ONE of the great myths of our times is that pensioners are poor.

A great many are not - cruise liners are chock-a-block with wrinklies and advertisements abound to tempt stiff-kneed grey-hairs into expensive walk-in baths, ease-you-up armchairs and stairlifts.

There would be no market for such luxuries if they were all hard-up.

There was oldie outrage that the state pension is set to rise by just 73p a week next year, though this will keep claimants abreast of price increases in the shops whereas they would all go ballistic if stuff went up at the rate above inflation that they want their pensions to increase.

And there was extra anger over the warning from Pensions Minister Jeff Rooker last week that people who rely on the basic state pension in future face "abject poverty."

In to bat for the grumblers went that veteran spender of taxpayers' brass Barbara Castle - the ex-Cabinet minister who gave welfare money to the well-off when she introduced child benefit for one and all.

"It's all very well Jeff Rooker saying that people will die in poverty, but whose fault is that?" she cried.

Surely, it is none other than their own - if they have failed to make provision for themselves and expected the state to do so instead.

Isn't that the root of the pensioners' gripe - that they want the cake and ha'penny by not saving for their old age when they were earning and expecting the taxpayer to featherbed them at rate above the level of inflation when they no longer are?

It is all those old folk on the cruise liners, enjoying the winter sun in Spain for weeks on end and lolling in their expensive recliners watching daytime TV who have the answer to the gimme outlook to which Baroness Castle panders.

They have made provision for their retirement and are standing on their own two feet instead of coming with cupped hands to the rest of us.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.