“Old age,” said Confucius, “is a good and pleasant thing. It is true you are gently shouldered off the stage, but then you are given such a comfortable front stall as a spectator.” Nigel Hawkes invokes the ancient sage this week to question the decision of the UK’s General Medical Council to start charging an annual retention fee from doctors who are over 65 (p 145; doi: 10.1136/bmj.a809). The GMC may be helping to make old age less good for some, but since a key objective of modern medicine and public health is that more of us should reach old age, we should do all we can to make it as …