Is this the brave new world we will face one day once very strict, and not just token age discrimination laws reach our shores, as they have now reached our ex mummy islands in the UK?

There, new age discrimination laws which came into effect a couple of weeks ago, now prevent employers from discriminating on the basis of age, which means that all organisations must revamp their policies and procedures to deal with this. And of course this does just not apply to public sector organisations, but to private ones too.

The amazingly ageist airline industry has been one of the first to have been badly, or positively (depending on your take on things) hit by this new legislation. Virgin and British Airways have lifted all age restrictions for cabin crew, and the latter has also raised its retirement age from 55 to 65. So grannies can be air hostesses (not necessarily with the mostest!) and you will see more and more pilots, or pilots with mounds of white hair or no hair, whereas now many of them retire early.

As a report in the UK Sunday Times put it: “You lean back in your seat, the pilot announces that you have reached the cruising altitude of 35,000 feet and the fasten seat belt signs are switched off. And then you have a shock. The cabin crew attending to your needs will not so much be trolley dollies as airborne grannies, well into their sixties.”

This is ultimately what the pension revolution is going to boil down to for Mr and Mrs Average. Working longer and longer into what we thought would be retirement, but will now be increasingly a working retirement, at least on a part-time basis. No country, except perhaps some incredibly oil or resource rich one, is going to be able to sustain us in old age in the future. So instead of raising the retirement age, which is often unpopular, they talk about age discrimination as a way of sugaring the pill.

Those who are retiring now, or who have already done so, are the lucky ones. The next generation may not be able to retire at all, or will at least certainly have to work part time in their sixties, and perhaps even early seventies, just to keep their heads above water. In 10 years’ time, this could become a very big election issue, as retirement ages rise and rise to nearer 70, and more and more pensioners swing the voting table as the proportion of older people increases and our birth rate continues to nosedive.

At the end of the day, we are all going to have to realise that a government pension cannot keep you comfy in old age, whether you are British or Maltese, Chinese or Russian. Of course it’s more of a problem for the Brits and us because we have such a long life expectancy, while Russian men for example have an awful one. No wonder all these Russian babes are coming here in their droves to find Maltese sugar daddies. Who is going to support them otherwise after they turn 50 once their men start dying off?

And whatever the blurb about private pensions, they are only good for those who are high earners, who can afford to put away a substantial amount every month anyway. High earners have always done this, putting their extra cash in property, or shares, or investments that have all been forms of private pension for as long as I can remember.

Most of the people I know though, bringing up young and less young families simply don’t have enough left at the end of the month to put anything like enough away to fund a decent pension. Too many are wasting their time putting paltry sums away, which will give them next to nothing by the time they are 60, but they don’t quite realise it and they are not told as much, or as clearly as I think they should. Of course if you start at 20 it’s OK. But usually these thoughts hit you at 35 plus when, unless you are a very high earner, it is already too late to put away enough (if you even earn it) to substantially alter your income level when you retire.

In Malta though, we are not as ageist to start with, so this kind of anti ageist legislation will not be so much of a shock to us. We expect our judges to be older and they are. We expect our Presidents to be pensioners, and it’s only when we see somebody like the Irish President that we realise that these positions, particular when they are voted in by a popular vote, need not only be the preserve of older people. We are also, or at least many of us are, incredibly hard working, and many people, the self employed particularly go on running their businesses well into their seventies which is in no way a bad thing.

It’s so confusing for us girlies though isn’t it. On the one hand governments want us to work to pay for today’s pensioners, as well as to recover the enormous sums invested in educating girls as well as boys. Our archbishop thinks we should pay mums who in his words make the “noble choice” and stay at home (many already are, aka our rising number of non working single parent mums, imagine the explosion if there was even more incentive not to work.).

Posters tell us breast not brains is best. And we can also face a future now as botoxed trolley dollies, flying low cost or with Air Malta, if it survives the competition. It is a grey new world in which grey will not be allowed to show. Probably best for us smart parents of pre university kids is to guide our sons and daughters in any career that keeps us looking young... plastic surgeon or hair colourist, nutritionist or personal trainer?

We are all going to work when we are old. But like Madonna and Sophia Loren, two women whose faces and incredible bodies appear to defy age, we will all be looking younger than ever as we work longer and longer... not such a frightening prospect, or is it?

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