2016 saw Joe Bartley aged 89 secure a job within a cafe after posting a seeking advert to save him “dying from boredom”.
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2016/dec/01/eager-89-year-old-seeks-job-cafe-snaps-him-up
This story seems particularly fitting seeing as the end of last year saw the 10th anniversary of age discrimination legislation being implemented in our domestic legislation and the default retirement age was repealed 5 years ago, Age discrimination legislation was initially introduced in the Employment Equality (Age) Regulations 2006, then the Equality Act came into force on 1st October 2010 which amalgamates various types of unlawful discrimination under one lengthy piece of legislation.
The Equality Act 2010 (‘the Equality Act’) has 9 protected characteristics and the protected characteristic of age is defined very broadly in section 5 as a reference to people of a particular age or people who fall within a particular range of ages or are in the same age group. Even though the most apparent form of age discrimination typically affects older people, the Equality Act prohibits discrimination in relation to any age, so the possibility of discrimination against younger people is equally important.
