Editor-At-Large: I'm over 50 years old. I still work. Praise the Lord!

When Michael Balsom read in his newspaper last week that the Government plans to tackle ageism, he paused briefly, and then turned to the appointments section - as he has done fruitlessly every day since last February. My brother-in-law is one of the 2 million unemployed in this country aged over 50 who desperately want to work, but who can't get a job. Laudable though the Trade and Industry Secretary Patricia Hewitt's proposals may sound, will they benefit people such as Michael?

First, don't praise the Department of Trade and Industry too much, for it is only offering these proposals to bring us into line with a European Union directive. We already treat employees pretty badly compared with other countries - longer hours and a feeble minimum wage. We pay the third lowest statutory redundancy pay in the EU, and now Ms Hewitt, while graciously offering to protect the over-50s against discrimination, proposes to cut the redundancy money paid to those over 45 from one and a half weeks for every year of service to one week, retaining the current limit of 20 years. She isn't proposing to abolish compulsory retirement either, just seeking to raise it to 70.

Tied up with this notion of "fighting" ageism is the hard economic reality of finding the cash to pay pensions to a workforce, 45 per cent of whom will be over 45 by 2010, soon rising to 50 per cent. It is cheaper for the Government to get people working into their 60s and contributing to their pensions for longer. Discrimination in any form is repellent. People naturally want to work, choose when they want to retire, and restructure their time as they get older. My brother-in-law does not have that option. Funnily enough, he doesn't want to be one of the smiling old people handing out baskets at Sainsbury's, explaining how screwdrivers work at B&Q or dusting the potted plants at Homebase. He's not interested in being window dressing for companies such as Tesco who seek to employ older people for short working weeks and save money. He wants a full-time real job, and that's where his problems start. At 57 he hasn't got a chance, and these proposals will not make one iota of difference.

Not a day passes when I don't thank God that I can earn a crust tapping on a typewriter or mouthing at a TV camera. I thank my lucky stars that I never spent seven years qualifying as an architect, or, as my father had wanted, an engineer. Because if I had done so, I would be in the same boat as Michael. He is a qualified production engineer, a highly skilled operative, fully conversant with computers and new technology. He has been made redundant three times in the past three years as engineering works move from Britain to places with a cheaper workforce, such as China. Now Michael doesn't even get offered an interview. And as Ms Hewitt does not seek to protect the over-50s by extending the Data Protection Act to cover dates of birth, I don't think he's going to see any change to his circumstances.

In the United States, where birthdates are confidential, 66 per cent of the workforce are aged between 55 and 64, while the figure is only 60 per cent here. Much patronising twaddle has been written about the benefit of employing "older" people. Michael doesn't seem "old" to me, arriving on this planet only a year before me. But as an engineer, he might as well be 101. As I have written before, whole swathes of work in Britain, such as the hotel industry and catering, have been dished out to school-leavers with no experience and no "people" skills. The leisure industries are expanding, and engineering is contracting. But the fig-leaf that these proposals represent will still mean you are served breakfast by an untrained cheap and cheerful 17-year-old while a highly skilled 57-year-old man sits at home perusing the sits vac columns waiting for his potential to be utilised.

Bridal frock horror

Ossie Clark was one of the most intimidating people I ever met. He had a particularly nasty, sneery, sulky voice and looked you up and down as if you were a bit of cack his dog has brought in from the bins at the back of his fashionable boutique, Quorum, off the King's Road in London. But when I was 20, there was no one I wanted more to design my wedding dress. Luckily I was thin as a stick. Ossie came up with a weird shin-length, purple crepe number with lace collar and cuffs.It reminded me of the green nylon overall I had to wear on the sock counter in Woolworth's for my Saturday job, but I was too intimidated to protest. The king of cool had made my frock, so it had to be right! The surviving photos of the ceremony at the Chelsea register office confirm my doubts. I have never looked like that before or since. Matters aren't helped by my weird mop of curly hair - it looks like something discarded by Marsha Hunt (then starring in Hair) concocted by trendy stylist of the day (we are talking 1967) Harold Leighton.

Ossie had fashion shows at which the Stones and the Beatles turned up. He produced bias-cut chiffon dresses and snakeskin jackets to die for. He made me wonderful outfits to wear on television, draped and flattering in bright greens and blues. There is no doubt that the difficult Mr Clark was, for a brief moment in the late Sixties and early Seventies, the hottest designer in the world. Even when he hit the skids, Ossie was incredibly frightening, appearing at parties with a dog and a sketchbook tied to his wrist with string. You crossed him at your peril. Flicking through his diaries I came across this telling mention in the mid-1990s - "called up Janet Street-Porter and got her to pay my gas bill". He sent over a dress as a thank you. Size 8, it wouldn't have gone over Jade Jagger's rear, let alone mine. Sadly the extraordinary drawings in those sketchbooks have not been published, but you can go and see some of his magical frocks at the V&A museum from next week. Don't bother to look for JSP bridalwear, it went in the bin decades ago, along with the husband.

Sky-high Seventies

In Paris last weekend I dined in Restaurant Georges, on top of the Pompidou Centre, reached by an endless series of escalators up the outside of the building. You are rewarded with one of the best views in Europe and a shimmering Eiffel Tower pulsating with light dominating the skyline. The room itself is about 30ft high, and dominated by four large, freestanding, silver "blobs" made of aluminium housing the cloakrooms, kitchen, bar and private dining room. The French do sci-fi in such a Seventies way that it seemed as if I was eating supper in a set from François Truffaut's pretentious movie Fahrenheit 451 (remember Julie Christie, Oskar Werner and those ludicrous costumes). The night before, I'd dined in another attempt at "futurism", La Cantine du Faubourg, a lounge with video projections and fluorescent scatter cushions, pod-shaped sculptures made of wicker. Since the success of Eurostar I miss the naff futurism of Charles de Gaulle airport with its pods and connecting undulating walkways, but now Philippe Starck has come up with some plastic pod chairs in the new lounge at the Gare du Nord. The huge pink blob found on the beach in Chile last week is surely a relic of an early French attempt at colonisation, part of the fittings from a trendy French hostelry, circa 200BC.