A retirement age of 75 would stop pensioners like myself from living out my final years in good health
Iain Duncan Smith’s Centre for Social Justice think tank claims that increasing the pension age to 75 is the responsible thing to do. But statistics from 2016 predicted that nearly 40 per cent of men wouldn’t see 75, and the average man was expecting to live to 79. With life expectancy falling for the first time this year, swathes of men could expect little or no time to enjoy their retirement.
I was six months over 65 when I retired and for the next decade played the near daily golf I had longed to do since I joined the work force. But in the years after 75 my mobility and length off the tee plummeted and I now need a buggy to play the links.
In the early 1960s I won a US sports scholarship and agree with the scribe who wrote “Californian college life in the years before Vietnam was as close to heaven on earth as we have come.” But golf in the first decade of retirement at 65 runs it close!
Dr John Cameron
St Andrews
Low pass grades are no bad thing
What is the problem with a grade boundary of 55 per cent for an A in Maths? I am sure I could set a paper where students of that calibre could only get 5 per cent, or equally one where they could get 100 per cent. But if we want to rank and distinguish students across the whole ability range, including separating those at the top end, then this may well be the right level. As a philosopher colleague of mine once said in a similar context, “There is no platonic 60 per cent”.
Rachael Padman
University of Cambridge
Sinn Féin: rethink your abstentionism
We all know that UK politics is gridlocked and the Northern Ireland Assembly is suspended. But how to resolve both of these urgent issues?
It might seem fanciful, but what if Sinn Féin were to unconditionally return to the Northern Ireland Assembly while at the same time starting an open review within the party around the policy of not taking up their seats at Westminster?
I understand that the policy of abstentionism goes back to the creation of Sinn Féin early in the 20th century and applied equally to Westminster and Dáil Éireann, right up to 1986 when Sinn Féin held a conference that led to a revision of the policy and they took up their seats in the Dáil.
If policy could change in the Republic why not in the UK? If this were to happen not only would Sinn Féin gain the moral high ground in re-establishing local political control but it would also cause a seismic change to the UK political landscape; undermining the Conservative/DUP pact, putting Brexit in doubt and giving Ireland a say in the future of the Union, one of the reasons Sinn Féin was created in the first place.
John Simpson
Ross on Wye
http://players.brightcove.net/624246174001/default_default/index.html?videoId=6037072682001
Independent Minds Events: get involved in the news agenda
How can ministers deny no deal would be a catastrophe?
No matter what evidence is presented to government ministers that a no-deal Brexit would be catastrophic for Britain, it is always dismissed out of hand. They seem to be suffering from the same mindset as those who, centuries ago, despite scientific proof to the contrary, not only stuck to their belief that the world was orbited by the sun but persecuted those who disagreed with them.
Roger Hinds
Surrey
Every time information reaches the public domain about the negative effects of Brexit, even including recent official government documents about the potential catastrophic consequences of no deal, the “do-or-die” Leavers angrily claim that it’s all just part of Project Fear.
My question is, where is Project Hope, and when do we see the hard evidence that tells us how much better our country will be when we are no longer in the EU?
Dr Peter Kirkbride
West Yorkshire
Read more
IDS’s plan to raise the pension age to 75 is sheer cruelty
Corbyn’s no-deal strategy: I don’t care about Brexit, so why do you?
