THE value of your pension is plummeting, residential and nursing care is costing £600 to £1,000 a week out of your hard-earned savings and the NHS is going private.

Private? Look closely at Health Minister Andrew Lansley’s proposals.

So, one suggestion is to give every pensioner a gun and two bullets.

They can go out and shoot two MPs or local councillors or even bankers of any preferred stripe, not necessarily dead, just in a very painful place. I would suggest, based on long observation of these types, not in the head or heart.

This will entitle the pensioner to a prison sentence.

Behave yourself and you’ll get a comfortable room, possibly with a very interesting and challenging room-mate who is unlikely to have come from your own social milieu.

You’ll get three meals a day, a nice clean set of clothes changed regularly, all the dental and medical care you could want, a new heart, liver or knees if you need them, all on the State.

Your relatives can visit at least as often as they do already.

The beauty of this is that it won’t cost you a penny and when you come out – probably in a couple of years, given the length of sentence those guilty of violent gun crimes normally get – all your assets will be intact.

I have reader Roy Bottomley to thank for the germ of this social comment.

Behind the humour, of course, is the paradox that the model citizen is often treated much worse than the hardened criminal.

Must Mr Honest Joe expect rewards only in Heaven?