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A minor problem!

Alistair Darling has spent much of the day telling us that it is only a small minority of companies that discriminate because of age.

If this is true, then why is there a need for legislation that will cost the taxpayer many millions of pounds annually, and that will impose yet more burdens and costs on *all* our companies?

It does not make any sense - until, that is, you realise who the real beneficiaries are.

The government! - which gets more control over people lives.

The lack of adequate state pensions in the UK makes ageism a very relevant problem.Many older people do not wish to carry on working after60,but are being forced to through simple necessity.In Italy,where I live and work,the average retirement age has been 57 for many years.Older people enjoy the luxury of spending quality time with their family and have no desire to carry on with the rat race ad nauseum.The Italian Government plans to raise the retirement age to 65 in 2008.This is being met with some resistance despite the economic arguments in its favour.

Doesn't look like many people watched this program. Maybe because most otherwise interested people were freaked out by the passing of Bush's Torture Bill, Bush going one step further than Hitler. Are you sure you're aware of what's going on in the world?

Dissapointed wrote: Doesn't look like many people watched this program. Maybe because most otherwise interested people were freaked out by the passing of Bush's Torture Bill, Bush going one step further than Hitler. Are you sure you're aware of what's going on in the world?

That bill was only passed by one house and so does not go forward. Bad enough that one house could see fit to pass it though. Hopefully the November elections will return some better people.

The law against age discrimination is the latest of the protections required by what is now the European Union's common market in labour principle, and so all the issues that commonly arose with protections previously given to other classes of workers really should be expected. And yet no one mentioned any of them. Even though every person in the UK under 65 stands to be affected some time in their working lives. Issues such as what happens at the edge of the protected class? Is anyone really expecting that people of 64 (or 60, or 55, or 40) will not be discriminated against on the basis that they'll be retiring at 65? At what age will it be legally accepted? If people will no longer have to state their age in most applications, how will all the other details that forms usually demand, like dates of schooling, of qualifications, of previous employment not still betray the age? Once again it will be down to workers to clarify the law through the courts.

Why did the UK wait so long to do what the US enacted so long ago (but then has largely made an inaccessible law)?

I think some of the most interesting effects are likely to arise at the lower ages, especially since vocational education is included, as always with EU employment law.