My guest is Charles Merritt.

Charles Merritt is a Financial Times foreign correspondent for 15 years in his past career,

and then an EU affairs columnist on the Offit Pages of the International Herald Tribune for 20 years.

In 1999, he founded the prominent Brussels think tank Friends of Europe,

which he writes still a fortnightly column

called Frankly Speaking. He's the author of a new book, Time Bomb, when Aging explodes. And welcome

to the podcast, Charles. Thank you. Right. Well, I'm intrigued like anybody who's written a book

to ask to the author, why, why this topic and why now? You say in the book that we are

very conscious of the geopolitics of the world at the moment and all the tension around the world.

We're very increasingly conscious of climate change and the impact of climate change,

but we're not really at all aware of the issue of ageing, especially in Europe?

Well, I think it was precisely that the refusal of politicians right around Europe

to focus on this huge problem coming towards us.

And of course, the reason is obvious. There is no electoral

advantage in talking to voters about problems that lie ahead, but require higher taxes now.

And the problem I think we all know, Europe is getting much older.

The problem we don't really look at

is what this means for younger people.

We sort of know that our children and mainly our grandchildren are not getting as good a deal as we of the post-war baby boom generation.

We know intellectually, if you like, that housing is much more expensive.

Wages are now lower.

Job security is much less.

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