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Showing posts from March, 2010

The Aging Population

Do you remember the first time some kid came up to you and said “Hey Missus do ya have the right time?” You almost looked around to see who they were talking to because you weren’t a ‘Missus’! You weren’t much older than them – and then you realised that they thought you looked old enough to be a ‘Missus’. Disconcerting does not even begin to describe that moment, suddenly and irreversibly you had joined the ranks of adulthood in someone else’s eyes and you felt a bit of a fraud because in your heart you still felt yourself a kid. Back then, I was studying sociology. I was being taught about the demographics of population and the ageing population to be specific. The forecast for the future was that in twenty or thirty years there would be more old people in the United Kingdom than young people. Blow me down if that time isn’t here already, and I still feel a bit of a fraud thinking I am going to grow up any day now. – Ageing is not just a physical thing it is a state of mind and a