Sir, Your report on our ageing population (“Future looks grey as pensioners outnumber children for the first time”, Aug 22) highlights the need to address the implications urgently. We need a new settlement for funding better care that more fairly shares the costs across generations. And we need to promote stronger intergenerational relationships.

Research shows that younger and older people get on much better than traditional stereotypes suggest but our society has failed to harness the potential of these relationships. Befriending, for example, could help to reduce the isolation and loneliness faced by many older people. And better access to training and lifelong learning could ensure that our whole society benefits from the skills and knowledge of older people.

Stephen Burke
Chief Executive, Counsel and Care

Sir, According to the Office for National Statistics, for the first time we over-60s now outnumber the under-18s. It really is time for us to start pulling our weight.

We are better off than any other sector of the population and increasingly, it appears, in better health.

So out with the degrading over-60s free bus passes, prescriptions and winter fuel payment. No universal benefits that are not means-tested should kick in before 75 or 80, when it seems reasonable to give people respite from form-filling. As for the age of retirement, there is no need for one.

If people are paying into contributory pension schemes, they can decide when they want to turn their contributions into pensions and actuaries can work out the rest. The only thing that has to be fixed is the age of entitlement to the state pension. If employers want to shed older employees from their workforce, then they should have to make the kind of case they would make for any other employee.

On this basis, with most of those aged 60 to 80 contributing more and taking out less, more resources will become available for a decent state pension and for care of the elderly frail, currently ignored by politicians eager to buy the votes of the militant youth wing of the getting-older group.

Trevor Pateman
Brighton, East Sussex

Sir, Your report states that the future indicates “a costly dependency culture among the elderly”.

Funny isn’t it then that many of us pensioners still seem to support our children?

Arthur J. A. Bell
Sud Aveyron, France

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