Mid life MoT

Probably, the best thing I ever did was to escape the world of full time work some nine years before my state pension was due to be paid. Sure, there is a financial hit and if the accumulation of money is your raison d’etre, then you can safely ignore the following advice. This is life, it’s the only one you’re going to have, you won’t survive your own death despite what religious folk will tell you to the contrary and there are plenty of millionaires in the graveyard.

In case you haven’t noticed, the ageing process deprives you of the capacity to do things, particularly things of a physical nature. In physical terms, by the time you reach your thirties, it’s all downhill from there, as you will have noticed during the recent World Cup where even Cristiano Ronaldo was incapable of rolling back the years. You can do stuff to delay death, but the thing is you can’t stop it, no matter how hard you try. However, the government doesn’t want people in their fifties to leave the workplace at all. They don’t care about you, as they have amply demonstrated during the current industrial action being carried out mainly by low paid public sector workers, and they want you to work until you drop.

Since the start of the Covid pandemic, a further 565,000 people have become economically inactive. I’m one of them. I’m not in work, I’m not looking for work. Neither wild horses nor generous salaries could tempt me back to the workplace. It’s my life and I want to live the rest of it in the way I want. But billionaire Rishi Sunak, our part time prime minister, and his mate the DWP secretary of state Mel Stride, is according to the BBC, “considering plans to coax retired middle-aged workers back into jobs to boost the economy.” Hmm. Interesting use of the word ‘coax’.

Sunak wants to offer us old folk “a midlife MoT to coax (us) back into work.” It would be administered by DWP Jobcentre staff, who to my certain knowledge, are already overworked and underpaid. Quite how it would operate is beyond me. It’s not that they could compel us to attend Jobcentres because once you make the easy decision to quit the workplace, I can’t think of a single reason to go back to it again. Perhaps, if wild financial incentives were on offer, then maybe some folk might be persuaded, but my feeling is they wouldn’t. As I said before, my only consideration when finishing work was this: have I got enough money to enjoy life without going to work? if the answer is yes, then no amount of coaxing will persuade people to resume work. “Sod that”, would me my answer to any request from the oily Sunak.

The only ‘plan’ I have seen so far is that the government will carry out a public information campaign next spring, along the lines of, “Are you fed up enjoying life? Would you like the chance to carry out some shitty target-driven work for the minimum wage and also pay full rate tax and NI? And because we don’t people to work from home, so you’ll also have to drive, take the bus, take the train and spend even more money just getting there. If this is for you, then just come to your local Jobcentre, if there still is one anywhere near where you live.” Hmm. That’s not too appealing, is it?

More seriously, in 2022 I have lost dear friends long before their time, people who never got near retiring. When I took the plunge, that was already high in my thoughts. I loved my work but I loved doing other stuff even more. Being relatively poorer financially made me far richer in the quality of my life. I know this doesn’t work for everyone  because some work to live and others live to work. I did the former all my working life and now I don’t want or need to work at all.

Covid may have represented a moment in time where we evaluated our situations and reconsidered our priorities. It certainly did with mine. I’ve rarely made good decisions but this one was spot on.

Sunak can stick his midlife MoT where the sun don’t shine. I for one won’t be taking advice from such a little toad who has no idea how the rest of us live our lives and won’t be flogging himself into the ground in his late sixties, like he wants us to do.