit catty and against my nature, but I can’t conceal my feelings that there was something decidedly odd about this appointment from…

I am struck at how differently people respond to elections. For some, election time seems a good moment to leave the country. I beg to differ. The thought of all those Election Call broadcasts has me reaching for my telephone notepad.

I once heard a friend sounding off in a phone-in with Geoffrey Howe. After he had finished I called him back, assuming a…

But hands up who has been thinking of what might emerge if and when the DRA is abolished or raised? Will all those employers so keen to see the backs of people once they have clocked up 65 years on the planet, no longer…

In similar vein, last week TAEN arranged an event with the Social Market Foundation, which included speakers from each of the main parties. They outlined their thoughts on the question of Who’s hurting and what’s working? Tackling unemployment after the recession.  Our focus was, of course, on the age skew of much that has gone before.

Yvette Cooper,…

Of such errors, small fortunes can be made. Ask Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots & Leaves; the Zero Tolerance Approach to Punctuation,” published a few years ago.

What at first seemed like a journey into lateral, creative ways of reshaping work and retirement was in fact a familiar drum being banged; “Increasing numbers of employees are being…

In the first letter to the Sunday Times, organised by Tim Besley, 20 economists urged the Government to accelerate the rate of reducing the budget deficit by increasing the size of cuts. By this reckoning, the Conservatives were said to be following the right course.

This was followed a few days later…

All this is so much nostalgia, except that it was sometimes my sad role to meet individuals who had been broken by the experience of bullying so that they quit their jobs to begin lengthy periods of struggle with trauma, depression and other forms of mental illness.

I would not want to guess how many…

What are they going to do about it? Some 60 per cent of responses to the white paper included comments on the need to tackle media bias against older people. They can’t all be wrong.

We are all ageing, including newspaper editors. Still the clichés churn out however. In some papers, there is hardly a story about someone over 60 without sobriquets ranging from “granddad/grandma, to “old geezer”,…

That all changed however. Apprentice training tailed off, with employers reluctant to commit to the time and responsibilities involved. More recently, there has been a renaissance. Approaches and attitudes to apprenticeships have been improving dramatically.

I know a young fellow who is having a hard time persuading his employer to offer…

On one hand, we have the strategy for an ageing society, emphasising active ageing and stating in terms that “making a contribution to society, in particular through employment,” is a key indicator of independence.

On the other, we have mandatory retirement and the DRA, bundling people out of work just because they reach a certain age. How crazy is that?

At times like this one’s heart goes out to those tearing at the rubble of fallen buildings or carrying drips for those clinging to life. Not been born near an earthquake fault line was a lucky break here in the UK and a sad…

Maggie, it will be recalled, was the older woman of Rod’s fantasy relationship, who had him regretting his stolen heart and threatening to return to school. They don’t write them like that any more!

Cue for comment that older woman flinging off her inhibitions to date a young blade, is a growing trend. Good luck to them I say.

Is this really so new however? After all, Shakespeare was 18 when he married Anne Hathaway, eight…