BRITAIN’S OLD-AGE TIME BOMB (Guardian Monday 25th February 2013)
A recent article in The Guardian referred (although they may have been quoting someone else) to the ‘time bomb’ of Britain’s expanding population. Of course, over the last few years we have seen numerous similar reports referring to the ‘burden’ that our generations is imposing and increasingly going to impose on social and health services and the Treasury. Newspapers other than the Guardian might put, more graphically, the ‘shock horror’ case of the burgeoning elderly population. According to the Guardian article our long life is a ‘gift’ and we are ‘in the vanguard of an extraordinary revolution in longevity’. So are you ready to mount the barricades or do the depictions in the press of older people still make you want to explode?
One of the things I plan to do in these blogs is keep an eye on the press but your observations would be very useful. I also intend to look at those older people who write regular columns which tend to focus on age and, to me, seem to be, too frequently, quite negative!