What Age Must I Retire and be on a Pension?
It seems that many ”important types” keep telling me when I can or ought to retire and then move away into poverty-pension-land.
Indeed some readers of our Pohjolan Sanomat newspaper would, it seems, be very happy at my retirement which could be as soon as possible. Shame on those people I say. You may not like what I say but I do have the right to say it you know. Do I not have the right to bore you or to pester you through my silly words?
Anyway to those people that campaign for my early retirement I can only say this: ”Over my dead body”. But that is not a request for you to shoot me. Anyway our wisdom from the political insurance networks tells me that I cannot retire anyway. I must keep working until I drop dead. You see it is cheaper that way.
As politicians seem to get younger everyday they also seem to get more disrespectful for the older generations. These youngsters in power are after us old farts to work on and on and on and on and on. We old farts must not be allowed to be a burden upon the youngsters.
I began work at 12 years of age although then it was only two hours per day. But it was starting at 06.00 hours in the morning and then finishing at eight and in time for me to get to school. By 14 years of age I had begun to grow up. I did that school, of course, but I was working four hours per day delivering newspapers too. I did that five days a week. It was very good. I could buy a packet of cigarettes and then tempt the nice girl from just down the road to give me a kiss and a cuddle in exchange for about three cigs. Oh, those were the days, my friend.
Why would I ever give up work with those kinds of memories inside?
I was born to be a kind of slave to work. I have always had to struggle to get free-time. Then when free-time came I did not know what to do with it. So back to work and earn those pennies to pay for that good Saturday night with kisses and cuddles which would make it all worthwhile. Then back again, on Monday, for another week of the same.
Who the fuck needs a fancy pension scheme when life is so very simple?
But there is one question. For about 50 years I have paid into various pension schemes, here and there and in different countries. I have been unemployed for only a month or two here and there. One of those schemes was from the UK and it was called ”Graduated Pensions”. It was a government scheme. I was forced to pay into that for a few years. Today I am lucky if I get back an Euro or two per week from that scheme or scam. Not enough to get that kiss and cuddle!
But as one of early bosses used to say at work: ” Nobody is gonna look after you mate and if you trust the government or business you are daft in the head”. When he said that I was only sixteen and far too young to learn. I was only sixteen. So I worked for kisses and cuddles. OK.
What the hell am I talking about here? Is it anything ”More than a Feeling”? Am I just singing a sad song? Or do I rejoice in the fact that I will work until I die?
Can anybody remember Donovan? That folksy singer-songwriter used to sing the following words to ”Gold Watch Blues” :-
”Here's your gold watch and shackles for your chains
And your piece of paper saying that you're sane.
If you want your son to have a good career
Just get him to sign on the dotted line and work for fifty years.”
Well today we need to change those words a little. It is no longer to be in the chains for fifty years. It is now 70 odd years of shackles. So now we must sign along on the dotted line and work for seventy years before we can get our reward as that gold watch for good service to society.
We can already hear those youngsters of the new political elite telling us old farts that we were put on this earth to be useful, to work and to make an honest contribution to society. We were not born to be free or relax in the sun on some expensive pension-package.
We witness, in Finland, a moral return to the Protestant Ethic itself.
The last thing our society wants or needs are unemployed old-farts causing havoc on the streets of a Friday night. Pensioned leisure is a threat to the very social fabric that we hold so dear. Grannies on skateboards? We do not want to see this do we.
So, God damit, after fifty years of continuous work here I am. Ready now to get my haircut nicely and get a real job. Ready again to be a moral role model for the new young kids on the block.
Steve Bowles
