Did you meet Brian last Sunday? He was introduced to us by our political columnist Andrew Rawnsley in his piece on the looming Age War, writes Stephen Pritchard, readers' editor.
Brian is 55, and thanks to the booming property market, lives in a house now valued at £1m. He runs a nice car and is looking forward to a fat pension. He's a pretty happy man.
By contrast, his son, Ben, 25, is struggling to raise the money to put down a deposit on a flat. Consequently there's no prospect of him and his partner starting a family. And his pension's a joke. Life, in short, looks pretty grim for him.
Andrew's piece has already attracted a flood of letters and emails to the paper. Some point out that Ben can look forward to a big inheritance later in life; others argue that at 55, Brian isn't 'old' but merely middle-aged, and that it's octogenarians who are really feeling the pinch today, not the young.
What do you think? Have you given up on saving an impossible sum for a deposit on a flat? Do you look at your parents with envy and think they've had it easy all their lives? Or do you think that owning your own home and paying into a pension are outmoded, middle-class obsessions that society would be better off without?
Are you are enlisting to fight in the Age War?
