Golden Oldies

I WAS brought up in my grandparents' house. They helped my mother, and assumed as much right to reward and punish as she did.

My most treasured childhood photograph is of my grandfather, a craftsman, showing me how to attach one piece of wood to another.

I watched both he and my grandmother decline and die. Indeed, I was the first to discover my grandmother had died, and remember my relief that her crying would no longer cast a pall over the house, mixed with awe over my first corpse.

They worked, almost literally, till they dropped - my grandmother reading palms and telling fortunes from tea-leaves, my grandfather fiddling with old, fishing boat engines whose repair had provided his living after he left the merchant marine.

He certainly never doubted for a minute his importance in the house and his mastery of it - even after my mother remarried, and we lived uncomfortably with his angry awareness of the subterranean longing for his death.

It was no idyll - real families seldom are.

It was also not unusual in a Scots village of the 1950s; it is the experience of a handful now. More frequent is that angst narrated by the newscaster Jon Snow earlier this week, his guilt about being "ruthless in my refusal to make sacrifices to care for my mother".

A recognisable spasm; who among us wants to have our homes invaded with what Snow memorably calls "the smell of incontinence battling with detergent", hear our children moan about Granny's nagging, feel reduced from middle age to resentful childhood by a row? And, for most of the elderly, a sense of independence and hatred of being a burden keeps them apart as long as they can manage it.

Thus our representations of age are of the elderly without families. The fractious working partnership of Steptoe and Son has given way to the comic variations on empty lives in Last of the Summer Wine or the demented solipsism of Victor Meldrew in One Foot in the Grave.

Once, some years ago, I gave an old woman a lift home from hospital to a tower block whose lifts did indeed smell of incontinence, though not that of age.

Her son was a sports reporter on a national newspaper: "He can't come to see me often...he travels all over the country...he knows all the big players."

Inside, a mountain of his cuttings. And the only thought in one's head: How to flee.

Hearing the rustle of these dry leaves and being itself young and full of projects, the Government plans to hold out its hand to the elderly. It wants to dispel the view that it is only interested in youth. No wonder, for the numbers of the elderly are mounting fast, and will increase by 50 per cent in the next 30 years.

Not appearing to care about these grey panthers could invite a nasty clawing at an election - the more so since, unlike the young, the panthers vote enthusiastically.

Today will see the announcement of various initiatives to help the aged, and of the appointment of a new inter-ministerial committee, chaired by John Denham, the Pensions Minister, and including junior ministers from most of the spending departments. Modelled on the rather higher-powered committee on the family chaired by Jack Straw, the committee on the elderly has been told by the Prime Minister (who is said to have a particular concern for its work) to come up with initiatives and attitudes before the summer recess.

It builds on a growing trend. It is now less and less the case that women at 60 and men at 65 hang up their working clothes after a lifetime's labour, and idle away their time until they become a burden, and then die.

Some leave work early with good pensions and start another life of ease, or ease mixed with voluntary or part- time work. Some leave work early because they have no choice, but find something to stop life feeling wholly futile.

Many of the voluntary organisations in which this country is still rich would cease to exist without the panthers, many more children would be untended, were it not for Granny.

Mr Denham's belief is that this should and can be encouraged. He sees tasks of guidance, caring and education needing to be done, and legions of older citizens with the desire and aptitude to do them.

The Government must be unequivocally on the side of bringing the need and the capacity together - of finding ways through the fiscal and legislative barriers to offer useful work to those who fear they can be of no further use to others, or themselves.

They answer a crying need - a need often manifested by the crying of men and women who feel life has dumped them while they still have the heart and strength for more productive living.

The appointment of the committee appears to be a recognition that the elderly's place of honour has long gone from most families; that, if honour is again to be associated with age, the State must assist in creating the conditions in which it can be manifest.

New Labour, quietly, sees that neither society nor family can flourish unaided, in a world in which market logic pitilessly chooses the fittest to serve it and rejects the rest.

The State has to make good the deficit, or it picks up a heavier tab in the end.

JOHN LLOYD is associate editor of the New Statesman. This article first appeared in The Times.

Victor's a victim of same old joke

By JOHN DENHAM

Junior Social Security Minister

RICHARD Wilson said it all the other day: Victor Meldrew is funny because he is an old grumbler. That's the joke. But if our view of people of his age was different, maybe he would not have to resort to grumbling all the time.

So Richard agreed to help the Government launch a new strategy to make sure we really listen to older people and what THEY want, before we make policies which affect them. For too long now, we haven't heard their voices properly.

There are the immediate issues that we are tackling - what to do about pensions and long-term care. But as people live longer, and enjoy more active lives, their positive contribution should be recognised and encouraged. We all know older people who make life a lot better for all those around them. Grandparents holding families together, looking after children, helping out with the school run. Or volunteers in hospitals, schools and community centres.

So the Prime Minister has set up a new group of ministers, which I am chairing, to make sure Government is listening and acting.

If you would like to tell me what you think of the idea, or if you have any suggestions to make about what we should be doing to make life better for older people, I am keen to hear from you. Please write to me at: Department for Social Security, Richmond House, 79 Whitehall, London, SW1A 2NS.

Action now, not more research

By BARBARA CASTLE

former Social Services Secretary

WHAT does the Government think it's playing at? Once again it has postponed its proposals for pension "reform" - first promised for spring and then for June.

Now Tony Blair has told me in a letter that the Government hopes to publish what he calls its "initial framework for change" later this year.

Even then its proposals will only be suggestions for consultation. At this rate pensioners will have to wait - if they can - until the next Millennium to know their future.

Pensioners' organisations and expert groups have spelled out in detail to the Government what should be done. They want the security of a defined pension in their retirement, not a gamble on the stock market. Only the wealthy can afford such luxuries.

They want an improved basic state pension up-rated each year in line with average earnings and a good second pension through either the revived state pension SERPS or good company superannuation schemes.

They are not looking for handouts but for the restoration of good contributory schemes which Margaret Thatcher set out to whittle down.

Pensioners were promised a voice in planning their future. They have been articulate enough, but is the Government listening?

The time has come for action not research.

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