Let me start by talking a little bit about the aging workforce.
CPRN now has a study under way, as part of our human capital adult learning and work segment, assessing the implications of an aging society for skill shortages. We're very directly looking at ways in which we might use our talented and skilled aging workers to make a difference in terms of helping with skill shortages.
One of the issues that I think you're describing in terms of the response of the employer to an older worker is one of simple discrimination. I think it's never simple when it is discrimination. Developing a flexible adaptive workplace also means that we need to have a way of viewing an older worker as a valuable resource, rather than someone who should be pushed out for those young workers who don't exist.
I think there are a number of simultaneous issues involved when we're talking about older workers. There's the relationship between new income from employment and the effect it has on pensions. There are disincentive issues with respect to the tax levels on that new income. There's then the issue of a flexible, adaptive workplace that may not value those older workers in the way it should.
I think we have done a great deal of work in the past in this country on helping to change public attitudes towards workers. This is a new area for us, and one that we will have to adapt to because we have a shortage and we're going to have to find more ways to use people.