The root of the problem lies in the fact that the 'natural' lifespan of a human - in a hunter-gatherer lifestyle without most technology and any medicine - is 35-40 years. For the twenty-five per cent that don't die in infancy, that is!

Indeed, up until the early 20th Century, the life expectancy of a working-class person in the North of England was about the same.

Pension age was originally set at 60 for women and 65 for men because only a few people lived to that age, nd becuase the majority of those who did, died with a year of retirement anyway. This persisted inot the 60s and 70s - only about half of my grandfathers' colleagues lived long enough to retire, and so many died within a year of doing so that some regarded retirement as a death sentence and fought to stay in work! Yet by the time my father came to retire in the '90s, most people wereliving into their 70s or 80s. Historically, except for the very few, that level of age was terra incognita and we know find that 'here there be dragons', such as osteoporosis, stenosis, type 2 diabetes, heart failure and dementia.

The problems of old age are magnified by the fact that we are not physically built to live so long, and as we age, we grow more and more dependent on assorted technologies to sustain us.

The psychological issues are even more difficult. When nobody lived past 40, nobody ever heard of a 'mid-life crisis'!