It was with irony that I remarked here last week that George Best's funeral would need to be a state occasion if it was to live up to the grossly overblown reaction to the footballer's death.

Well, with the service held in Northern Ireland's Parliament buildings, outriders accompanying the cortege on its journey, helicopters hovering, the funeral was a state occasion in all but name.

The reports told us that George had "united'' people across Northern Ireland's bitter sectarian divide. This, we were expected to assume, was a wonderful thing.

I disagree. Remember, from a few years back, how troops had to be on the streets to protect children walking to school through an area whose residents practised a different religion to their own? The warring factions couldn't unite for the sake of children. But they could unite for a footballer, who hadn't even lived among them for decades. Depressing, wouldn't you say?

The Best funeral again brought out the over-used description of football as "the beautiful game''.

There's a wartime poem I sometimes read, one verse of which goes:

A time will come, a time will come,

When the people sit with a peaceful heart,

Watching the beautiful, beautiful game,

That is battle and service and sport and art.

I'm not sure what "service" means. And I'm not oversold on "battle". But the general drift gets a tick.

Written by Arnold Wall, the poem continues:

A time will come, a time will come

When the crowds will gaze on the game and the green,

Soberly watching the beautiful game,

Orderly, decent, calm, serene.

"Calm" and "serene" are just for the poets. And "soberly watching" doesn't quite catch the spectating scene on Headingley's West Bank. But yes, it is cricket that is "the beautiful game". Or was, until they started playing in pyjamas.

For all its 400-plus pages, the Turner report on pensions is a very limited document. Concerned largely with finance, it overlooks many huge social implications of later retirement.

Where will tomorrow's "granny nannies" come from? They won't. Charities and community groups will also find themselves short of volunteers, now drawn in legions from the retired. And the withdrawal from the leisure market of highly active younger pensioners, who sustain jobs by travel and buying goods, will impact vastly on both manufacturing and service industry.

Many historic properties, most of whose midweek out-of-season visitors are retired, will be forced to close. The National Trust will be particularly hard hit.

The belief, inherent in Turner, that people retiring at 68/69 will do what those now retiring at 65 or earlier do could be disastrously flawed. Ill health will claim a toll, and pensioners in their late 60s and older will probably be less willing to travel than their younger counterparts today, especially if traffic conditions worsen.

To give people the best possible chance of enjoying a decade or so of active retirement - surely their right after three or four decades of full-time work - earlier, not later retirement, with tax encouragement for part-time work, should be the aim.