Today elderly people are drawn from the last generation of young people ever to know true hardship the last generation of young men to bear arms en masse for their country, and the last of the young women to keep their country running during a world war.

Those young men and women were promised that their reward from a grateful nation would be a lifetime of security, extending into a comfortable and dignified old age.

Tell that to the elderly people now denied residential care places because of declining funding and tightening Government rules for care home owners. And then forgive them a hollow laugh.

As the Evening Advertiser reveals today, the number of senior citizens in Swindon has risen by almost 3,000 in the last decade, but the number of care home places has dropped by a third in less than two years.

Those who hold the purse strings and therefore have a hand in this disgrace say it is a shame.

We already know it's a shame. What we want to know is what they propose to do about it.