It seems that somewhere along the line we decided as a society to forget about the elderly. When I was a child in the 1970s, the welfare of old age pensioners was at the heart of our national debate. Public anger over the elderly living in poverty and want was politically commonplace.

I remember terrifying reports on Newsround, the children’s current affairs show, telling of the elderly dying of cold as they were too poor to turn the heating on. It upset us GenX kids - especially those, like me, who grew up in working-class homes. We could imagine the same happening to our grannies and grandads.

My own beloved grandmother, who spent her entire life in back-breaking work - even fighting fires in London during the Blitz - was forced to move in with my parents some winters as it was just too expensive to heat her flat.

READ MORE BY NEIL MACKAY

It’s intolerable: the true horror of child poverty in Scotland today

Our pampered politicians know nothing about the lives of the working class

Jimmy Reid Foundation accuses SNP of abandoning working class youth

Maybe it was Brexit - with its ugly subtext of inter-generational war - but a change came over this country, and we stopped caring very much about the elderly.

Some truths first. Pensioners, no matter what some may say, aren’t all living triple-locked lives of luxury. Many are indeed comfortably off, thanks to burgeoning house prices and well-stocked retirement funds. But that’s not universal.

Around two million pensioners live in poverty across Britain. Nearly one million are classified in "deprivation". So not every "Boomer" - as some of the crueller Millennials and GenZers refer to their........

© Herald Scotland