To think that not all old people have worked hard all their lives...

[MrsKittyFane]

Go on, flame me.

My gran, who died 5 years ago, was from an extremely poor family, who avoided the workhouse by the skin of their teeth. She was born in 1912. She used to tell me how the family couldn't afford to bury her mother; how they used to rootle through bins to find food.

She worked as a Nippy for Lyons and eventually got married. She had my Dad in 1941 and in 1942 came home to find the contents of her home being loaded onto a cart and driven off as her husband walked out on her. She was left with my Dad, his cot, a bed, a table and a chair and the rent to pay. She got nothing from her husband and brought my dad up from nothing. She scrubbed floors, sold insurance, worked in a department store to make ends meet.

She was made to retire at 70 and shut herself in a cupboard for days as she didn't know what to do with herself. She took up voluntary work, and was devastated when she had to give that up at 85.

She always used to say that the Old Age Pension was the most money she had ever had. She wouldn't claim pension credit, even though she could have done, as she saw it as charity, something she had a horror of receiving, although she gave when she could; but she did get HB and CTB. She hated it when we paid for anything for her, be it her train ticket when she came to stay, or if we funded her OAP railcard/coach card for her.

So my Gran (who could be a battleaxe, but she was my battleaxe), did work all her life having left school at 12, and under circumstances that would have left most of us reeling.

She sounds like an amazing woman, scary.

There were and are lots of amazing women who humble me.

I'm not mad about the boomer generation the most entitled bunch of whiners who keep the daily mail in business. And for that reason alone the lot of them should be sent to room 101

Your Gran isn't a boomer though Scary, her generation actually did work hard and make massive sacrifices

Likewise: DH's Grandparents started work at 14. His grandad kept a little job going until he was 89 - it was only gentle caretaking but he took it very seriously. My Grandad worked until he was 76.

DH's mother retired at 60. His father was made redundant at 50 but then did approximately 25 hours per week of very diligent voluntary work until he was 78.

DH will probably never retire - just wind down a bit. I will probably carry on working for as long as possible but hope to go down to four days a week from September. Am 51 and quite honestly with two teenage children, a workaholic husband, a home, pets and lots of developing interests, I'm getting too tired to do a full time job as well

I hate it when people say that. Mums parents did. Granddad worked 6 days a week, nana brought up 4 children and had an evening job. My dads parents on the otherhand didn't. Old people are just people and you get the same mix as you would of any age group. Some work, some can't, some won't etc. I don't get the 'lets applaud becuase someone got old.' I love my elderly family members, but don't understand why getting old is something to applaud. But thats just me.

Yes, my Grandmothers generation worked hard - if she were alive she would be 98 now.

My father's generation have not worked hard, free university places, retirement at 50/55, big houses very cheap, probably 30 years of active retirement - state pension plus good private/public sector pensions. Lots of them have been able to afford one partner not working.

My generation in their 40's - some financial blessings if they bought houses early but they seem to work long hours and both parents really need to be working to afford half of what the previous generation.

My child's generation - utterly fucked, expensive education, no possibility of home ownership, have to put off having children until very late - much, much less opportunities.

And worst of all, they have all the previous generations saying how GCSE's/A Levels are so easy, they don't know their born, we never had all those computer games , gadgets etc etc

Women like Scary's grandmother would have been running industry, commerce or the country a few generations later. They put the Great into GB. We need that sort of spirit back again.

The sad thing about her Heswall was that she never told my Dad she loved him. He said that he felt that he was an inconvenience. He wasn't allowed to go and do A levels, and wouldn't take the job she'd organised for him with a bank, so he joined the RN instead when he was 16.

He rose from being a junior rating to a mid ranking officer, and she always said to him that she never felt he was good enough to be an officer. Even when she saw him a week before he died, she didn't tell him she loved him, and how he was brought up had a huge impact on the way my db and I were brought up.

I also think she was very resentful of how things have changed. She was appalled that when we got married dh already had an automatic washing machine, as she never had one (to her dying day), and frequently told me that my Mum had had to wait years for hers. It was useless to point out that coppers and mangles weren't sold any more and that twin tubs were rapidly becoming obsolete as well.

You could have argued that my Dad was a baby boomer, but he worked bloody hard for what he achieved. From junior rating to Lt-Cdr in 23 years on 4 O levels, is very good going, and it was all on merit when you came through the ranks as Dad did in the 60s and 70s; no automatic promotion. However, he died at 60, so no chance to ever get his state pension, although he did get some of his Naval one.

Many of the elderly I know are rolling in it. They were from poor backgrounds, and did not have amazing childhoods. But, the women barely worked, the men managed to get decent but normal jobs, and from these very ordinary situations, are now quite well off. Likewise, my parent's generation. We are comfortable, but need both of us working and more well educating to be so. My kids? God knows.

Everyworks hard, albeit in different ways. I wouldn't judge

Goodness scaryt, have you read Why Be Happy When You Could Be Normal by any chance ("She was a monster but she was my monster"). Good, isn't it?

Back to thread. Scapegoating. It's all the fault of the old/young/binge drinkers/men/single mothers/people who support fathers for justice/Tories/Labour/foreigners etc.

Once we get rid of them, we'll be fine....Anyone getting a feeling of deja vu yet? Intelligent solutions anyone? Or would you rather just target a group and decide it's All Their Fault?

But doesn't it take two people working because we all have so much more. In my mother's generation (she's 76) it was very common for young married couples to live with their parents or in bedsits while they saved for a house deposit, etc..

I'm 51 but remember knowing lots of people in the 60s who didn't have a bathroom, didn't have a car, didn't have a phone, didn't have a washing machine, hadn't been abroad, didn't have central heating, had never eaten out in a restaurant or tasted coffee, let alone wine. Lino, cabbagy smells, grubby babies in prams outside shops, knitted cardi's

I think families do work hard and everyone has to be earning but the expectations are so much higher than a full tummy and two weeks at Margate or Skegness.

Married - my maternal grandparents died in the late 70s. They never had an inside loo or a bathroom, central heating, a car, or went abroad. Coffee was instant, but they drank tea mostly.

MFF - no I haven't read it, but I was lucky, I have dh who has always given me a sense of perspective on how abnormal some of my family were in attitudes and behaviour.

I agree that the elderly are sometimes deified blindly. I wouldn't ever want an old person to suffer however hard they've worked, but up until this latest budget, they've been totally untouchable in terms of government cuts.

My FIL retired at 55 and is now almost 80. He's been retired on an excellent pension since Thatcher was in power, and he worked in a normal, 9-5 job that wasn't particularly stressful.

That's a massive contrast to the working life I see ahead of me, that will be nearly 15 years longer and will see me pay far more to get back far less in a far shorter retirement. And, going by what my partner says, I work far harder than he ever did.

I don't resent him for that, but I would resent it if he tried to tell me that I just needed to work a little bit harder.

Depends who you know. All the elderly I know had foreign hols, houses like mine, a car. These are people in their eighties and late 70's BTW, not boomers. Obviously not all are like this, but proves that generalisations don't work.

My parents retired in their early 50s and live a very nice life.
My husband is 15 years younger than them and will retire at 70.

My father was overseas in the Army during the War. My mother had me as a baby so did no 'war work' except helping on a local farm. I remember going to help build the stooks one day in beautiful weather. Mother did some pricking out at a local vegetable garden. After the war, my father had a menial job with a (now) national building company - with no occupational pension. All they had to live on was his wage and when I was at grammar school, he was earning £4 per week. Married women with children did not usually work because their work was considered to be bringing up their children with the husband being the 'breadwinner'.

Once my sister and I were a bit older, my mother got a part time job in a local greengrover where she earned what was then called 'pin money' and it was intended for luxuries like a school blazer for me. She worked only during school hours. My father sold his wheelbarrow once to enable my mother to buy a winter coat for me. Mother was still expected to do all the housework, shopping, laundry and other domestyic chores. My sister and I did not know how lucky we were.

Their pension was just the state pension and nothing else. If they had stayed alive, they would be in their nineties now. But they had enough to lend my DH and me £180 to put down as a deposit on our first house (5% deposit) - and it was paid back.

I dislike the term 'granny tax' because there are some Grandad's out there, surely? Newspapers for you!

Hmm - just thought about my mum. She started earning as a ballerina at about 15/16, she carried on dancing after I was born, then had a little dancing school until her joints (professional dancer's joints tend to get trashed) made her give up in her late 50s. Since then she has done all my step father's paperwork until this year (he has just retired/sold his business at 66) and spent 5 years nursing my grandmother. She has a couple of holiday lets which she bought when my grandparents died as an investment and she also manages those.

No, the old people I know certainly haven't had it easy. OK mother was from a well of background but that never stopped her earning money to meet her need to spend unwisely! But step father was brought up in a London slum tenement and started building work at 15.

Why is it always, MIL hasn't, FIL hasnt, what about your own parents, gets on my fucking nerves, it's always the in laws. You will be in laws one day.

My own mother hasn't worked hard. She started work at 45 and was basically given a house under the right to buy. My god you should hear the moaning about her NHS pension the likes of which I can only dream. As for my father he has worked cash in hand for the past 30 years and saved anything he ought to be paying tax on into a private pension. I hope he gets hit by a bus the day after he retires for other reasons in addition to the pension stuff.

Some old people have worked hard. Some have not.

Some people on benefits are down on their luck. A small minority are just chancing their arm.

Some young people have written hundreds of applications and not even been called for an interview. Others sit on their arse all day and complain about their parents who had it so easy.

Some old people are rolling in money. Some can't afford to put the heating on and are dying of cold.

Reducing the problems that this country faces to "Old people had it so good, and we are paying for it" is over simplifying a very complicated situation.

It is just as ridiculous as stating that the bankers are responsible for the recession. Or the benefit cheats. Or the wealthy.

My Mum, Dad and Step-dad all still work and are all in their 70s.

MIL always worked, sometimes two jobs, up until she died, because FIL didn't think that his money should be spent on her luxuries. Things like a winter coat, for example. Yet he is the only one who uses "I've worked hard all my life, so I deserve x, y or z."

Not PIL-bashing, just how it is with the older generation of our family.

I think that we all have heavier workloads now than many people in previous generations. Employers seem to think that one person can do what two people did 30 or 40 years ago.

Also, we have lost the security of 'a job for life' (or as long as we want it for) which previous genrerations took for granted.