Sandra Chapman: Boris must play fair with the older generation

Months have been mentioned, a penalty sure to cause major problems and for what purpose?

The Government doesn’t appear to know what to do with us, only promising to ‘clarify the lockdown rules’ relating to older people soon. In anticipation of what none of us wants to hear, politicians at Westminister got an earful from no less a person than Baroness Altmann, a former pensions minister, who warned there could be ‘social unrest’ if the over 70s are ‘forced to endure a longer lockdown than the younger generation’.

This is a country where once upon a time women could retire at 60 and men at 65 – as that was regarded as old age. But people have been living longer due to better living standards, the results of all the hard work the baby boomer generation put in right up to the present time. This appears to have emboldened successive Governments to raise the age of retirement age for both men and women. More money in the public coffers is the result.

The retirement age may well rise in the longer term to 70 years if not 75, a prospect feared by every worker in the country. Yet, politicians remain silent on this. Putting up the age of retirement also means there will be less years for state pensions to be paid out.

I worry at what appears to be the increasing use of the term ‘healthy over 70s’. What exactly does that mean?

Few people in this age category I suspect enjoy perfect health, otherwise GPs across the land wouldn’t be advising them to take statins to keep blood pressure levels down. Women have been encouraged to take HRT long after menopause, even staying on it for life if needs be. These life enhancers, as some medical people appear to regard them, may be just the ticket. But how are we to know since the latter, statins, are relatively new to the people whilst HRT still attracts controversy?

Do either of these treatments increase longevity? We simply don’t know the answer to that question.

Locking down the over-70s, many of whom will still be paying tax to the Government, could be interpreted in many ways. I will take the kindly approach and suggest that the Government will need all the scope it has to get the economy back up and running; schools will have to be re-opened and plans will have to be laid for the possibility of a future pandemic since the current one caught everyone by surprise and left the country on its knees.

With the absolute necessity to get people back to work and paying income tax, the Government must have thought the oldies could wait and since many of them will have various ailments it could be dressed up as ‘protecting them’.

One Cabinet minister has said the whole thing ‘is to be based around consent rather than compulsion’.

That’s fine, but it appears no one asked us first whether we wanted to be lockdowned for longer or left to do our own thing.

I certainly do not want to be on lockdown for any more weeks than I have to because once you hit your 70s life seems to go by in a flash. It seems no time since my children were clinging to my skirts wanting me to play in the garden.

Anniversaries and birthdays came and went with me so busy I scarcely noticed.

The children grew up with me hardly noticing the years go by and then they were off to university.

They found themselves wives, leaving us at home, on our own, wondering where all the years had gone. But still we felt young, still able to work and go on holiday.

We hardly noticed our 70th birthdays, then last year it was the 50th wedding anniversary.

We still have brothers and sisters and the only recognition of ageing is when the much older members in the wider family, the true older generation, pass on. I don’t think I’m the older generation yet.