The Age of No Retirement-I hate this name!

Thanks to all who have grasped the point that I feel "The Age of No Retirement" is in fact some sort of con trick. Convince people that working is the only way forward, restrict their access to benefits and pensions and tell them they are in some way a drain on society if they take these up and you have a perfect situation to keep people working until they drop. My argument is that retirement in fact provides not only a healthier lifestyle for retirees, but benefits society, by making us available to do all sorts of volunteering stuff (not to mention childminding)
As far as the SAHM question goes, what about Grandparents who are childminding are they not entitled to opinions either? If so this means I can have opinions 6 days a week but not the 1 day I am minding my DGD-mm??

In an ideal world, it would be wonderful if those of us wanting retirement could be free to go for it; whilst those wishing to carry on at work could do so. A flexible retirement age to suit each individual would be perfect. It's worrying that some people must work on into old age, when they'd like to enjoy their later years with family and friends.

Yes indeed Blinko - there is such huge difference in the capacities of people at 70 or 80 or 90 and their expertise is wasted when they are forced to retire while they still have much to offer.
I have 2 relatives in their early 80s - one is still rushing around leading a very active life and the other is almost completely physically incapacitated. This is obvious but the mental capacities of older people are more difficult to assess sometimes. I have one relative who is still writing academic books in her 90s But there are many with early Altzheimers.
If you made it completely flexible, employers would have to sometimes tackle people and have a discussion on grounds of capacity - telling them the time has come to go because they were no longer up to it. Some people do want to go on rather too long.
We probably all know someone who has gone on driving a bit longer than they should for instance. You would have to introduce cognitive assessment tests in roles like judges and doctors to ensure they were still on top of their game.

Surely employers do continuous assessment of all employees to make sure they are performing their jobs as they should.

Most employers have some kind of "performance review" system but sometimes it is done well, sometimes badly and sometimes postponed until things are less busy.

Yes indeed, Jess - mine started doing annual 'assessments' of their employees' performance some years ago but haven't got round to it for the last two or three...