Category: Topicality

When does an incident become a trend? At what point do a couple of pebbles rolling down the mountain start an avalanche? How do we know when the atmospherics of the day suddenly suit seismic shifts? When the two pebbles plop purposelessly into the pond below just so often  -   are we right to conclude that they signal nothing save a barely troubled equilibrium? Or, when and how do today’s news headlines really matter to the forecaster? This is a story here about the shifting dimensions of ageing. We toss out the following pebbly-titbits: In late 2018, the US lingerie chain Victoria’s Secret is subjected to a bruising assault by an alternative and self-consciously feminist underwear brand called ThirdLove. Other commentators join the virtual demo. The core complaint is that…

Prodded By Science We reference here, first of all, what we will call a new scholarship of empowerment. The by-now-long-since embedded realisation that millions of us, at the moment of once conventional retirement, have another twenty years+ of healthy living to fill has stimulated a new wave of self-help literature. (more…)

In the Summer of 2017, the Office for National Statistics in the UK produced fresh and compelling data on the finances of retired households. In brief: From the late 1970s, just as Mrs. Thatcher was about to ride into Downing Street to the opening of the tenure of Mrs. May in 2016, the disposable income of those retired households grew at an annual average real-terms rate of 2.8%. The mean gross income of this segment (including benefits) had thus swollen by a factor of 3 across this generation of time. Whereas just less than 50% of retired households enjoyed the benefit of a private pension in 1997 this had risen to 80% by 2016. Average disposable income for those with one of those private pension plans is now (2017) ca…

We learn in 2017 that only 18% of septuagenarian women and 12% of septuagenarian men consider themselves to be good-looking. (www.rinklifunstaz.com) Now read on…. (more…)

Old Facts, Fresh Insights The business community probably knows quite a lot of facts about this 60-70-80 generation. The broad sweep of our demographics is a visual stalwart of every futurist’s presentation deck. Populist redtops, meanwhile, carry a headline every day about dementia, the victims, the cures, the lifestyle counsels. This month, many a Marketing or Communications Director will attend a scholarly seminar on our national/Western ageing, its consequences for the public purse, for the financing of care, for all those ejected too soon from the career market (with lots left still to give), etc, etc. Such quasi-academic conversations might well drift towards the future of intergenerational frictions and conflicts - over access to skills, revenues, concessions and, of course, political power. The grey hubbub is always in the air, broad outline…