Don’t write us off

I am getting very, very disgruntled at hearing my generation being classified as “The Ageing Population”. It is con- stantly being pointed out that we are now cluttering up the GP surgeries, bed-blocking in NHS hospitals, overwhelming social care provision and causing a housing shortage because we want to live in our own homes. How inconvenient of us to hang on for so long! To us, it seems that we are a redundant generation, an unwanted statistic.

I would like the statisticians when they are busy numbercrunching, and the pundits when they are busy pronouncing, to recall one thing .“The Ageing Population” were children of war. We are the survivors of World War Two. Hitler and his Nazi Germany irrevocably scarred our childhoods.

I have friends who sat their O-levels in air raid shelters, with bombs crumping down over their heads. I have friends whose fathers were not taken off the beaches at Dunkirk,