''And what do you think of old people?" asked the producer of the live afternoon show on ITV. The four co-presenters, myself included, looked thoughtfully at our hands for a moment and searched for a fitting soundbite that would stagger the audience without offending or annoying anyone.

"Well," blurted out a young researcher in the pause, "some of them smell of pee and they're virtually all racist." Once the shocked hisses (and stifled giggles) had petered out, it was the presenters' turn to offer a more grown-up overview of the debate. And so we did. After ten minutes, our discussion had revealed that the elderly (tragic incontinence notwithstanding) were all "nice", "wear coats in the summer" and "look after you if you're not well".

Only Julie Hesmondhalgh, the actress who plays the transsexual Hayley in Coronation Street, offered any contradictory evidence that our view of the older generation may have been a tad patronising and jaundiced. A pal had recently suggested a visit to her grandparents to cheer them both up after a stressful few weeks. "We can go to bed early, have sandwiches and tea, and be waited on hand and foot," she sighed. At her gran's front door, she casually added: "Nan's a bit racist, by the way, but it probably won't come up."

By 2am, far from being in bed with a mug of cocoa, they were hunched over a huge map of the world, spread across the living-room floor, as the drunken OAP stabbed a finger at various countries, fuming: "And THAT used to be pink, and THAT used to belong to us, and THAT was one of ours, too, and so was THAT. You girls know NOTHING about the empire at all!"

As a student, when I worked for BHS, a very old lady would come in at closing time every Saturday and slowly pick up a pint of milk and a loaf of bread. She would ease them into one of her many plastic bags, wink at me and shuffle away. Every week, I watched her do it and every week I turned a blind eye. Old people may have disappeared from our homes, our city centres and the workplace, but when it comes to cons, some of the elderly (horror of horrors) use our prejudices to commit crime.

Thank goodness, then, that this grown-up government has the clear-headedness to treat the elderly with the same suspicion it treats the disabled and the unemployed - like potential (if not inevitable) scrounging fraudsters.

My 63-year-old mother has (yet again) had her pension and disability allowance stopped. She hasn't received a penny in benefit since February. She has no money for electricity (paid for with a meter) and goes several days of each week without food. Now her landlady is threatening to evict her.

Great-uncle Eddie, meanwhile, is 79 years old and suffering from dementia. He, too, has had his housing benefit and pension stopped with the proviso that he must "prove who he is". Nameless state employees are demanding to see his passport (he's never had one) or his bank details (he doesn't have a bank account) before they recommence payments. Only the intervention of relatives to pay his bills, buy him food and fill in the endless forms that he can no longer comprehend is keeping him off the streets and out of hospital.

Under new rules to counter fraud and save money, all claims, whatever your age, are "reviewed" every six months. Unless you can supply the necessary documents and are patient enough to fill in endless, painful, technical and confusing forms (several times over, because they always get "lost"), your entire income disappears. The elderly and infirm must prove that, in today's popular parlance, they are "genuine" (as opposed to "bogus") human beings.

When Gordon Brown and William Hague mention "making provision for your old age", it's not a promise of help they're making. It's a threat.

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