Simon Jenkins is right to point out the growing feasibility of older people choosing to work into their 80s (Mary Berry, and now Prue Leith. Retiring in your 80s is the new 60s, 23 January). As he says, older people are far healthier than they used to be and continuing to be economically active is generally good for one’s health.
But I feel that he, and successive governments, have missed a trick. He states that “the idea of Britons becoming useless at 60 was increasingly unreal”, yet as soon as retirement age is reached, one ceases to pay national insurance (NI). I was astonished when I no longer paid NI after the then retirement age – yet I would not have missed it in my extra two years of teaching. It would have simply been a continuation of what I’d already been paying.
