Last week I received an early birthday present. Sealed in an official brown envelope came an invitation from the Department of Work and Pensions to claim a monthly pension allowance for which, over the past 40 or so years, I have been contributing as a UK taxpayer.

Sadly, it’s not the more generous local version, but I look upon it as a deferred salary, on which, of course, I shall be taxed locally. So I will now be supplementing the local Revenue as well.

I have to admit that it comes as something of a bitter-sweet milestone: on the one hand, it’s the receipt of an accrued benefit; on the other, it’s an entry into a category of folk who constitute, in institutional speak, ‘a problem’.

How often during the increasingly acerbic jousting over state versus private pension provision, and the wilful counter-productive disruption caused by public-sector strikes, have we heard the accusation from the mouths of politicians, economists and hacks that ‘the problem facing the economy, housing, NHS etc, is that people are living longer’?

Well, thanks very much. So what would they prefer? Should all those who reach State retirement age organise conveniently to shuffle off this mortal coil, not pass Go, and certainly not collect their £200? Well, that can’t happen because it’s illegal.

Furthermore, there’s a host of industries and professions reliant upon the financial sustenance of the Silver Generation. Indeed, for GPs and consultants, it’s their very raison d’être – to keep their charges well and alive.

All this is delivered against a background of stories of inadequate care for and exploitation of the elderly. The closure of retirement homes and the climate of fear generated by uncertainties over institutional funding have given the impression of a prevailing attitude that says: they’ve done their thing, had their fun, so it’s time to put up, put away, and shut up.

Here, the recently published Health and Social Services review shocks us with the expectation that ‘between 2010 and 2040 there will be a 95 per cent increase in the number of people over 65’, as if that is storing up some sort of Armageddon.

Of course, it ignores the huge contribution of the ‘granny nannies’, the volunteers and carers within the ranks of the over-60s who are engaged in valued employment, mostly unpaid. It’s called community responsibility. A whole life’s experience ploughed back is worth any guru’s text-book or on-line tutor.
Clearly the cost of palliative care for those who have become vulnerable and frail has increased, but with the prospect of individuals being forced to surrender all their independent means, it cannot be right that elderly people find themselves punished for saving.

If you ignore the very low-paid who have been overshadowed by successive raids on the public purse by unaccountable senior bureaucrats, the expectation of the sort of ring-fenced pension feather-bedding now being demanded by sections of the public sector would never have figured on the radar of the those now eking out their savings to support their retirement.

They are the remnants of the ‘can do because we’ve got to’ generation, for whom the welfare state was a privilege, not a right.

While the baby-boomers have probably had the best investment opportunities to provide for their twilight years, the reality now seeping through the demographic floorboards is that for the current workforce, a secure retirement depends on increased contribution to its funding.

The private sector is, in fact, well ahead in pension reforms. With the glaring exception of certain notorious boardroom brigands, it has already taken a hit on such ‘luxuries’ as final-salary deals, simply because they are proving too expensive to sustain, particularly for small employers.

So we have seen a shift from deferred-benefit pension schemes guaranteed by employers – and still widely offered in the public sector – to ‘defined contribution’, which is virtually a savings scheme reliant on investment.
It is only one of a harsh pack of realities visited on those embarking on the hostile environment course called earning a living and providing for an ever longer-term future.

Breaking into the labour market is difficult enough, and those who demonstrate an intellectual prowess can be saddled with huge tuition debts from the start. Moreover, the thought of immediately organising a pension to see you through your later years calls for even greater resolve when a parallel benefits culture has been allowed to fester as a disincentive.

But those who don’t, won’t or can’t save for the future will certainly face bleak times. In the current funding debate, we appear to have been served a muddle of spin over what is affordable, or tenable, and predictions vary hugely. Paying a little more when you can for a little bit longer, with the expectation that the more you put away, the more you benefit, certainly satisfies the theory that sharing the burden across the national workforce over time is the ‘least worst’ solution, and removes the onus from general taxpayers to workers themselves.

Of course, you’ll hear the word ‘fairness’ being batted around liberally, but there are many positives to be gained from a longer-living population.

Our moribund tourism industry, for example, would collapse without the influx of grey threads woven through its life-raft. High street retailers ignore the purchasing power of the mature market at their peril.

With middle age extending into the 70s, attitudes to life after retirement are shifting radically. It doesn’t all just stop at 60, 65 or 67. As the columnist and doyenne of mature discernment, Katharine Whitehorn, put it on radio recently: ‘You get your cataracts done, your teeth fixed, and look around for what to do next.’