THE disgraceful treatment of two elderly people in unrelated cases in Britain this week sums up this country's awful attitude towards the old.

First, we read about the 73-year-old council tax protester who was jailed for failing to pay the charge in full.

Then there was the even more distressing story of the 82-year-old war veteran physically evicted from the Labour Party conference by stewards for mildly heckling Jack Straw.

These are both shocking but not surprising cases in our dreadful modern society. Old folk used to be respected and revered but now they are viewed like an inconvenient boil on the backside.

I wonder how they are going to treat me in a few years time. What now serves as the spoutings of a controversial columnist will be instead taken as the rantings of a demented fogie who should be drugged up and kept in a corner.

There is no future for the elderly in today's selfish Britain. Few allowances are given for old age and too little help is forthcoming for a group of proud citizens in their time of need.

Yes, I know the council tax protester wanted to go to jail to make her point. But she should never have been put in that position of despair due to a levy that continually makes a mockery of inflation and leaves pensioners on the breadline.

Thousands of residents of south Bucks will empathise with her because they too could be in prison instead of an old people's home this time next year as bills increase.

And, as for that pitiful sight of the old man being dragged away at the Labour conference ... that could well be a symbolic vision for how they are going to treat the rest of us in the next few years.