Swim for Britain

The over 60s will be able to use all public swimming pools free from April 2009. This is already the case in Wales (no jokes about whales in swimming pools please). Apparently it is to encourage participation in sport in the run-up to the 2012 Olympics, so anyone who has just turned 59 should be encouraged to aim for the British swimming team in the London Olympics.

Sir Alex & Ageism

While ageism is now supposed to be banned in all sorts of areas of life, it does appear that Sir Alex Ferguson still finds it acceptable to criticize the Chelsea team for being a bit old - over 30 seems to be the key point. Sir Alex - (born 31 December 1941, in Govan, probably not noted for his sense of timing) is himself even older than Sir Mick Jagger, and considerably older than Scolari, his counterpart at Chelsea.

Age in sport is a bit odd. The Tour de France has just been won by a 33 year old, the same age Armstrong won his last Tour. They seemed to be quite fit, in the traditional sense of the word. Personally, I always find it distressing to see a bunch of what appear to be primary school children performing gymnastics with all the individual personality of robots.

I think Sir Alex has got it wrong. Let’s put a minimum age on people competing in sport, so that these little robots can actually have a bit of life, and perhaps only allow serious competitive sport after the age of 30. Football might be a bit less aggressive, we might see cricketers passing on gardening tips instead of sledging, baton passing in relay racing would involve pleasantries and thanks - much more civilized. If the young have to compete, perhaps we could give them handicaps as in horse racing, carrying extra weight to compensate for their youth. Or instead of penalty shoot-outs, players should have to address the crowd for five minutes on a philosophical issue chosen by the Ref. Now, young Mr. Rooney, five minutes on the meaning of life.

Your Nearest Post Office

The Post Office closure programme seems to be rolling ahead, with little more than an appearance of public consultation. To be fair, there is public consultation, and some 100,000 communications have been sent in, but these have only changed 4% of the planned closures - 2,481 offices are still going to close.

The inconvenience of this to many older people is obvious, and groups such as Help the Aged are rightly pointing out that when the Post Office say that most of these people are within 3 miles of a Post Office, this is not always helpful. For the frail elderly, this is rather like the suggestion that people who have no bread should eat cake instead.

However, I am not sure that the case for Post Offices should be made by appealing to pictures of the frail elderly. I used to give money to Help the Aged, and every so often I get a leaky ballpoint pen from them, and a request for more money. I may use the pen to write to the company who set up an annuity for me, to tell them that their free binoculars don’t work, but then I’ll have to go to the Post Office, which is indeed further away than it used to be.

My own feeling is that the Post Offices have been their own worst enemy for years. I did research on Post Office users some years ago, and I remember one person asking what other organization, faced with long queues in their branches, would decide that the solution was to put up TV screens and run advertising to ‘entertain’ the queues. The row of ‘Position Closed’ notices, with staff sitting behind them adding things up, is infuriating - one just wonders why they don’t do that after they are closed altogether. My local branch had a ‘use it or lose it’ poster, which was faintly insulting when one had to queue for ten minutes to buy some stamps.

Service levels have been poor at many branches, and it is no surprise that many people, given the alternative of on-line services, opt not to go into the branch and join the queues, regardless of the level of in-queue entertainment. Not even if they offer clowns and jugglers.

If service levels were raised, some automation introduced (remember years ago that there were always stamp book machines, which never seemed to work?), then perhaps branches would be better used. Automation has worked in banks, and many public libraries have made a great success out of public-access computer terminals, surely a natural for the Post Office.

However, should they be judged purely on profitability? There seems to have been no attempt to examine the social value of the branches. In many rural locations, Post Offices hold together the local shop, which in turn allows people to buy some goods without driving to the supermarket. One of our local small Post Offices has a clutch of farm gate and house gate outlets selling vegetables, eggs and meat; take away the Post Office, and I suspect that those outlets will disappear as well.

So, the existence of Post Office branches can cut down car usage, help local economies, probably keep people a bit healthier, reduce the ‘food miles’ on many products (I still struggle with why our Tesco sells asparagus from Peru when the asparagus farm down the road has it fresh at half the price), as well as performing a serious job of giving a focus to communities. It really does feel as though a narrow focus on the profit and loss account of the individual branches has blinded government to the broader value of the service. It is a lesson we should have learned from the destruction of the rail infrastructure resulting from the Beeching report.

What Inflation Means to Seniors

We are seeing a lot of discussion at present about the threat of higher inflation, and this means that we see regular estimates of the current rate of inflation. There is a ‘preferred’ rate calculation, which always sounds a bit odd – as if the government statistical office was offered several kinds of inflation in the inflation shop, and said ‘I think I prefer that one, blue doesn’t suit me.’ You can take out mortgage payments or leave them in, but really that is about the only choice.

Thinking about this and our over 50s market, I suspect the real rate of inflation for the over 50s is unlike that experienced by someone in their early 20s, or for a young family.

Price rises are happening at quite different rates in different markets. I have just filled up our house heating-oil tank – seven years ago this cost me just over £300, this week it has cost me £1,260. Yet if I wanted to buy a computer, or a flat screen TV, I would be paying far less than a few years ago. Most electronics have come down in price appreciably, while they have become better and faster over the same time.

I live in the country, with no access to mains gas, and a need to use a car to travel to most places – on a sunny day I might use a bicycle, but the opportunity to be squashed by a 4X4 up from London for the weekend does not always appeal. I already have all the furniture I could want, and am pretty content without a flat-screen HD television. Food, heating and basics take up most of my spending. As a consequence, my personal rate of inflation is almost certainly way above the level given by official statistics. If I were a 20 year old, living with parents, and spending on alcoholic drinks, entertainment, clothes and electronic gadgets, I would probably be experiencing virtually nil inflation (except perhaps the waistline). I might even be eying up the property market just now, waiting for the cost of a new home to reduce enough for me to buy it, and then to fill it with low-priced furniture.

What has happened is that the ‘basics’ such as fuel and food have been hit very hard by increased demand, much of it ironically from the countries who are pushing out the cheap electronics, clothing etc. which are dropping in price in our market. Falls in house prices, which can be seen as good news for the first time buyer, are potentially very bad news for older people who may have been counting on recouping some or all of the capital value of their (often mortgage-free) homes to help in their retirement. So, while they are facing a high rate of inflation for the basics of life, their capital base is actually shrinking.

This means that an inflation rate which is an average across the whole range of ages and situations in the country means little for an individual.

The reality of the current situation is that the less you spend, the higher your personal rate of inflation is likely to be. If you were in the market for a luxury power boat, apparently you could get a discount from the £1million price tag this month. Handy, but the mixed corn I feed my hens has gone up by 50% lately, so I’ll probably forego the boat. If one only spent on food, energy suppliers, and council tax, then one could be looking at a rate of inflation way over 25% per annum.

The point of all this is that when the government next comes to review pension levels, it really means very little to many seniors to know what the overall rate of inflation is. Far more important is the rate of inflation in their spending pattern, and changes in state pension ought to reflect their experience rather than an overall average.

Have a think about your own rate of inflation, and let us know what you calculate it to be, and perhaps we can start a more realistic debate on this subject.