Britain's pensioners are the poorest in Europe.

You are quite right.

The difficulty is that it is really difficult to move public opinion on anything that the media does not find interesting, and the media are never interested in the elderly for a long period.

You get the occasional bout of horror, when everyone wrings their hands at how bad it all is, but then things move on to the next story.

I know i often find myself saying "the media should do xxx", but the fact of the matter is that they don't see it that way. Their function is to sell papers, or to clock up viewer numbers.

What I keep thinking is that we need much more structured forums, where there is a lot of material gathered together on different topics, People can read the research papers and summaries, and can take part in discussions.

There are of course public consultation exercises going on all the time, but how many people get to hear about any of them? I have taken part in a few, most people will not have done.

With pensions, you are I am sure quite right that this is something that needed to be addressed in the 80s or before, and it hasn't really been tackled adequately yet, so there is major funding gap.

I don't think there is a painless solution to this one. The number of pensioners in poverty is likely to grow. We won't be able to walk away from it, there won't be enough young people of earning age for them to carry the burden so the only logical solution is that either you tolerate huge disparities between the poor and wealthy elderly, or you find ways of sharing the costs within your own age group.

I think I am a bit of a maverick where it comes to money. I ask the question that Vince Cable does. "What is money for". I think we have to look at what it is important to do, and if we find that we are being prevented from doing it because of money, then we should look at different ways of raising the money!

It is incidentally a question I've asked two other issues in recent years. One was Care funding, and one was Feed in Tariffs for Renewable energy. On both of these questions I went out on a limb. Now they are both happening! Can't see any reason why it wouldn't work for pensions too.

It's not all pensioners, though, is it? Remember the great queues of pretty ordinary people outside Northern Rock wishing to withdraw surprisingly large amounts of money? What with property values and the old-fashioned habit of 'cutting your cloth' some people are quite comfortably off.

Poor pensioners are entitled to top-up pension credits and many other benefits that can potentially make their lives a lot easier. Millions goes unclaimed every year due to pride or ignorance and that's something that needs to be urgently addressed.

And the rest of us should take note & make our own provisions for old age. If the government doesn't finance your lifestyle today... don't expect that to change just because you hit 65.