UK Leads European Nations In Hiring Over-50s

Over the past two decades, ageing populations, rising retirement ages and higher education levels have contributed to rising employment rates among workers aged 55 and over across OECD countries. Yet many workplaces are still designed around shorter careers, leading many people to leave work earlier than they need or want to. This deepens the demographic pressures facing ageing societies, including labor shortages, as early exits reduce the number of employees and inflate public welfare and healthcare costs.

The OECD argues that employers play a decisive role in enabling longer working lives through hiring practices, access to training, job quality and workplace conditions. To help organizations assess and improve their approach, the OECD recently launched a Longevity Readiness Tool, which benchmarks policies and practices across sectors and countries to identify where action is most needed.

As Statista's Anna Fleck details below, the data reveals wide differences in how countries support older workers. In hiring, the United Kingdom ranked highest in Europe in 2023, with people aged 50 and over accounting for roughly 12 percent of new hires. Finland followed at 9 percent, while Denmark and Estonia each recorded 6 percent. Poland ranked lowest at just 2 percent.

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By industry, the category of accommodation and food services hired the largest share of older workers at 11 percent, followed by administration and support services at 9 percent, while education lagged behind at only 3 percent.

Training opportunities also varied significantly across OECD nations.

In New Zealand, 49 percent of surveyed employees aged 50 to 65 said they had participated in employer-funded training programs, marking the highest share recorded. The United States followed at 48 percent and Czechia at 43 percent, while South Korea ranked lowest at just 5 percent.

Job autonomy showed similar disparities. In Japan, 92 percent of workers aged 50 to 65 reported having some control over the pace of their work, compared with only 61 percent in Sweden.

An OECD paper notes that hiring rates among older workers are shaped by several factors. Although wages and benefits often rise with age, productivity does not always increase at the same pace. At the same time, evidence suggests multigenerational workforces can strengthen productivity through knowledge transfer and accumulated experience.

Older applicants also continue to face age discrimination (particularly women), alongside employer concerns about adaptability, tenure and technological skills.

However, the OECD argues these barriers can be addressed through better training, fairer compensation structures and policies aimed at reducing age-related bias in recruitment.

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/21/2026 - 04:15

UK Police Log One-Year-Old Baby As Crime Suspect; Hundreds Of Kids Flagged For Offences Authored by Steve Watson via modernity.news,

A one-year-old baby girl has been officially recorded as a crime suspect by Kent Police after allegedly causing a minor injury to another toddler. This is part of a shocking tally where 683 children under 10 were reported for offences over three years.

This isn't some isolated bureaucratic error. It's the latest symptom of a system that treats tiny children as miniature criminals or budding bigots while real threats from failed integration and ideological grooming go unaddressed.

None of these under-10s can be prosecuted - the age of criminal responsibility in England and Wales is 10 - yet police are dutifully logging every playground scrape, tantrum, or alleged slight under ridiculous Home Office rules.

Police reveal one-year-old baby among HUNDREDS of children under 10 reported for offences https://t.co/9kpuZO2EIA

- GB News (@GBNEWS) May 18, 2026

Figures obtained via Freedom of Information request reveal the scale: six two-year-olds, 11 three-year-olds, and 20 four-year-olds among the suspects. Boys made up over three-quarters of cases, with violence against others the top category. There were also 130 'sexual offences' involving children under nine.

Kent County Council cabinet member for children's services, Councillor Paul Webb, called the numbers "not great" but stressed early intervention through prevention programmes. He pointed to county lines drug gangs recruiting vulnerable kids, especially those in care, as a major driver.

Kent Police Chief Superintendent Rob Marsh explained that reports come from victims, families, schools, and agencies, with the focus on safeguarding rather than punishment: prevention, education, and family support.

This toddler-as-suspect absurdity doesn't emerge in a vacuum. It mirrors the broader UK push to turn nurseries, schools, and playgrounds into surveillance hubs for ideological compliance.

Just weeks ago, nurseries in Wales were urged to report "racist" toddlers to police under a £1.3 million taxpayer-funded scheme.

Childcare workers receive training to spot and log "hate incidents" by children barely out of nappies, complete with audits for "diversity" and lessons on "white privilege."

The guidance from Diversity and Anti-Racist Professional Learning (DARPL) at Cardiff Metropolitan University explicitly frames toddler squabbles as potential hate crimes warranting 999 calls.

Meanwhile, schools in Sheffield and elsewhere are pushing radical race doctrine claiming "Black people cannot be racist" towards white people because they supposedly lack "power."

Materials for seven-year-olds hammer home "white privilege" and demand kids monitor their language and report peers.

Related efforts include schools pressured over "Islamophobic" children's drawings that could be deemed blasphemous under Islamic law, books celebrating small boat migrants and telling kids there's "plenty of room" for unlimited crossings, government pushes to snitch on "anti-Muslim hostility," and even a video game flagging kids who question mass migration as potential extremists.

The pattern is clear: British children's innocence is collateral damage in the drive to enforce woke orthodoxy and cultural replacement.

Add in the 2025 case of a toddler under four expelled from nursery for "transphobia" - likely just innocent curiosity - and the picture is complete.

While authorities obsess over logging baby "assaults" and policing toddler speech, genuine safeguarding issues fester.

Child-on-child sexual abuse is a recognised national concern requiring police referral regardless of age. County lines exploitation preys on the vulnerable.

Yet the response often defaults to bureaucratic box-ticking and ideological reprogramming rather than addressing root causes like family breakdown, open borders straining social services, and education systems more focused on dividing kids by race than teaching right from wrong.

Critics are right to call this Orwellian. Toddlers cannot meaningfully hold racist or transphobic beliefs - they lack the cognitive framework.

Projecting adult political neuroses onto them turns childhood into a minefield of potential reports and exclusions. It erodes parental authority and normal development in favour of state-approved conformity.

This is the inevitable endpoint of a cultural shift that prioritises grievance hierarchies, mass demographic change without integration, and "anti-racism" that actually fosters resentment.

Parents see their kids labelled suspects or bigots for normal behaviour while institutions bend over backwards to accommodate sensitivities that clash with British norms.

The solution starts with rejecting this madness. Reclaim education for basics like reading, maths, and personal responsibility. Prioritise actual child protection over ideological score-settling. Push back against the surveillance state treating every playground as a crime scene or re-education camp.

British children deserve a childhood free from this nonsense - one rooted in reality, freedom, and common sense.

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/21/2026 - 03:30

Where Inflation Is Highest In Europe In 2026

Inflation has eased from its recent peaks, but price growth remains stubbornly high across much of Europe.

This graphic, via Visual Capitalist's Gabriel Cohen, ranks 36 European countries by annual inflation rate, using the latest available 2026 data from Eurostat and the UK Parliament.

Annual inflation measures how much consumer prices have risen over the previous 12 months, such as from April 2025 to April 2026.

Where Inflation is Highest in Early 2026 in Europe

Romania has the highest inflation rate in Europe at 9.0%, followed by Kosovo at 6.5% and Bulgaria at 6.2%. Several of the highest-inflation countries are in Southeastern Europe, highlighting how price pressures remain especially elevated in parts of the region.

This data table ranks European countries by their annual inflation rates as of early 2026.

Romania, the largest economy in Southeastern Europe, faces a crisis on three fronts: high inflation, a multi-month economic recession, and a protracted political crisis that imperils governmental efforts to rein in the country’s fiscal deficit, the largest in Europe.

Inflation in recent months has climbed not only because of food and fuel prices, but also due to rising rents.

Inflation is equally politically sensitive in neighboring Bulgaria, given the country’s recent adoption of the euro in January 2026. Many in the country had feared that joining the eurozone would contribute to rising prices for everyday goods.

The Success Stories of Europe

The European Central Bank, Bank of England, and Swiss National Bank all maintain a 2% inflation target. Only four European countries fall within this target range as of March 2026: Czechia and Sweden (1.5%), Denmark (1%), and Switzerland (0.6%).

Interestingly, none of these countries use the euro as their national currency, although both the Czech Republic and Sweden are theoretically expected to join the eurozone upon satisfying certain criteria. Denmark has negotiated an opt-out.

Switzerland’s inflation rate is not only the lowest in Europe, but also among the lowest worldwide. The small Alpine country has successfully navigated international turbulence without seeing large-scale price increases.

It has also managed to avoid deflation (negative inflation), another key part of the Swiss National Bank’s mandate.

Inflation in Europe’s Major Economies

The major European economies today each grapple with inflation rates above the targets set by the ECB and other central banks.

France (2.5%), Germany (2.9%), and the United Kingdom (3.3%) are all facing substantial cost-of-living increases, driven partly by rising energy prices linked to geopolitical conflicts such as the wars in Iran and Ukraine.

Persistent inflation has also kept cost-of-living pressures high, making price stability a central political issue across many of Europe’s largest economies.

Wondering where rising prices can be seen most clearly? Check out Where Inflation Has Hit the Hardest (2000–2025) on Voronoi.

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/21/2026 - 02:45

Norway Wants To Lead A "Viking Bloc" For Containing Russia In Northern Europe

Authored by Andrew Korybko,

It can simultaneously threaten Russia along the increasingly interconnected Arctic and Baltic fronts.

Russian Ambassador to Norway Nikolai Korchunov gave a brief interview to TASS about bilateral relations. He warned that Norway is integrating new NATO members Sweden and Finland into the bloc’s regional plans. More American military bases and NATO facilities are opening up there too. To make matters worse, 32,500 troops from 14 NATO countries in last March’s “Cold Response” military drills in Norway and Finland’s northern regions, which add to growing NATO threats to Russia from this direction.

NATO’s militarization of the Arctic, which also includes artificially engineered tensions over the demilitarized Svalbard Archipelago, is proceeding in parallel with its militarization of the Baltic.

Korchunov believes that this raises the risk of the bloc one day attempting to blockade Russia. He reassured his compatriots that the authorities will defend their country’s interests, however, including through military-technical means in an allusion to new naval escorts of some commercial vessels.

In connection with blockade scenarios, Korchunov was asked about TASS’ report from early April about how “Ukraine readies terrorist attacks on Russian ships off coast of Norway”, which he said caused quite a stir in his host country. He didn’t elaborate on how exactly Russia plans to deter or defend against potential Ukrainian drone attacks from Norway, but he ominously warned that escalating threats to Russia from Norway “will inevitably lead to a directly proportional increase in risks for Norway itself.”

Korchunov wasn’t asked about it in his interview, but the week prior to its release, the UK announced that it’ll lead a new multilateral naval initiative against Russia with Norway and eight others. This goes to show Norway’s growing role in threatening Russia through blockade scenarios, whether they’re in its neighboring Arctic region and/or the nearby Baltic one. As a founding member of NATO, Norway seems to believe that this obligates it to lead Russia’s containment in Northern Europe.

To that end, it’s functioning as Sweden and Finland’s “big brother” in NATO while actively cooperating with the UK, one of Russia’s historical nemeses. This enables Norway to simultaneously advance Russia’s containment along the increasingly interconnected Arctic and Baltic fronts. Given its oil wealth, Norway could also extend military loans to its “little brothers” for accelerating their military buildups and the subsequent creation of a northern regional command against Russia as part of the US’ “NATO 3.0” plans.

The preceding insight draws attention to one of the ways in which multipolarity is reshaping Europe, namely through the trend of regional military integration, whether it’s Norway wanting to lead a nascent “Viking Bloc” or Poland trying to restore its lost Great Power status in Central and Eastern Europe. The Anglo-American Axis is managing this division of military-strategic labor, with the US being the senior partner and the UK being the junior one, and they plan to replicate this model elsewhere in Eurasia.

Apart from Norway and Poland’s regional military blocs, Romania provides this duopoly with reach into Moldova and the Black Sea, while Turkiye expands their influence in the Black Sea but also the South Caucasus, Caspian Sea, and Central Asia via the “Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity”. There’s also AUKUS+, which could prospectively include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, and even Indonesia. The emerging result is “The Globalization of NATO” with multipolar characteristics.

Tyler Durden Thu, 05/21/2026 - 02:00