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It sounds the stuff science fiction. But only just - for researchers now believe our nation has begun to fade grey.

 Falling birth rates and rising life expectancy are turning Britain a land codgers.

An 'age-quake' is about to overwhelm us, a 'wrinkly' revolution that is set to transform society: singles' nights pensioners

fitness clubs, workers employment their seventies, grandparents running houses

grown-up children who can no longer afford their own homes. The grey pound will be all powerful and society will bend the

will the aged. The golden oldies are the march.

Just consider the statistics. 2050 one person five Britain will be 70, a regiment

12 million oldsters - double the current population London - filling residential homes and sheltered housing

the land. the land.

  addition, there will be a further eight million aged 60 and 70. the first time, there are now more

over-60-year-olds than under-16s this country.

The consequences this seismic shift demographics will be profound. the 1950s an employee lived,

average, only three or four years retiring 65. Today he or she will survive

decades, a trend that is now producing major shortfalls company pension funds the West, as the US Centre

Strategic land International Studies recently warned. 'Countries will have to race time to ensure their economic

and social fabric the shock global ageing,' it stated.

It was a message repeated the World Economic Forum Davos last week. The world - both developed and

developing - is facing an ageing bombshell, delegates were warned, and many nations are singularly ill-prepared. As Peter Heller,

the International Monetary Fund, pointed out, pensions Britain were now woefully inadequate the

coming years.

Heller's warning was echoed home Tory politician Grahame Leon-Smith and Labour stalwart Terry Pattison when

they launched the Senior Citizen Party, which has pledged to fight better pensions elderly people.

But if the elderly feel hard done, so do the young. A hundred years , every pensioner there were five people

employment. Today the figure is 2.5. a few decades it will approach one. Each worker will have to support

themselves and another - old - person. having a pyramid support a myriad workers

its base, each pensioner will rest one straining individual, a lonely column dependency. Already problems are

materialising.

Middle-aged couples - already stuck the spiralling costs children - are having to pay more their

parents' care as they live longer and their pensions and savings fall short.

' the past three years, the fees my mother's residential home have risen £1,200 a

month £1,600,' said Anne Findlay, Wimbledon, London. ' the same time her pension went

up a pittance.

Some that extra money now has to come us. That is money we would have invested our family's

future, but now it has to be spent today. This is going to become a real problem.'

Such things put a strain the best families, as Jasper Carrott observed, when comparing people's relations

  ageing relatives and children: 'They're both drugs, they both detest us, and neither them has a job.'

And things are only going to get worse, say experts. The Government has made it clear it wants to fix state pension spending

current levels, while occupational pensions - employers - will continue to shrivel. Cash our swelling

ranks oldies is going to become very scarce, although the bills will rise inexorably. The Royal Commission Long Term

Care estimates that the costs caring old people will increase its 1995 level £11 billion

more than £45 billion 2051. The question is: who is going to pay?

The answer, made some increasing vehemence recent weeks, is simple: immigration.

the world's poorer nations, where 60-year-olds are rare, age profiles contrast starkly those the West. While

the median age Europeans is 37, that Asians is 26 and Africans a mere 18. These are continents filled

young blood to spare, men and women willing to leave their homelands to find a better life. Just look what this

process has done America, argue analysts. the boom years the United States the

1990s, more than 13.5 million people immigrated - most them illegally - the US, most heading

California and Southern states. these individuals - mostly Asia, Mexico and South America -

America's young labour force would have shrunk 20 per cent and its industrial growth would have stalled, says Paul

Harrington, Boston's Northeastern University. 'We would not have been able to fuel our economic expansion

the absence foreign immigration,' he states.  (...)