‘Raising the state pension age has meant hardship for many women’

Alison Peters, 63, on how she is making ends meet until she can claim her pension at 66

I live alone and, at 63, had expected to be drawing a state pension by now. As it is, I have to wait another three years, and am getting by on the minimum wage earned from my part-time job as a charity administration assistant. Last year that amounted to £2,500.

Raising the state pension age has meant real hardship for many women my age, particularly for those on their own. It is difficult to reconcile this with the frequent media reports that the over-60s are using up money and resources that younger people feel they are more entitled to. Women of my age didn’t get paid maternity leave and often gave up work to be full-time parents and/or carers of the elderly. Many of us have not been able to save for a private pension, and workplace pensions were not routinely offered as they are now.

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Rented properties face clampdown – but tiny flats escape ban

New rules launch next week, just as thousands of students move in to shared homes

A tougher licensing regime for private rented homes comes into force on Monday, along with a new minimum size for bedrooms – just days after it emerged that 35 people had been found living in one London semi.

The government measures are designed to crack down on bad practices and generally make life better for renters. They come as thousands of second-year university students begin renting their first place with a group of friends.

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A guide to a greener home https://t.co/cih9UVApQs #conveymove #estateagentsnottingham https://t.co/GmjoJxU3bM (via Twitter http://twitter.com/conveyandmove/status/1045904051496529921)

A guide to a greener home Nottingham Estate Agents

Andrew Crowther, Assistant Resources and Energy Manager at Strutt & Parker, looks at ways to make a home greener. Here are five top tips to help homeowners to follow the three Rs – Reduce, Reuse and Recycle 1. Water butts British summers tend to swing from pouring rain to hose pipes bans. One of the […]

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Let’s move to Grange-over-Sands and Cartmel: ‘Ooh, Alan Bennett’

An exotic destination for middle-aged elopers

What’s going for it? Grange-over-Sands is the kind of spot namechecked in Victoria Wood sketches, Alan Bennett scripts or classic Coronation Street as the epitome of posh, the exotic destination for middle-aged elopers, with its hedonistic cocktail of hushed hotels, vigorous (but not overly so) rambling and restaurants with starched napkins and potted shrimps on the menu. It’s still a most pleasant place, if a little forgotten about. Whether you find it charmingly nostalgic or deadly dull depends on your penchant for secondhand bookshops, purveyors of hearing aids, chocolate boutiques and benches for gawping out across the squelchy plains of Morecambe Bay. It’s my kind of place, though one fears for its future. Today’s midlife elopers are more likely to opt for Cartmel, next door: nostalgic in its own, hipper way, with its cute, Instagrammable priory, boutique hotels, delicious food shops and A-list restaurants. Plus the prospect of a slice of the village’s infamous sticky toffee pudding. Better than (middle-aged) sex. So I’m told.

The case against Tucked rather out of the way of the 21st century. That, of course, being the point. Quiet. Gentle pleasures.

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