Letter: Retirement choice

Sir: For a Government so publicly committed to the extension of 'choice', it seems odd that it should fix the retirement at all (leading article, 13 April). A simple solution would have been to allow both men and women to choose their own age of retirement from somewhere between 60 and 65 (say). The fact that the retirement age has been equalised at 65 shows that the overriding consideration is 'economy' - for which 'choice' has previously been used as a euphemism.

Yours faithfully,

GERARD M. BLAIR

Edinburgh

14 April