On measuring Age

The conventional way of measuring age (that is, how long you have lived) is wrong. Measuring age as 'birth plus' is probably quite useful in some ways, mostly administrative and including, I suppose, desiding when people should start schooling. But going on to draw all sorts of conclusions about people just because they happen to have been around a certain amount of time is quite another matter and has no justification so far as I can see.

For example, it's crazy that a fit, active, compos-mentis man or woman should have to retire for no other reason than that they're 65 or 103 - or whatever it is the Government wants these days - while some drink-sodden wastrel of 40 whose only exercise is to crawl from the sofa to the front door when the pizza arrives can continue taking paid sickies for another quarter of a century with near impunity.

A better way of measuring age is 'death minus' (that is, how long you are likely to have left, assuming you aren't hit by a bus or catch a disease that could afflict anyone or is no fault of your own). This way of measuring age takes into account not just how long someone has lived, but how they've gone about it. In a nutshell, measuring 'death minus' means that people who are fit and active are considered younger than others of the same 'birth plus' age.

Just think, it means that fit people could actually start to boast about being old (in the 'birth plus' sense) rather than get all hot under the collar about it. The world would change overnight! To see what I mean, here is the new way of calculating age that I propose.

First you have to do a little assessment, like these two examples:
1. A fit 43 year old, based on an assumed death at 90 (if there are no Acts of God): actual age equivalent to Death minus 47.
2. A lazy 43 year old git, based on an assumed death at 60 (if there are no Acts of God): actual age equivalent to Death minus 17

Then the clever bit: you take the above figures and then find out the average birth-plus age of death across the population as a whole; let's say, for the sake of argument that it's 75 for men. Now your real age looks like this:
1. Fit 43 year old: 75 minus 47 = actual age of 28.
2. Lazy 43 year old git: 75 minus 17 = actual age of 58

See! You never have to worry about your age again - unless you're a slob. If you are really super-fit this would open the intriguing prospect of there even being certain over-25s pubs and clubs that might actually deny you entrance or refuse to serve you unless accompanied by an obese person several years your junior (working on the faulty current 'birth-plus' formula)!

Right, I'm off to the pub.