Southport Online Club
for the Elderly, Housebound, or Disabled in Southport
Please bookmark this page now! http://www.celticsurf.net/soc/

Hiya, my name is Richy Roberts and I created this website as an online support and contact centre for the elderly, housebound, or disabled in the Southport area because I'm concerned that they are often not getting a fair shake from Sefton Council and many of the voluntary agencies. This is because resources which should go into health, housing, and general support are being diverted by the government (and this applies not just to the present government) into buying guns and bombs for adventurism overseas and into feathering political nests. What remains goes mostly into juveniles and immigrants, leaving little for the support of the elderly or disabled.

     Yet it is self-evident that the first duty of any government calling itself civilized is to look after its citizens, particularly the elderly and disabled. It is truly time for us to make our voices heard!

     The treatment of the elderly is not something which is properly addressed. Comment generally is negative, focussing more on reducing public expediture rather than upon improving the actual welfare of elders. We must work to change such negative attitudes.

     As people reach old age, they are sometimes treated as incapable and unimportant by others. Many people fear getting old, and I wonder if that has anything to do with the way they see others being badly treated as they get older? And children used to be raised to respect and care for their elders but in recent times this has changed for the worst. One of our tasks is to restore the ethics of respect for elders.

     Don’t want to retire? At the moment there is no national retirement age. It’s important not to get ‘retirement age’ confused with ‘pension age’, as they’re different things altogether. As you probably know the state pension age, the age when you’re entitled to draw your state pension is currently 60 for women and 65 for men, but employees do not actually have to retire at this age.

     So what does the new Age Discrimination Act do? The new law creates a new default retirement age of 65 (this will be the same for both men and women). This means that if your employer tries to force you to retire under the age of 65, or their own higher normal retirement age, you can claim for age discrimination and for unfair dismissal. It is likely that employers will only be able to justify forced retirement under the age of 65 in exceptional circumstances. For employees over the age of 65, it will usually be lawful for an employer to force them to retire, as long as they follow the correct procedure. However, from 1st October 2006, employees have a new right to request to continue working beyond the date when the employer wants them to retire.