The banks won't lend and loan sharks charge exorbitant interest. The pawnshop has been rehabilitated, and apparently this is not even such a Bad Thing. The decline of these seedy outlets was once measured in inverse proportion to the advance of the welfare state, until such businesses achieved vivid attention only when one was reading the novels of Dickens, Lawrence or Dostoevsky, or perhaps the early writings of Orwell, when he was down and out in Paris and London, or on the road to Wigan Pier.

Treasury writes off debt of 40% of underpayers, while those owing more could have up to three years to pay. As part of an effort to sort out anomalies in the past collection of tax, anyone who has been undercharged up to £300 in the past six tax years will have it written off, while those who owe more than £300 could have up to three years to pay.

Anti-ageism campaigners believe UK employers are targeting mature workers for forced retirement. The number of over-60s forced to retire against their will increased dramatically last year to 100,000 as employers targeted mature workers for job cuts in the recession.

An average of just 25,000 sexagenarians had been forced out of the workplace in each of the previous two years, according to Age UK. The charity highlighted the fourfold jump as the government unveiled proposals to scrap the default retirement age of 65 and decreed employers should no longer be free to push someone out of their job because of their age.

The UK's 200 largest companies have a pensions shortfall of £100bn and the downturn is likely to make deficits worse. The coalition's move to abolish the default retirement age of 65 is a step in the right direction, but simply allowing people to work longer will not solve the pensions crisis, either for individuals or for companies. Neither will the piecemeal measures announced so far, including the downgrading of inflation-proofing of benefits in line with consumer price inflation, which tends to run at a lower rate than the previous benchmark, retail price inflation.