Expiry date never: age is the new superpower with Victoria Tomlinson

I couldn't agree more.

There's a couple of things that I want to add into what you have just very succinctly outlined.

One is, I think it is a disaster for society not to take on board the research that exists that shows that there is a correlation between people retiring and early death.

And the hypothesis is that it is due to a sudden lack of purpose, a sudden lack of perceived usefulness, a lack of meaning in life.

And I think we have to address that because exactly to your point, people are living longer.

And I've just been doing some work this morning on aging populations and the extent to which by 2050 the majority of populations in the global north will be majoritatively over the age of 60 and in parallel birth rates are absolutely dropping.

So this whole piece around the restructuring of society is taking place in real time.

What that then means for countries and their economies and how they derive and generate value has huge, huge implications that needs urgent, urgent attention.

bluntly, if you're listening to this and you are in government, I don't think we should be talking about disposable barbecues.

I think we should be talking about these kinds of issues.

Yes, I agree.

You know, and then the other

thing is, you know, because of previous conversations that we've had, Victoria, I used to work in recruitment.

I worked in recruitment and staffing for 20 odd years.

I left because I was really disillusioned by the way in which, in pursuit of cost and operational efficiency, organisations were prioritising recruitment algorithms.

And recruitment algorithms aren't working.

They haven't worked for a long time.

And in fact, I'd go further and say what they have done is bred out of those managing the process, the skills and expertise to pick up a telephone and dig deeper and ask questions about all the things that can't be contained in two sides of A4.

And Kat, can I add to what you said? In

a way, I mean, I'm going to be really brutal.

The lack of purpose doesn't just lead to early death.

In many ways, you might say that would be better.

Actually, it leads to you're far more likely, you age 10 years more and you are far more likely to get Alzheimer's So if we're worried about the social care problem in this country, this problem is going to exacerbate the number of people who cannot look after themselves and need care that we cannot afford at the moment, let alone the future.

And yet, keep people occupied, they could be independent.

And what I'm saying is at the moment, we're heading for a massive drain on society with older people.