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Let's move to Turkey for a long retirement

Cruising is a popular retirement pastime. Pixabay
Cruising is a popular retirement pastime. Pixabay

THIS month, when I turn 62, I will begin receiving a pension from the company I worked for when I started out in the newspaper industry.

It’s only tiny, but it’s something. It’s the second pension I have claimed, the first being another small payment, for the four years I spent working in various government departments.

Added together, the amount is useful, as is anything credited to my bank account, but it is a long, long way from being enough to retire on. Even when I’m able to claim every pension I am due for my entire working life, it will still fall short.

I will have to wait another five years, until I am almost 67 to stop work.

It’s nothing short of appalling that, here in the UK, we have to slog on until we are almost 70 to claim the State Pension.

Retirement should be a time of relaxation, fulfilling some of your dreams, going on holidays, spending more time with friends and family, taking up new hobbies and generally having fun.

But at that age, you’re lucky if you’re still healthy let alone able to enjoy yourself in your remaining years.

In the UK men used to claim their pensions at 65, women at 60 - something that clearly needed levelling up, and by 2018 it was 65 for both.

Interestingly, before 1940, the State Pension age for men and women was 65. In 1940, the aged for women was lowered to 60, despite the fact that they tend to live longer.

Now, men and women must be 66 to retire, but this will rise to 67 by 2028 and to 68 in 2039.

I can’t understand why we Brits have accepted this without a fuss.

Across the Channel they don’t take such things lying down. The citizens of France are up in arms over government plans to make them work until they are 64 before they can claim the state pension, up from 62 at the moment.

Protests have raged in major cities including Paris, Marseille, Toulouse, Nantes and Nice, bringing many transport services to a standstill. In Paris police fired tear gas and the furore was such that the Eiffel Tower was closed to visitors.

Not that I am encouraging people to rampage through the streets of British towns and cities carrying burning torches, but why did we accept this without a hue and cry when just about every country in Europe has a lower retirement age than we do? Currently only Netherlands, Iceland and Norway retire later, and not much later.

No wonder a café society prevails across mainland Europe - retirees in countries such as Italy, Greece and Slovenia, who claim their state pensions at 62, have oodles of time on their hands to sup cappuccinos and people watch, while we are still cramming ourselves on to commuter trains at unearthly hours, trying to mind the gap with our Zimmer frames.

No wonder the French are rebelling when they may have to work two extra years before their days can be spent reclining with a glass of Bordeaux in between short bursts on the boules court.

It’s not as if their retirement age is shooting up to 68 like ours, it’s only rising to 64. They don’t know they’re born.

Some people may not want to retire and may actively want to work until they drop, but the majority of people don’t.

Maybe we should all head for Turkey. There, the official retirement age is 60 for men and 58 for women, but a new law enables many to claim the State Pension years earlier.

Had that applied here I’d have been retired long and had goodness knows how many cruises. I’d probably be on one right now, sunning myself with a glass of prosecco in hand.