ON a midweek day recently - one of the many that prolonged summer through September - my wife and I spent a pleasant hour or so pottering about Runswick Bay.

Though not busy, the place was lively enough. The caf and the pub were doing steady business, with customers sitting outside to enjoy a snack or a meal. The beach was dotted with strollers. Kids in a school party splashed in the gentle waves.

That school group apart, just about every visitor was of retirement age. Had they been zapped from the scene, the village, with scarcely any resident population, would have been deserted. More particularly, neither the caf nor the pub would have found it worthwhile to open.

One day last winter I noticed the same phenomenon at Fountains Abbey. Nearly all the 40 or so people in the Visitor Centre were aged over about 55. Probably retired, most spent money in the shop as well as the restaurant. The year-round opening of Fountains would not be sustainable without these "senior" visitors. Quite a few jobs would be lost.

In a small way these examples highlight the folly of the "work-till-you-drop" future now being vigorously promoted by New Labour. Overlooked in its attempt to keep people at work until 70 is the effect of removing a large corps of active retired people from the economy.

Given reasonable wealth, many people who retire between the ages of 55 and 65 contribute a great deal to society. Their extensive role in Running Things - community work - is widely acknowledged. But less well recognised is how, by Buying Things and Doing Things, they create work for others. Think of Saga Holidays - a huge business based on retired people.

Of course, we are living longer. But it still seems unlikely that people who retire at 70, having endured the stresses and pressures of work for an extra five or more years than at present, will be anything like as active as today's younger pensioners, whose positive approach to their leisure benefits society as a whole.

Take my wife and I. Our retirement helps support businesses a little further afield than those cafs at Runswick and Fountains. Each summer we holiday in Cornwall. But the road journey gets worse every year. Now 65, will I fancy it at 70? Probably not. And that would be with 15 years of (relatively) relaxed retirement behind me.

A 400-mile slog after 15 more years of battling deadlines? Not a chance. Noses to the grindstone until 70 will devastate Britain's economy. Of New Labour's many misguided policies, few are more ill-judged than this.

AT his meeting with the Pope, the Archbishop of Canterbury was left in no doubt of the Pontiff's displeasure at the ordaining of homosexual priests - "a serious difficulty on the path to unity''. Always too much the supplicant in this unity business, the Church of England perhaps might indicate that no less a difficulty is the Roman Catholic church's insistence on the celibacy of its priests. For if homosexuality is "intrinsically disordered'', to quote a recent Vatican edict, what is the suppression of the instinct that has kept the human race going since long before Christ?

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