Work til you Drop or will retiring later keep you alive for longer?

Britain will soon have a quarter of its population aged 60 and above, and so today's announcement that men will have to work until they are 66 possibly as early as 2016.

Nick Clegg told the BBC: "We are reinvigorating what retirement means."

Work and Pensions Secretary, Ian Duncan-Smith, said: "Britain used to have a pensions system to be proud of..... we must live up to our responsibility to reinvigorate the pension landscape.... People are living longer and healthier lives than ever, and the last thing we want is to lose their talent and enthusiasm from the workplace due to an arbitary age limit."

And this is the key - Age Concern has been lobbying the government for years to get the default retirement age axed, as many of the baby boomer generation are happy and keen to work beyond 65.

Hearing from current retirees about how they would feel about working on to 66 or even 68 would be really interesting, as would hearing from people currently working but who are years off retiring. There are after all more and more employers taking on over 60s, such as in B&Q, Debenhams... and it's often those older workers who give you a better service. Why is that?

Age UK have come out to say that this will disadvantage those on lower incomes and who suffer from ill health, and there is an argument to say that although office workers and directors of big companies might be happy to stay on a few more years, those who do manual or physical work, or who travel a lot for their work, might not be able to keep the pace up beyond 60.

Perhaps the choice should be there but not the obligation?