Nicholas Craig column

May 5 2006 By Nicholas Craig, The Journal

Today is not only my birthday, but also a permit to pay less on trains, buses, in cinemas and hairdressers.

I am now 60. It is a milestone and a bit of a millstone. There are people in their twenties who act older than I will ever feel. I am, nevertheless, mature, distinguished and full of gravitas. In other words, a person capable of having a bus pass.

I decided to take advantage of the bright new world opening up to me by visiting Hexham railway station earlier this week to inquire after my railcard. I was told to come back when I was a proper age to do so. It was remarkably pleasant to be too young to take part.

What becomes clearer with age is that experience really does matter in business. One in five start-ups is by older people, and they are twice as likely to succeed as young entrepreneurs.

As you learn through life, the risks you take are measured against what has worked in practice.

People over 55 have a wealth of talent and trained expertise we cannot afford to lose. We hear this mouthed by organisations and government, but attitudes to age in the workplace are hard to shift. Sixty may be the new 40, but tell that to the 39-year-olds keen to move up the career ladder.

It will take time to integrate over-55s across business in equal measure to the under-35s.

Speaking personally, middle age seems only to have taken its toll on my waistline. I am as busy at work and in my social life as I was 20 years ago, and enjoying both just as much.

Nevertheless, it is sobering to realise I have now been working for 40 years and am unlikely to carry on doing so for another 40. Our generation did, however, crack the genetic code, so nothing is impossible.

The Government's coming-of-age reforms become law this year, to ban age discrimination. I hope they also begin to shift opinion so that age is no longer seen as an on-cost by employers and that directors begin to recognise that people my age are often full of energy, ideas and drive, unhampered by the distractions of young families and thirty-something traumas.

What is undoubtedly true is that, as John McEnroe said: "The older I get, the better I used to be." Just wait another 10 years - I'll be invincible.

Nicholas Craig is a partner at Watson Burton LLP