JANET STREET PORTER: Why shouldn't we baby boomers get pensions and work? It's not our fault we can't afford to retire
Sometimes I feel as if I've committed a crime, a heinous act over which I had no control. There are millions like me, newly stigmatised. Put simply, we baby boomers were born at the wrong time, and now politicians and social commentators have got it in for us.
We, not the Bulgarians or Romanians, are becoming pariahs in Britain. The other week, I took part in a BBC TV political programme hosted by Andrew Neil, who moaned at me for not handing back my winter fuel allowance. Why was I, who still works, claiming a pension? Why was I cheekily using my Freedom Pass on buses and trains?
Answer: Because I have paid more than my fair share of official deductions - income taxes, corporation tax, national insurance and council tax - all my working life, which at the last count adds up to more than 45 years of coughing up and not evading or avoiding anything by being domiciled in the Virgin Islands, or similar. Which is more than can be said for big business such as Starbucks et al.
Nick Clegg has talked about the 'problem' of wealthy pensioners, and it's rumoured David Cameron wants to claw back our benefits to balance his books.
Now, the attack has shifted to a different front - by carrying on earning a living, when we should be dusting off our slippers and ordering a stairlift, we stand accused of hogging jobs that unemployed school-leavers should be getting.
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Utter rubbish, but anti-boomer propaganda clearly lies behind this. A bank has analysed data from the Office for National Statistics and concluded that 93 per cent of the rise in employment over the last five years has been among the over-50s.
Since the beginning of 2008, the number working past retirement age has leapt by 40 per cent - not just down to a rise in demographics, but because pensions have fallen in value and we can't afford to pay our bills.
'Since the beginning of 2008, the number working past retirement age has leapt by 40 per cent - not just down to a rise in demographics, but because pensions have fallen in value and we can't afford to pay our bills'Over half-a-million more of us will be paying income tax this year. Also, my generation are so much 'younger' than our parents were by the time they reached 60.
Most haven't experienced war, social deprivation, rationing, and have avoided hard manual labour. Factory work might be boring and repetitive, but machines do the hard graft. We don't walk so far to work - and our homes are better heated and more comfortable.
'Expecting a generation to stop work because the government messed up their sums is a joke'Many of my generation have started their own businesses, often selling back leisure and recreational products to other boomers.
Supermarkets and shops discovered that boomers have terrific people skills and make friendly sales staff (not me, perhaps!). The vast majority of older staff are in the services sector - leisure, retail or offices, not outside in harsh conditions.
A third of all workers say they plan to work past retirement, so this is a trend that's not going away.
According to critics, boomers are like bed-blockers in hospitals, preventing 20 and 30-somethings moving up the career ladder, so school-leavers can't take their jobs and get started. I can see the problem, but here's a solution: why doesn't the Government pay my generation to train the young, acting as mentors, and teaching social skills?
Many younger people scrabble for posts as unpaid interns, or compete for pointless work experience schemes. I would give up my winter fuel allowance if it was turned into pay for a trainee. Baby boomers have children and grandchildren who can't get jobs - they understand the problem.
Employers must be paid to take on extra workers, attaching them to boomers as mentors. Expecting a generation to stop work because government messed up their sums is a joke.
Sorry chaps, you may look the part but it's an ugly way to get aheadDemanding roles, or career crisis? Both Hugh Grant and Al Pacino regularly complain about being typecast — Grant as an undemanding series of self-satisfied middle-class English chaps, and Pacino a repetitive line in snarling gangsters in blockbusters from Scarface to The Godfather.
But recent pictures show the veteran actors have decided on drastic action, perhaps in the hope of re-igniting their careers.
Hard to believe that, at 72, Pacino has only won one Oscar, back in 1992, for his wonderful turn in Scent Of A Woman.
Al Pacino and Helen Mirren in Phil Spector, the new US movie about the record producer and convicted murdererNow, he's sporting a huge afro to star as convicted murderer Phil Spector in a new U.S. TV movie, with Helen Mirren playing his lawyer (both pictured right).
Hugh, who at 52 might justifiably feel he's a bit long in the tooth for Romeo roles, plays a frightening cannibal in the screen version of David Mitchell's novel Cloud Atlas, opening here in a couple of weeks.
Almost three hours long, the film has been described as both 'stunning' and 'rubbish' in equal measure.
Whatever the verdict, both actors seem to have decided to ditch sex appeal for good.
You're too young to retire at 23, Rebecca Rebecca AdlingtonPensioners get accused of clogging up the workplace, but what about top sportspeople who step down while very young?
Our most successful swimmer since 1908, Rebecca Adlington, scored gold medals in Beijing, and bronze in London last year.
Just 23, she is announcing her ‘retirement', but she's set up a sports foundation and will be helping to train young people at swimming camps - surely that's work?
The daily routine of training for competition is dreary and draining, but I applaud Bradley Wiggins, Jessica Ennis and Mo Farah, whose careers seem to be lasting longer.
Read yourself same? I've got just the book for you... Phillipa Perry, wife of artist Grayson
Feeling miserable, or just unfulfilled? High-profile critics such as Allison Pearson and Alastair Campbell were furious when I wrote that GPs often dished out anti-depressants to patients who didn't really need them.
Talking therapies can be helpful, but there are usually waiting lists, and some of us find it difficult to unburden ourselves to strangers. From May, though, doctors will be able to offer another kind of help that doesn't involve medication - the chance to read supportive and inspiring prose. A new scheme, backed by the Department Of Health and the Arts Council, has come up with 30 titles that will be available in every public library, ranging from novels to self-help manuals, and doctors will specify which ones they think are appropriate to deal with conditions ranging from anger to anxiety. They range from Bill Bryson's Notes On A Small Island to Laurie Lee's Cider With Rosie. My self-help book, Life's Too F****** Short, was a bestseller a few years back, but I don't imagine it's on the list. It offers ruthless JSP-style solutions to everyday dilemmas.
Philippa Perry (pictured), wife of the artist Grayson, has written a thoughtful little book called How To Stay Sane (£7.99), which one reviewer described as 'how to maintain a flexible position between rigidity and chaos'. I am capable of running the full gamut of emotions from rage to hilarity in less than five minutes, especially when speaking to a call centre about a refund for a train ticket. Is there a book about that on the NHS?
Gizmo that makes me overheat Janet Street-Porter hate her thermostatOne gadget that always reduces me to panic is the central heating thermostat. I've edited a national newspaper, run teams of 250 people, but I cannot set my heating. These baffling devices are designed by sadists, most probably male.
When they are installed, a jolly plumber runs through all the settings at breakneck speed, then hands you a leaflet in German, Japanese and pidgin English, and leaves. You have three different sets of timers for three different sequences. You have holiday settings. You have to set the damn thing for every single day of the week. You have override buttons, extra hour and boost buttons ... I feel an anxiety attack coming just writing this!
Now, help is at hand. Tony Fadell, who helped design the iPod, has come up with a revolutionary version, called Nest, which can be controlled from your phone and 'learns' your daily routine, coming up with the appropriate settings. It can even work out when you have arrived home!
It's on sale in the U.S. but will soon be here.
Thank goodness. Perhaps Tony could redesign my noisy, long-winded dishwasher next.
