Baroness Jay is to stand down from the Cabinet to see more of her granddaughter and, as an incidental bonus, fewer of the irksome headlines that have dogged her during her time as Leader of the Lords. Not that snipers are likely to have deterred her. At 61, she simply wishes to achieve what an aide calls a 'better work/life balance'. What an emblem she will be at a time when the stereotypes of creeping age are dead. Whatever balance Lady Jay achieves, it is unlikely to feature midweek bingo and holidays in Frinton. She will not be expected to peruse, for as long as the cataracts hold off, adverts for Dr Werner's denture fixative, pre-arranged funerals, incontinence pads, stairlifts and sunshine homes for the terminally confused.  These days, the elderly call the shots. Shops and service providers target the grey pound. Politicians court the grey vote, and the discriminatory notion that employers must force people to leave when they become eligible for the state pension expired last week. From 2006, it will be illegal, under EU law, to stipulate a compulsory retirement date in an employment contract. This provision, hailed as upholding human rights, also gets the country out of a hole. There are now four workers for every pensioner. By 2050, without a rise in retirement age or an immigration total of one million a year, the ratio will be two to one.   By then, a quarter of Britons will be over 65. Already, the over-50s represent one third of the UK population, have a collective income of 166 billion, hold 80 per cent of Britain's wealth and 60 per cent of UK savings. In short, they are    loaded. Retailers fawn on them, while failing to establish what this strange, new breed wants or needs. A contributor to a recent anthology called  The Definitive Guide to Mature Advertising And Marketing solemnly advises that home-shopping catalogues targeted at oldies should offer dress sizes up to 34, footwear of an EEE fitting and expandable trousers. 'Today's 50 year olds have worn jeans for 30-plus years,' the author (clearly a student of the T. Blair informal dress code) writes. 'Consequently, success is gained by flattering youthful aspirations and offering jeans with discreet side elastication for extra comfort.'   How misunderstood the ageing are. For a start, 50 seems quite young to anyone but a creative director or a fruit fly. In addition, oldies do not, in general, have feet broader than telephone directories and bottoms resembling mattresses. They are, instead, skipping round like Baroness Jay and compiling a new lifestyle portfolio, or booking Saga cruises to the Galapagos, or brushing up on their golf swing or Mandarin. It is hard to see why this vibrant Sanatogen set should not carry on working, particularly since a retirement age of 65, or 60 for women, was established in Britain half a century ago to fit the narrow span between the gold watch and the grave.   Now, according to a report by the Centre for Policy Studies, the Government's promise to pay the basic state pension to future pensioners represents an unrecognised liability of 1,000bn. The longer people work, the less acute the pensions problem becomes. But the calculation also involves well-being. Last week, the  Guardian held up Bobby Robson, 67, and John Mortimer, 77, as examples of contented older workers who, but for their choice of football and writing, would have been out on their ears long ago. Instead, Mr Mortimer's life seems a pleasant round of parties and book signings and languorous champagne lunches.  No doubt Lincolnshire beetroot-picklers or conductors on the Kilburn night bus or stressed-out teachers would also be delighted to put in a few   extra years if the Krug and hours were right. Whether headteachers want to take up Margaret Hodge's kind suggestion of a classroom job after 65 'to lessen the pressure as they got older' seems quite another matter.   For now, sticking around is rarely encouraged. Unwanted executives step aside at 55 with a fat pension and a mutual sigh of relief. Good policemen rarely stay beyond 50 because, under existing pension rules, it would be financial suicide to do so. Whitehall despatches its employees at 60, while others simply get booted out when they are deemed to have reached their use-by date. Only 37 per cent of men still work by the age of 64, and the Louis MacNiece axiom - 'Sit on your arse for 40 years and hang your hat on a pension' - is for serious time-servers only.   Reversing the pattern will be hard, not least because many who can afford it quite like the idea of 30 years of indolence. Change may, despite pious talk of rights and choice, involve compulsion. For Britain to retain the same balance between workers and retired people over the next half century would mean raising the retirement age to 72. Already Iceland's threshold is 70, Norway's and Denmark's is 67, and in Italy, where the birth rate is dropping faster than anywhere in Europe, workers regularly slog on until 75. Whatever compact Britain eventually reaches - hopefully more immigration, a move towards funded pensions and encouraging, but not forcing, people to work longer - its success will depend on making the poorest better valued and rewarded.   The new spotlight on old people   gleams on a supposedly homogeneous breed. They, increasingly, are the dominant workers, consumers and electors. An Age Concern survey last week showed that six million elderly voters have still not decided which party to support. In 1997, 38 per cent backed Labour and 29 per cent Tory. If that position were reversed - as it was in a Gallup poll last summer - Labour would have won 349 seats instead of 418. No wonder both Hague and Blair are full of blandishments for the elderly. Labour's deal, skewed longer-term towards helping the poorest, is brave considering what is at stake. It is also the only solution.   Old age is not synonymous with poverty any more. Over the past 20 years, pensioners have done twice as well as the general population. But while share-owning and occupational and personal pensions have underpinned a 60 per cent growth in income, the divide between rich and poor has widened dramatically. That gap must be narrowed now, not only for fairness but also, more expediently, because this is perhaps the last generation of pensioners that will vote for altruism.   Affluent older people are the volunteers - the cancer-shop workers or meals-on-wheels deliverers - who see the poverty among those of their peers who get the worst NHS treatments, a pitiful pension and a life of isolation imposed, in part, by an abysmal transport system. The next generation of wealthy pensioners will be a Peter Pan collection of gym-toned, cryogenically-preserved, smooth-browed Eminem fans whose long juggling of the 'work/life balance' may blind them to the fact that others have little life and less work to weigh.   The world grows older by the minute, The future is grey. There is nothing alarming in that evolution, beyond the fact that if the current gulf persists, a twenty-first century population composed of sprightly, globe-bestriding, vitamin-popping, nine-to-five-working octogenarians will only be camouflage for a society increasingly polarised between rich and poor.