I was unreasonably angry when I read the news that under 19s are to get free sports sessions. In some places, near me, over 60s also get free sports sessions…as well as free bus fares.

I am 56, I’m white and British. When I left university 34 years ago, it took me a couple of months to find a newspaper to give me job. Because I had to leave home, the government topped up my meagre wages on the Scarborough Evening News by the princeley sum of £4 a week for a year. That is my guilty secret.

Since then, I have done nothing but contribute to the state. When my daughter was born, I took two weeks’ holiday. When my mother died, I took two weeks holiday. When I had a brain haemorrhage  (and the casualty doctor sent me home with paracetamol!!!) I had three months 0ff work to recover from brain surgery. Since then, I haven’t had a day off sick.

Now I work for myself,s o if I go on holiday, I take my computer with me and carry on working. There is little sign of the people who promised me contracts before I left the Manchester Evening News. I am paid pocket money as a freelance to save publishers the expense of employing a full-time, fully qualified specialist transport journalist. A lot of organisations don’t want to pay me for several months after I have supplied them. I apply for jobs and, presumably because I am 56, employers do not feel I deserve the simple courtesy of a “I regret to inform you” reply.

I don’t need the money but many of my age do. 

I have been shafted by people who should know better ( and who know who they are).

Am I bitter? Yes. I am a baby boomer ….the lost generation and LAST generation to fend for itself!!!!