Perhaps it is time to retire the idea of retirement at 65

Only the ‘great and the good’, like Mary Robinson and Jimmy Carter, are considered useful in their later years. Everyone else is made obsolete at an age when they may have another 20 years or more to live, writes Caroline O’Doherty

A RATHER lovely document came to hand this week, full of evocative photographs and stirring statements of noble ideals.

Its cover depicted a globe held aloft by a variety of hands — young, old, black, white. Cliched, yes, but that’s forgivable, given its origins.