Don't retire - and have plenty of sex!

Due to rising costs and unmeetable needs, the government's new goal is to prevent illness rather than treating it. Like the old Soviet Union and its targets for wheat and steel, they always insist on targets rather than aims or aspirations, and their target for healthcare is now five more healthy years of life, rather than a reduction in waiting times, or improvement in cancer mortality. This might be depressing, except for the wonderful way in which they hope to achieve this.

Besides the obvious ones of a balanced diet, exercising regularly and drinking only moderately that we all know about, it appears that our emotional state and how much sex we have plays a more vital role in a longer life span than our genes! But analysing the government recommendations, I find a hidden agenda. We are encouraged to:

1) Avoid early retirement and continue working. Clearly a way to reduce pension costs and benefits. I'm OK on this one - I'm still working more than 10 years after retirement age.

2) Don't act your age. This ties in with furthering liberal attitudes. People may already identify as whatever gender they wish, irrespective of what their anatomy is telling them and the distress it causes others, or what anybody else thinks. A 65 year old man in the Netherlands is insisting he is inside a 45 year old body, and wants his birth certificate altered to reflect this so he can legally lie to young women. Several columnists have argued that they wish to be considered Muslim, or Jewish as may suit them for their columns. In the USA, a 'white' woman has identified as black and claimed black arts grants. Ancestry analysis of my genetic pool shows 1-2% Polynesian. Does this mean I have the right to declare I am really from Maori stock and have a right to live in New Zealand?

3) Become a parent. Clearly a hidden agenda here, to overcome the falling birthrates in Europe (see my blog Birth-rates and coffee mornings), but I'm OK on this one too.

4) Have an active love life. Well, I used to once, and I it is true I was then very healthy. Now I don't have much sex, and I'm very unhealthy. But which came first – ill health or a declining love life? Clearly there is an area here for further research.