LIZ JONES: Hooray for sexual liberation! Now I can die lonely and poor







Journalist Liz Jones took the 'How long will I live test?'... and apparently will live until 100

I took the ‘How long will I live?’ test last week, the one the Government thinks you should take to ensure you don’t buy a Ferrari, but eke out your pension instead.



Oh, for the luxury of a pension! I don’t have one, just enormous tax bills, and negative equity.

Unfortunately, I have never smoked, I exercise every day for at least two hours, am slightly underweight, have parents who both survived past the age of 80, and I’m vegan to boot.



Apparently, I will live until I’m 100, which is a blow, to be honest, given my heating bill up here in the frozen Yorkshire Dales is £600 a month, which means without food and on only a state pension I will be running a deficit of £200 a month.

I won’t pay off my mortgage until I am 79, but I suppose the plus side of this is I will default on my payments and thus be rendered homeless, so will have nothing to heat.



Perhaps I could also try to persuade one of my cats to give me meningitis.

It’s come to a sorry state if we are all now wishing we could die relatively young, so we are not tipped into penury.

I am a feminist, I really am (I’ve never let a man pay for anything), but feel the current generation of women in their 60s, the first to abandon the way of life of their mothers, which meant they pursued careers, married and had children late, had affairs then got divorced, all in the name of liberation, are now imprisoned in debt, alcohol abuse and loneliness, wishing they could die, and do it soon.

One of my sisters, who now lives abroad but spent decades as a cardiac intensive-care nurse in the NHS, wrote to me last week asking if I could send money so she could pay her electricity bill.

Growing up, it was all about getting a career, and a boyfriend.



These were our only goals. No one ever sat me down and gave me financial advice. Not a bank manager, or my parents, or a teacher, or a boss, or an agent, or even an accountant.

I have worked since I was 18 years old, never had a day off sick or a spell on maternity leave, and have absolutely nothing to show for it.



Women like me – I’m now in my 50s – have survived mainly on optimism, the thought that one day we will be OK. The thing is, we have simply run out of time.



She said: 'I won't pay off my mortgage until I am 79, but I suppose the plus side of this is I will default on my payments and thus be rendered homeless, so will have nothing to heat.' Stock picture.

BORED BY THE MEAT LOAF BABE

B id to annoy Mumsnet, No 427: When the cover of a broadsheet newspaper is given over entirely to your hair, as was the case with the Duchess of Cambridge last week, you know you are in trouble. I’m bored with Kate, who conceals her arms with old-lady three-quarter sleeves, and is welded to those wedges.

George is the most boring baby in history: Kate acts as though she’s carrying a meat loaf, while the child is destined to inherit the Windsor bald gene. I think they should have left him at home: infants don’t know where they are!

And I bet they bagged the bulkhead seat on the plane with the extra legroom...

When you are not from a privileged class, which I certainly was not, you are so grateful to even have a job or a book deal you don’t question anything, let alone demand a safety net. You don’t protect yourself.

So, yes, I will be rather relieved if I die and, by the way, God, any time soon would be good.

It’s not necessarily your fault if you end up without enough money to see you safely into your grave. In my sister’s case, she gave up her job to care for her son, who was dying of cancer.



Scratch any poor and ancient person, and you might well find a similar story, even if it is one of misplaced trust and being too busy to read the small print.

I’m taking part in a debate at the Oxford Union on May 1.



I am arguing against promiscuity. Oxford has chosen me because I was a virgin until my 30s, not for my brilliant education at Southend Tech, but my point will be this: the sexual revolution did us no favours, really.

