OUR collective prospects of a long retirement appear to be reducing as the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries has, for the second year in a row, cut their predictions of UK life expectancy by six months. Its statistics are, as one might expect, based on data for England and Wales but it’s a reasonable assumption that Scotland, which normally has a lower predicted age, will be experiencing a similar reverse in the trend. I would be surprised if the predicted reduction is spread uniformly through all strata of society.

It really is a sad condemnation of life in general in the relatively prosperous UK, the way we conduct ourselves as individuals and our social conditions as controlled and regulated by government that the post-war gradual increase in life expectancy has gone into reverse. Something or things are fundamentally wrong, but who will identify and change them in this era of cutbacks and austerity?

I wonder what the Women Against State Pension Inequality (Waspi) movement make of it, or in fact all those currently in productive employment who witnesses the progressive push-back of the age at which they can start to have returned to them some of the money they and their employers have invested as National Insurance payments into the state pension scheme.

Remember pension is an entitlement not a benefit, and the way things are going today's workforce one way or another are going to get less of their investment back, partly because government has already spent it.

David J Crawford,

85 Whittingehame Court,

1300 Great Western Road, Glasgow.