Why should us oldies be forced to downsize?

I have just noticed Erica Townend's column in your May 25 edition.

It was headed: “Should the 6,078 home owning OAP's of Wokingham be forced to downsize” (those over 65). It was a question posed to her on social media.

That is an overwhelmingly cruel, terrifying, in suggestion. If anyone is watching over the elderly, it’s the vultures. Also there has been an enormous push to create inter-generational tension. Cunning Rasputins are behind the wooden spoon tactics, and callously blame the retired for Governmental ineptitude, both locally and in Parliament.

No, we are not ALL "living longer". Take my case.

Still typing my fingers off at 65, I retired at 67. Thousands of my generation smoked themselves to death.

I am entitled to enjoy my home during office hours, leaving decades of hard graft behind. Footballers’ wives enjoy holidays every whipstitch to top up their tans, then get paid enormous, quite ridiculous sums to endorse products and add to the golden boots £millions.

At a low hourly rate, I was glued to a typist’s chair, so hooray, at long last I became free to enjoy my home which took decades to get in good order.

Senior citizens are continually bombarded with equity release ads (alias re mortgaging); a list of insurance ads as long as your arm; urged to pay in advance for funeral costs (no guarantee of undertakers not going bankrupt before we claim our boxes).

Meanwhile, the City and various business and parliamentary think tanks regard senior citizens as a bunch of pushovers with massive great £ signs floating above their heads, ripe for plundering!

Wealthy showbusiness people grin out from endorsements to tempt us with free pens. A pen is hardly worth re-saddling our homes with encumbrances. We are entitled to see the back of decades of mortgages, and entitled to a few concessions to keep heads above water, and aid good health.

I note that Ms Townend is an estate agent. Of course, it would be handstands and corks popping in the numerous agency offices if over 6,000 seniors get successfully hounded out of their homes and herded unceremoniously to live like battery hens in seriously pricey “sheltered” accommodation.

High profile people including politicians have invested in what they saw as golden geese, and need to lure the old into their net so they the investors can live like lords on the backs of others, by filling all vacancies in overpriced “Sunset Homes” at Ritz and Savoy prices. Per week.

As a conveyancing legal secretary, I constantly had dealings with Estate Agents. Drawing a veil over the antics of more than a few, let’s just say I knew where the bodies were buried.

Come to think of it, there are many estate agents offices converted from homes which would have better served society if change of user been denied. The fact that modest properties are now inflated to the £500,000 bracket is due to the prospectors, speculators etc.

Thatcherism saw to it the stabilising effect of good social housing was “Thatchered away”. (Prospective high rise incinerators are not good social housing).

Chickens are flocking home to roost big time and, as usual, senior citizens are diversionary scapegoats. There is a remorseless land grab campaign and many sticky parasitic fingers scratching at the pie. A well-known celebrity was paid a fortune( £Millions) to present the lottery programme. Having ensured her “businessman” boyfriend leave his children to marry her, he (a typical parasite) bought up numerous properties, but his venture came to grief. Now the ex-queen of the lottery is happily endorsing kitchen worktops and doubtless not suffering financially.

Undoubtedly Social Security funds for the powerful when they become ex-Government, or their businesses crashes makes for well-cushioned comebacks.

When elders are genuinely anxious to downsize it is very much up to them, but to suggest pensioners are penalised so brutally they cannot afford to stay where they are happy is a nightmare scenario. Justice is not served by worrying the old folk to death. They deserve not to be harried by threats designed to rob them of their homes, and concessions to help them keep heads above water.

Many young people are being groomed and goaded to resentment by toxic journalism. Young people will hardly gain if parents and grandparents are sick with anxiety.

I am fed up with the term Baby Boomers. BB should apply to BANKERS BOOBS, blame the bankers, CEO's etc for the unholy financial mess the country and the world is in. Millions of pounds are spirited away in banking and corporate scams – I don't know who has the filched dosh in their greedy piggy banks, does Ms Townend have any suggestions?

Her toxic headline may not be Erica Townend’s quote originally, but she has sure given the punitive idea the oxygen of publicity.

Estate agents love to see people changing their address, and Ms Townend would be no exception. Commission is the name of the game. G E Griffifths, Earley