'Don't be putting down my generation - us oldies are not lucky'

11 April 2024 , 16:53

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Retired legal secretary Sheila Correll says she can't live on her pension (Image: PA)

Talkin’ ’bout my generation! They are, and I don’t like what they’re saying.

Economics guru Paul Johnson CBE, highly paid head of the Institute for Fiscal Studies, says we oldies belong to “a lucky generation”. He says we’ve never had it so good because the so-called triple lock gave us a one-off pension rise equal to the rise in people’s wages last week.

If only that were the full story, but it isn’t. My generation bore the brunt of the Covid pandemic, which killed hundreds of thousands in the UK. Life expectancy is falling, after decades of it increasing. Tell the WASPI women waiting for justice that they’re lucky, and stand well back. Tell the 100,000 over-65s waiting for 24 hours in A&E for a hospital bed.

And the 350,000 pensioners who are struggling to afford enough food – more than double the number of only three years ago. Tell 81-year-old Lincolnshire retired legal secretary Sheila Correll, who says: “You cannot live on the pension. The rise is swallowed up by ­everything else going up.”

Some luck. I’m reminded of the lost pet small ad: “Missing dog, deaf, blind in one eye, lame leg due to traffic accident – answers to the name of Lucky”. Yes, compared with life for the wartime generation, when I was born, and those who lived through austerity in the later 1940s, we’re fortunate. And we worked for it.

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Compared to patronising Paul, 57, best-selling author, columnist, public speaker and TV celeb every Budget Day, living in London’s fashionable Highgate where houses cost millions, we’re not so felicitous. Sir Steve Webb, ex-pensions minister, calculates pensioners are a massive 4% better off in real terms than 30 years ago.

Call that lucky if you like. I prefer to think that society has finally moved some way towards valuing old people properly. The triple lock may not be perfect, but at least it sets in stone a relationship of respect. Talk ’bout my generation if you must, but don’t try to put us down.

Paul Routledge