Kitz Forum
Chat => Chit Chat => Topic started by: Weaver on January 26, 2022, 11:40:11 PM
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Today my wife said that to me, also saying ‘You’ve had a fall.’ - my first. So we can celebrate dotage now. I fell down and became trapped between the side of my bed and the bedside bookcase and didn’t have the strength to get out or get myself up. Luckily my iPad was in vocal reach and so I said "Hey Siri, make a Facetime call to Janet" which worked, and help arrived quickly. I had fallen asleep with my iPad on my chest; which fell off and went down onto the floor at the side of the bed. In reaching down to try to retrieve it, it was then that I slid down to the floor and became trapped. So when a few minutes later my weekly citylit.ac.uk Gaelic class started, I said "Tha mi ’na mo sheann duine gu h-oifigiuil a-nise. Thuit mi ás mo leabaidh." - "I’m now officially an old person. I fell out of my bed."
At what age am I a ‘concession’? Will I get an old age pension? I’m 60 now, birthday coming at the end of April.
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You can get an annual Senior Railcard, for £30, aged sixty.
The state pension age is now equal for both female and male and is gradually increasing. Having reached the required age to draw mine, some years ago, I have no knowledge of the current required age. There must be a web-site with the details, somewhere . . .
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Actually Janet has a card that gives her free [? - need to check that with her] bus and train travel all over Scotland, something available to people with disabilities. She isn’t sixty yet, two and a half years younger than me. She was fifteen and I was seventeen when we met in a bar in Rome.
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Sounds more romantic than my meeting the future Mrs Candles at an 18+ dance. Do tell us more... :)
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Weaver, like me can't get his state pension until he's 67, as he's in Scotland he can look forward to a free bus pass when he reaches 60 though.
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Already had my 60th birthday last year.
> Do tell us more.
In spring 1979, I was in a choir in Staffordshire who went to Rome to give a concert. One day on a night out a young girl sat on my knee in a bar and four years later we were married, living in London where I was working as a software engineer, writing Z80 machine code for games and Janet was a vocal performance student at the Royal Academy of Music. When she started at the RAM, there were no mobile phones, so I drove from my parents’ farm in Staffordshire down to London and sat on the steps of the RAM waiting until she came out. A bit like Dustin Hoffman but with a 1.6L black Fiesta XR2 instead!
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Curious, what was the last architecture you wrote games for?
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Last game was a graphics routine for an mc8000 (Atari) which a friend at work was stumped over. Then moved into ‘serious’ programs, mainly o/s development and drivers. Wrote HD6301 =enhanced MC6801 code a lot, some 8086 graphics code. Have been reviving it by writing some x64 code recently. Then switched to all C in 1987.
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Weaver, like me can't get his state pension until he's 67, as he's in Scotland he can look forward to a free bus pass when he reaches 60 though.
When I started contributing to my works pension scheme my scheduled state retirement age was aged 60. I've not yet quite reached 60 but that retirement date just keeps stretching further and further into the future.
I'm not sure what it is going to be now 67,68?
I know I can check on the gov website, but I've seen so many changes affecting me and at the rate they have been doing, who's to say it wont again. I've seen changes 60>62>65>67. Its currently 66 rising to 67 and whilst they originally set a date for 68, they are now proposing to bring that date forward. Even the .gov site says it is under review and although I shouldn't be affected, you can hardly blame someone for being sceptical when they announce further reviews. It's like trying to play catchup and they keep moving the finishing line before I get there.
Another thing I found out that is scheduled to possibly change this year is free prescriptions. It had escaped my knowledge that once you reach 60 you are entitled to free prescriptions. It was a builder/joiner doing some work for me who mentioned this was under review.
Topic came up as he'd seen the rather large deliveries of items I need and he mused that he was due to get free prescriptions in a few months time when he reached 60, but expected that to be withdrawn this year and realigned to state retirement date. Wonder how that will work out for those already in the 60+ age group. It's meant to only affect England, Scotland & Wales remains unaffected.
He was saying he currently needs meds for arthritis etc mainly brought about from doing his job and also gets pain from (RSI?) usage of power tools. So although being in the trade since leaving school at 16, its only the past couple of years he has physically started having problems with certain labour jobs and really could not see him being able to continue doing his job for another 8 years. He said it may be possible for an office worker to continue until 68, but a large chunk of those who perform manual labour type work quite often physically struggle when they reach their 60's.
It's quite a dilemma for any gov, where you have a population living far longer lives than when the National Insurance scheme was brought in. How many of them are physically fit enough to perform manual intensive work. There is also pressure on the NHS for medical conditions that arise later in life. Whilst we may try to live healthier lifestyles, in a way we are just delaying the inevitable. Gosh how depressing.
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I get free prescription because I’m in Scotland where every choice seems to be the more humane one. It’s perhaps to do with the suffering of the people? The horror of the Highland Clearances maybe affecting the national psyche - I really don’t know what on earth I’m talking about.
I’ve been in Skye for 24 years now, longer than I’ve been anywhere else - was at home on the farm in Staffordshire (Hollington, very near Alton Towers) for 18yrs, then in London working for 16yrs. writing all known asm and C code in the West End. Janet worked at the same company as me for three years, in the accounts dept. When we were in London we lived in Crouch End for 11yrs and in Willesden Green for four years and first off, when we got married we rented a flat at Highbury Park, near the old Arsenal FC.
We bought the house in Skye intending to keep the flat we had in London but very soon decided to ‘hell with London’; Janet got a job offer in Skye and I wanted to become a full time Gaelic student at smo.uhi.ac.uk and that was that.
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He said it may be possible for an office worker to continue until 68, but a large chunk of those who perform manual labour type work quite often physically struggle when they reach their 60's.
Absolutely spot on, it seems grossly unreasonable that someone who has trashed their body doing manual work all or most of their life (some of the most valuable members of society, not that I think that should necessarily be considered as by that token on the surface I'd be seen as a drain on society) are treated the same as someone who had a job that was more body friendly.
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This is the attitude of those who consider themselves ‘normal’ and ‘important’ - middle or upper class, urban probably London, office work. A politician once said that living here in Skye was ‘a lifestyle choice’ because in their restricted mindset the only activity they can imagine is buying a second home and living here sometimes or, nowadays, teleworking or not working at all. I find the politician’s remark to be grossly offensive even though I have no right to say so and it’s probably hypocritical of me.
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Moving there was a lifestyle choice, but assuming everyone HAD that choice is wrong. Someone born in a rural area wont necessarily have the opportunity to leave. But its a similar argument they will make for anyone stuck in a dead-end job, they should just "go do something else", like its so easy to train for a new job (never mind the cost) and find one that pays decent.
They also seem to lose that sense of irony that they pushed for Brexit while not supporting the farms we now need more than ever, as importing food is harder and those farms no longer have EU help with running costs. I know from the local butcher that Lamb for example was a big EU seller, he would only buy UK Lamb on request or when it was cheaper because EU demand made it expensive. Which might seem bad on the surface, but farm work is hard and it was the only thing keeping them economically viable.
The whole argument for things like decent broadband in rural areas falls down on the fact that had it remained nationalised, it wouldn't have mattered that some areas cost more and others less, as we all shared the cost of doing it. The same way we don't say "oh we can't treat your cancer because it costs more than a broken toe".
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<rant>The mindset is the same as that that shows the south of england huge on the weather forecast and ‘distant’ scotland is tiny and far away from the camera, because the camera is looking at the centre of the world which is London. Perhaps should try putting the weather map upside down and centring it on Shetland for a change, just to expand our consciousness. ;) That mindset says that I’m far from London, not that London is far from me. I’m pleased anyway that some recent politicians have finally ‘got it’ and have done the R100 thing. </rant>
We here, us and my next door neighbour between us, had to do our own water, back in 2006, but not our own electricity like the people of Eilean Eige. I don’t mind having to arrange our own water, because the stuff elsewhere around here is vile, full of very nasty chemicals. Many years ago people had to sort out wiring the country up for electricity and before that the original PSTN, what, 120 years ago? I wouldn’t like to have to have the cost of generators burning diesel all the time, like at hospitals, and wind and solar are very expensive to set up. I’m very pleased we have a public electricity supply.
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You don't need a weather map for Scotland though, its always cold and raining. :lol:
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:no:
The Moray Firth from Inverness to Banff is relatively temperate.
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:lol: :lol: It’s the truth! The weather is usually horrible, though in the last ten years or so we have had beautiful weather in May and frequent droughts lasting into late June. Neighbours who rely on springs lose their water. We don’t because we have our deep borehole. In late June the weather usually turns wet and misty/foggy, can be like october. But then again it can be too hot for me. Very unpredictable.
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I was nervous going to Glasgow in November, but honestly it wasn't that bad. We get worse weather in Sheffield than I experienced that weekend, I spent a lot of time outside walking.
To be honest it was more the prospect of the trains being cancelled that concerned me.
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I get free prescription because I’m in Scotland where every choice seems to be the more humane one. It’s perhaps to do with the suffering of the people?
Much more likely to be down to the extra public spending in Scotland due to the Barnett formula.
I'm much more curious how "three siblings in one family married three siblings in another"!
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In my family?