'Life feels a million times better.'' Interesting to have the thoughts of Alan Milburn on "spending more time with the family." "I couldn't have everything,'' says Darlington's MP, who famously ditched his high-profile role as Health Secretary to spend more time with his partner and their two sons, aged seven and 12.

"Reconciling a demanding 24-hour-a-day career with anything remotely resembling a normal family life had become impossible,'' added Mr Milburn. Few will doubt him. As his remarks, in a speech to the New Labourish think-tank Demos, recognised, the work/life balance is crucial.

Probably a bit of kite-flying for his friend Tony Blair, Mr Milburn's speech focussed on improving life for working people. But the ideas he floated, or rather flew, including a year's paid parental leave, and free childcare for the poor, seemed aimed exclusively at young families.

What about working people at the other end of the age spectrum? Does Mr Milburn welcome the prospect, raised by his government's policies, of people having to work until they are 70? Does he intend to remain in harness to that age? Since an MP's job is so undemanding that many are able not only to spend ample time with their families but to take on other work as well, perhaps he does.

But would Mr Milburn wish to work to 70 if he were a sewerman, a London cabbie or, one of the jobs he mentioned in his speech, a security guard? Who would want to employ any of these at 70?

Yet older workers, too, might want to spend more time with their families. Heaven forfend, they might even want to give more time to themselves after decades of work and raising their families.

Fortunate to have been able to give up full-time work at 55, 11 years ago, I will admit that the thought of still having to face another four years of the high-pressure stress experienced by everyone involved in bringing out a daily newspaper would fill me with alarm. At 70 I would probably have neither the energy nor appetite fully to enjoy the following 11 years, should I survive that long. Yet, for my wife and me, the past 11 years have been some of the best of our lives.

Rational it may be since we are all living longer, but the goal of later retirement pursued by this government is among their most misguided social aims. By severely reducing the number of active retired people, now counted in millions, it will create a black hole in the economy, destroying year-round tourism for a start.

Closer to Mr Milburn's theme, it will also remove much of the family help now provided by still-vigorous grandparents. A year's paternity/maternity leave will be more than outweighed by the greater burden of parenthood largely minus grandparents, still with their own noses to the grindstone.

Expect, when Mr Milburn turns about 50, another speech to Demos on the work/life balance, this time placing retirement in the scales and discovering that, at 70, it barely lifts the weight of a lifetime's work off the ground. But put in early retirement and Mr Milburn's own words come chorusing back: "Life feels a million times better.'' Should anyone have to become a septugenarian to receive that (diminishing) chance?

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