When societies crumble as that in the UK is doing, people look for others to blame. Much of the blame in this guest post is misdirected but that won't cause it not to become a fixed belief. The writer is struggling for whatever reasons and feels hopeless and angry. It would come as a surprise to him or her that most oldies are just as angry at the Conservative party and feel just as angry and hopelss at the electoral prospects before them.
It should be obvious that after a lifetime of working and saving, older people are better off than when they were young and that this is a highly desirable result. They have not set out to achieve it at the expense of the young. That is utter nonsense. Getting angry and blaming the older generations simply because they achieved this happy state will not improve the prospects for the young one iota. Furthermore it is offensive to the many older people who have worked their butts off to provide for their families and the future of their children now to be blamed for the rigours some young people face.
There are very obvious causes for these difficulties, notably Net Zero, mass immigration, illegal immigration, profligate government spending, money printing, high inflation, the structural deficiencies in the NHS, irresponsible growth of the welfare state (particularly by the Blair and Brown governments to make the majority clients of the state), Woke Left wing policies etc etc. None of these policies is supported predominantly by older generations. On the contrary, they have all tended over the last few years to be favoured by the young. Mass immigration and Net Zero, in particular, have been championed mostly by younger generations. It is wrong to blame the older generations for the dreadful results of what the younger ones themselves demanded. It will not gain the young support from the old and is counter productive.
That said Matt Goodwin has done a great service in this guest post to illustrate the depth and extreme gulf of division in British society. It really is broken and there are no easy fixes.
Though I agree the older generation are not to ‘blame’ for the ills of the country and you have eloquently spelled out the causes, one must accept that many within the older generations have played a role in creating our current mess by voting in Blair in 1997 and thereafter for pro-mass migration governments in the subsequent 6 general elections.
"The Labour vote increased among all age groups (as might be expected in an election with such a significant swing) but there was a much larger increase among younger voters than older voters. While the Labour vote increased by 12 points for 25-34 year olds and 35-44 year olds, it only increased by 4 points for 55-64 year olds. The 45-54 age bracket saw the biggest collapse of the conservative vote (down 16 points). While Labour were ahead in every age bracket (an unusual result indeed!) this was by a relatively narrow margin for 55-64 and 65+ voters, while all other age brackets had differences in double figures, and the lead for those under 45 was over 20 points. Very nearly half of 18-44 year olds voted Labour, compared with 44% overall (according to the exit poll).
"Putting some of this data together, the largest increase for Labour appears to be among young women on low incomes and the largest collapse for the Conservatives among middle-aged, middle-class men and women."
The young should be familiar with this analysis. It comes from "STUDY NOTES, General Election 1997 - Gender, Age, Ethnicity and Region. Level: AS, A-Level. Board: AQA, Edexcel. Last updated 20 Nov 2017".
It can be read in two ways. The young of that vote are now 25 years older so many can be counted as today's 65+. But that demographic doesn't change much. The young always are inclined that way and generally change their views (for the better) as they get older. Every poll of attitudes in the last decade or more shows younger people more favourable towards immigration and increasing immigration. It is also favoured more srongly by university graduates as there was seen to be less competition for their jobs from immigrants than for the lower skilled. A case of I'm alright Jack. ....... .....
Part 2: And recent surveys show that immigrants are for the most part not the highly skilled contributors that are promised but semi or unskilled and a net cost to the economy. The reason is government policy, not oldies clamouring for mass immigration. On the contrary, the oldies oppose it most strongly. But the young still favour it, calling the oldies xenophobic, racist, white privileged and all the rest.
But there ARE easy fixes! 1) Tice needs to recruit young people, like the writer of this profound essay, to be the faces of Reform, not the unappealing/depressing grey/silver haired 90% of Reform candidates we saw in a recent photo 2) Reform URGENTLY needs at least a dozen spokespeople, a Shadow Cabinet, to make the party look electable, they should be touring the UK's town and village halls, stirring true Brits and laying out Reforms's clear views. 3) All of the issues this young person writes about would make a great party newspaper; please someone tell me Reform is about to reveal this newspaper and start getting it distributed across key constituencies. 4) A younger, smarter team needs to replace the tired, old, useless fossils at Reform HQ who gave the party JUST TWO council seats in the May elections. 5) Boot out the people from Reform who are working for Labour's big win on July 4th; you know who your are, why don't you quit before you get kicked out?
Well I did write and I received an encouraging reply - which I never get from my Conservative MP. And now Nigel Farage is leader and standing in Clacton.
Well, then the demographic problem began with the boomers (I don’t have to have 2.4 kids man) they massively support the welfare state. However with the lopsided demographic pyramid they helped create it’s unaffordable without massive growth. Frankly that’s not going to happen Britain is much too old for that in demographic and economic terms. The old happened to come of age at a uniquely good time to come of age. Where the economy was highly regulated competition was artificially low (few women in work, Asia a backwater, tightly controlled banking, finance, broad manufacturing base, free Uni, low house prices, rising wages, high unionisation) All these factors are now in reverse destroying the post war prosperity we took for granted. When this tight regulation was eased the affluent boomers benefited by being first (ie having established their careers and backgrounds before deregulation) then benefiting from the capitalism boom of the 80s/ early nineties then the long 90s boom. Now the state regulates both too much and too little, interferes both too much and too little. Given the policy of soaking the young for the benefit of the old they’ve every right
Just talk about pension or housing reforms, watch those older people run out saying but I paid in, but my view ect. Not realising that they paid for their parents pensions, they’re (overburdened children) will have to pay for theirs.
By the by it will be that self same generation in a couple years probably the next Tory or Labour government that will have a “plan” for pensions involving a phase out of state pensions for those under retirement age… due to cost.
From where do you get the idea that the boomers 'massively support the welfare state'? Or that they helped create the welfare state, or that they came of age 'at a uniquely good time to come of age'? You're wrong on all counts.
Conservatives believe in a small state and most 'boomers' (born from 1946 to 1964, now 60-78) are conservative and have always voted conservative - until this general election when it is about to change.
Here's the history. The welfare state was founded by Labour after the war on the principles of socialism 10-15 years before the first 'boomers' could even vote.
The Socialist Labour government of Clement Attlee: "Over the course of the 1945-1950 Parliament, legislation was passed which allowed for the nationalisation of the Bank of England, the coal industry, the telecommunications industry, the transport industries including railways, canals and civil aviation, the gas and electricity supply industries and the iron and steel industry." House of Commons Library BRIEFING PAPER Number CBP8325, 31 May 2018.
The 'boomers' came of age between 1962 and 1979, a period marked by the 3-day week, the miners strikes, rail strikes, hopeless nationalised public services such as gas and electricity, rampant inflation, balance of payments crises leading to UK's only ever bail-out by the IMF and UK joining the then EEC as the sick man of Europe.
Thanks for the long reply from far away. Very accurate, I expect things to get worse before there is a chance of a correction, if we are lucky. Who knows what the future holds? There are times though when the sun shines, and people are out and about enjoying life. And then on a summer’s evening you find a nice pub, with views over rolling fields and a pint of beer (not cold) and life is ok.
I agree with all of this but why doesn’t everybody?? 84% of Gen Z will vote for labour etc. Why do they think these charlatans will do anything other than make things worse? This is not to endorse the filthy Tories.
That's the point the writer makes, they are conditioned to blame the evil Tories, the people in charge, the boomers. Their ancestors would blame the aristorcracy or the monasteries. At some point they will notice that they are supporting their own immiseration.
Maybe but that view is grossly misguided. As I said above that won't stop it becoming a fixed belief. The average age of MPs at general elections has ranged from 48.8 to 51.2 between 1979 and 2019. They are NOT boomers.
The proportion of MPs aged 60 or over in each party following the 2019 GE was 16% among Conservatives and 25% among Labour. 49% of Conservative MPs were under 50.
the average age of newly elected MPs has not changed since 1983: 40-45, with women slightly older on average than men.
Source: House of Commons trends: The age of MPs, 3 Nov 2020.
It's a bit of a mix though. Gen Z are encouraged to blame the oldies for hoarding their wealth at their expense. It's convenient to blame someone. It must though be in the interests of some to promote this view. There is something wrong in a system where I cannot aspire to have the lifestyle my parents had and my children cannot aspire to have the lifestyle I had, in terms of say property ownership. Until we are dead, and by then after tax and care costs and divided by number of children, may not be much left for them!
Yes there is something wrong and I have expressed my view as to what is wrong in earlier comments: a heap of policies that tend to be favoured by younger people plus a measure of government incompetence. The blame game is symptomatic of any society in decline. It is intensified by identity politics, a specialty of the young who are now also greatly influenced by Wokery and Marxist ideas. The idea that the old have been ganging up against the young is utterly wrong and dangerous.
I agree, it is not good to play off one group against another. What happened to the idea of us all being in it together? What is also frustrating is that too many people will still vote for policies that will make them (and the rest of us) poorer.
Patriotism has been falsely conflated with nationalism meaning Nazism. Hence any one speaking up for UK or Brits first is labelled as Far Right, ie., Nazi.
Neither socialists nor Remainers believe in the nation state. Everything they advocate is intended to dismantle, neutralise or subjugate it. For socialists (who oppose private wealth) it goes back to the International. For Remainers it is the EU's ever closer union and the EU as the model for one world technocatic government supported by extra-national bodies like the WEF, UN, ECHR et al..
Obviously democracy cannot be extended beyond the nation state so it will die as a consequence of the intentions of these people, who in any case are quite content to force compliance of the majority with their views by law. Democrats they are not.
So you will all be in it together by force of law, and anyone who differs will be outlawed or sent for re-training to correct their thinking. Which is exactly how 'inclusive' policies already operate.
PS. In a properly socialist system, insiders are highly privileged so making everyone else poorer doesn't bother them and it serves their political objectives - they can speak up for them and get their votes. Without the poor they would have no power and the more people who are poor, the more votes they get.
They are going to get an awful shock when Starmer and his cabinet get into power. That is my only consolation when I think of the devastation the country will endure at the hands of those incompetents. (Not that the Tories were in any way competent - immigration anybody?)
No 84% of gen Z that turn out will vote Labour, I am a conservative Zoomer, there are plenty of us around (it’s just a different type of politics) more reactionary than conservative it finds little outlet in the (overwhelmingly) Liberal centrist parties that dominate British politics. Ask a conservative Zoomer if they value freedom or security they will answer security but freedom for their private lives. A boomer would answer reflexively they value freedom, and bang on about Thatcher ect. Such people see little point in politics, like their older less reactionary uncle the Red wall voter. They drop out of politics because they don’t feel represented by their leaders. Doesn’t help that the face of the British Right in Britain is old, well off, property owning liberal pensioners. It puts me off and I’m a Tory member, and former councilor candidate.
Excellent article and I completely sympathise with the author. I made similar comments yesterday on Matt's other article regarding Reform. There is huge potential amongst millenial and gen-Z voters, many of whom are utterly apathetic and do not vote. Yet Reform - and the other parties - offer them nothing, nor do they seek their vote. These people are ostensibly middle class. They are well educated, erudite, hard-working. They work in the city. They work in tech. Yet they do lot lead middle class lives in the historical sense. Some years ago, the Great British Class survey recognised this group as "New Affluent Workers"; yet they have been squeezed hard and are not all that affluent. All that New Labour, the Conservatives, academia and the State have promised over the last thirty years has proven false. They are unable to own their own homes. They are unable to have families - or if they do, they will have one or two children only. They have few savings and many do not have private pensions. Invariably they will live as a couple in a depressingly small one or two bed flat often well into their 30's. Both will work. They do not commit crime, they sought an education, always at great expense. They did everything right. Yet they are continually at the back of the queue, the bottom of the pile. And as the author remarks, with Labour, if they are white English, they will be increasingly discriminated against in their own homeland. This is intolerable. This is unjust. Yet no one is sticking up for them. As I said yesterday, immigration absolutely IS to blame for a lot of our nations problems. Yet you cannot wallow in hatred. You have to offer a vision of something more, something greater. We can provide these people with homes and the prosperity they deserve. So promise them something, seek them out on LinkedIn, contact them on social media and make them stakeholders. Give them responsibility in the party. They will vote for you IF you offer them something and if you recognise their struggle.
100 likes. You are absolutely right, it is intolerable that young white British especially men are being treated like this in their own country. My heart goes out to this young man, comparing his life to mine in London in the 70s. All I would say is don't blame the boomers entirely for this. Although many have excellent pensions enabling them to live more than comfortably, like many others I live on the state pension, I have no company pension although I have my own self-invested small pension to fall back on when/if things get bad. It's not our fault the governments are forever chasing our votes. The pandemic saw the bigget redistribution of wealth ever I believe, from the poor to the rich and whatever Starmer says about being a socialist, you can be sure than any attempt he ostensibly makes to redistribute wealth will end up with everyone worse off, (except probably those on benefits).
Yes, this is one thing which I take issue with in the original post. I don't hate baby boomers at all and I think some parts of the article mischaracterises them. As I understand it, baby boomers were the generation immediately after WW2, which includes my parents. My father certainly does remember rationing and being hungry. He also remembers baths in front of an open fire, no running hot water, single glazing and no central heating. These sorts of comments have become tropes, but people did lead extremely humble lives. Times certainly were tough. Not to mention good luck entering a professional career with a "regional" accent - although that bigotry still exists, it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.
That said, there is a segment of that generation which is vehemently anti-growth. I can understand rural working class types in their 60-80's not wanting Redrow estates built on the outskirts of their villages. These people are usually anti-immigration too, so at least they're logical "I never wanted the country to get so large in the first place, so I am going to oppose house building in my area". But there a large wedge of professional urban middle class types who have retired to rural areas. These people are often quite liberal/progressive, want to be part of the EU, want endless immigration.... but no houses or other infrastructure built in their area. Those people are your bog standard Lib Dem voters and they deserve harsh words.
One possible question here might be saying immigration is the problem. I'm mostly with you on the causes. And maybe my own example is unusual, but I can relate fully with the author's predicament (especially the feeling of doing everything right, education upon education, going where the market supposedly lay, yet losing much of my income on taxes of one form or another, half of it on rent, and feeling like handouts are going everywhere else with that).
Yet I am an immigrant, as is my wife, arriving in the late 90s. Now 48, I'm not in the same generation as the author but suffer from all the same issues - the difference being I have fewer years in which to resolve them and fewer years before I'm forced out of the workforce entirely. I spent a substantial number of years when I first arrived doing manual work, at risible £4.50/hr rates, with no sick pay, holiday pay, or perks and even now earn barely £50k. My only 'hope' is that when my parents pass on there will be some degree of inheritance.
My point with all this is that while immigration pressures have created a problem, those of us who work and watch others who live off benefits are all in the same boat - migrants or UK born. When I arrived I had no "recourse to public funds" for the first four years of my time in the UK. The idea that many have their rent covered from the moment they arrive and for years after angers me as much as any native British.
"They have few savings and many do not have private pensions."
Unfortunately when people obsess about the problems of "debt" then that necessarily means eliminating "savings" or "pensions".
That's because for some entity to have savings, another entity must have debt. That's how balance sheets work. Getting rid of one requires getting rid of the other.
Good article, and one that the politicians might like to read, although it will not rock any boats in the corridors of the real governors of this country, the WEF and UN who dictate immigration policy and are dedicated to destroying nation states via immigration.
I must take issue though with the writer's hatred of pensioners, of which I am one. I began work at fifteen, in a hard manual profession, TEN YEARS BEFORE the writer, who was happy to swan around at university, because my family was so poor I had to contribute to the household, and I can assure him that my generation did not have it easy - my first years wages were £6 - 15 shillings and sixpence a week and my father only earned £18 a week as a head chef and my mother was a cleaner. My father went to work by bicycle, and I remember him arriving home shivering and soaking wet on many occasions as we could not afford a car, nor did we have mobile phones!
The idea that the young are paying for the old is scurrilous - because society is structured to allow working-age people to support the young and old who are not able to work; who does the writer believe paid for his upbringing, education, healthcare and university place? (Don't say the student loan, as this is heavily subsidized by the tax-payer). Old people DO generally have possessions because they worked for fifty years in order to buy them; it would be a strange world if they had not accrued some wealth in that time; does the writer believe that nobody should be allowed to own anything? And as for the state pension, it is the lowest pension, by Capita in the world, nowhere near large enough to live on, so the idea that it is unaffordable and should be cut is disgraceful.
Every single problem that the writer discusses is due to immigration, from the enormous, unsustainable benefits bill to support Ilegal immigrants, currently running at ten million a day, to the seven out of eight legal immigrants who are dependents who do not work, to the lack of productivity due to employers using cheap, mass immigration instead of investing in technology, to the impossibility of accessing NHS services that are swamped by the vast immigrant population using it for free, and the lack of cash available because wages are so low. As for housing, we need to build a new dwelling every two minutes to house immigrants, so that does not give much scope for housing the indigenous population, and the much-repeated comment that houses were more affordable in the past is not true, because for the vast majority of the population, home ownership was a pipe-dream, something only the affluent could aspire to, and I would say that 90% of the people that I knew lived in council house accommodation, something that could not happen today because even If councils had the cash to build houses, British people would be at the bottom of the list and the houses would all go to immigrants.
All of this has been brought to our friend the writer by our own politicians, buying in to the WEF and UN's doctrine of destroying nation states by swamping them with mass immigration, resulting in poverty for most people, who have seen their lives destroyed by it. Why have our politicians betrayed the British people? Ideology? Greed? The fact that London has a Muslim Mayor, who naturally wishes to turn the place into a Muslim paradise explains much, but even he must see that if you allow millions of people into the country to live on benefits, then the result can only be a breakdown of society. Khan is currently funding his passion by taxing the motorist, but once they are eradicated, where will he turn to for funds? 90% of Somalis in Tower Hamlets do not have a job, so who do they think is funding their benefits? I wonder what Mr Khan's answer would be?
This treachery was begun by Blair, who states that his reason was to 'rub the Right's nose in diversity', but I find it hard to believe that, as a Scot, he would wish to see his own nation lose its identity and wealth (although this is guaranteed by English tax-payers). No, I believe that Blair was the first generation of politicians who bought into the UN's project, although possibly arch-EU fanatics like Hesseltine and Ken Clarke were paid up members of the club as well. The writing is on the wall - if we do not stop importing slave labour who drain benefits, and if we do not get wages up and reduce the demand for housing, then we will have a country like many with high populations, that have a wealthy upper-class who live in protected neighbourhoods, and a mass of people who have nothing, living in filth; think Brazil, India or South Africa.......
Our anonymous Gen-Z poster should vote Reform on this occasion and then back the new centre-right, control-our-borders party that emerges after the election.
Almost every issue we face can be traced, in some way, to mass immigration as either root cause or a contributory factor.
Work ethic is not as easy as non work ethic. The over generous benefits system is proving to be pernicious beyond reason. Of course one law of economics, the first, is scarcity sets price, so if you want cheap labour increase supply. Indeed that is the only supply side that the Tories have addressed is labour, not energy not housing not infrastructure so it’s understandable those with the option of not being socially mobile have their options stymied at every turn decide the country is not on their side. No job pays as well as the government. White unemployment is around 3% Bangladeshi unemployment more than four times that, so even the potentials recruits to low cost labour seem not to partake in market capitalism corrupted by social payments and gerrymandering.
I did write more but deleted it as I’m on a rant!
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
I recommend Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge. He has many interesting guests in addition to Thomas Sowell and the discussions are all deeply interesting.
Where to start on that one. Intellectuals and Society? The vision of the anointed? Every one of his books is an obvious work of huge genius. With music it’s JJ Cale, economics, politics and real philosophy it’s Sowell
He has visibility on You Tube, the best president the USA never had
Am not going to dwell on the young man’s depressing and dispiriting circumstances as he has explained it all brilliantly himself and I feel for him.
I don’t understand all this anger directed at boomers though . I had my first job brushing up, making tea, shampooing in a hairdressers aged 12. Always had a Saturday job at school, worked in university holidays and apart from child benefit when it wasn’t means tested haven’t had a penny from the state . Ditto my partner. Am 68 he’s a bit older, still working through choice, paying higher rate income tax and corporation tax and am bewildered as to how we have ruined the country or are being paid for by Gen Z . We do both get state pension which is the only thing we have ever got back so is cherished, but we contribute enough to pay for our own. Our friends similarly provide for themselves one way or another .Instead of pitching generations of the indigenous population let’s face the elephant in the room hardly anybody talks about. Immigration. Part of our town has been taken over as the author describes, 15 people cramming into a dwelling that used to house five, throwing their rubbish onto the streets, lots of empty Turkish barber shops, range rovers and similar top of the range cars outside the houses, drug dealing , hostility towards any indigenous people unfortunate enough to still be living there. The police don’t go because they were mobbed everytime they tried to arrest someone . It was the site of one of the grooming gangs that made the headlines. There’s the problem right there. It’s this situation created and maintained by politicians , the discrimination against the indigenous population that we should be uniting to fight against . Currently Farage would be the only possible leader but he’s out of the game . I recommend the poem “The beginnings” by Rudyard Kipling
Yes but it is the younger voters who favour mass immigration and call the older voters who oppose mass immigration racist, xenophobic, white privileged and all the rest.
Why is it that Gen Z especially but also the Millennials keep harping on about "the Baby Boomers who wrecked the country they inherited" without any evidence being offered? If the 'boomers' did so badly, why didn't the Gen Xers (now in their fifties) alleviate that mess? It's a bit like Labour and other lefties blaming Mrs Thatcher for everything, even a good 30 years after she was kicked out of No 10. IIRC, neither Blair nor Brown did much about correcting her policies, in fact Blair called himself the 'heir to Thatcher', and as for the Cameron government, the less aid the better.
Since Gen X, the Millennials and Gen Z clearly need an 'enemy', and since it's forbidden by the MSM-governing New Elites to question mass illegal immigration and the ever increasing 'welfare' state, that enemy must be the old, the boomers, granny and gramps who have been 'elevated' into the realm of a new aristocracy which uses up scarce room, sitting in their huge houses instead of handing them over, which sits on huge pots of money instead of being content with genteel poverty, and which is always ill, using up resources of the precious NHS: off with their heads, innit like ...
Well, I suppose every generation will have to go through the grinder that is a socialist government ... and no, I am not advocating to vote for the Tories: there's a reason why we call LibLabCon the Uniparty.
An outstanding article. There was an article in the FT (comments disabled) about how this generation is turning to right wing populist parties in Europe for precisely all the reasons explained above.
You state all this, and say your friends feel similarly but the majority of them are going to vote Labour! It was Blair’s policy of free movement that helped the decline that Thatcher had already began with mass privatisation of service industries. Make no mistake, Thatcher ruined Britain, Blair continued with the spiral of decline with mass immigration and the current tories have added to the damage with their mass immigration policies. One pie that keeps getting divided into ever decreasing sized portions. The working class have paid and continue to pay the ultimate price. We have for decades now. I lived through Thatcher’s rule and then Blair’s. Now at 58, I have to move hundreds of miles away to where I also know nobody as Icannot afford to stay in the area I live any longer! I also cannot even get a job as nobody wants to employ middle aged women! Don’t be fooled by the lie that there are jobs that Brits won’t do. We don’t even get to interview! It is Thstcher and Blair and now this lot that have ruined Britain. Make no mistake about that.
They can't remember any of it, they weren't born. They blame what they have witnessed. You can't just preach at people they have to find out themselves just as we did.
I am not trying to preach. Nothing will improve unless people with more life experience are heard too. If this isn’t the case then we might as well give up.
Eloquent but depressing. You can see the frustration of Gen-Z who intuit that something is wrong and either give up, want to smash everything or vote Labour in the naive hope that things will get better. At some point, a politician will cut through and show the consequences of a progressive one party state. There are also parents and grandparents who worry about their kids and their kids' futures - there is a huge constituency out there for someone.
More needs to be done to help the young. I find it incredible for instance that Londoners over 60 can travel for free on the tube but 20 year olds cannot get a discount on peak travel. Similarly for free prescriptions for over 60s. But these are minor issues compared with the cost of housing.
Iona, I would just say that most over 60’s are on multiple drugs which for someone existing on the state pension would be unaffordable. In America people often don’t take the drugs they need because they can’t afford them, resulting in worse outcomes , in our case costing the NHS more in the long run. Again free off peak local travel for pensioners can be a lifeline . For myself I have taken three local train rides in 8 years and hardly anyone I know uses it more than once in a blue moon . It’s not a big expense because it’s occasional use not a daily commute
Whilst I have considerable sympathy for young people and their financial and societal problems they need to get a grip and be a bit more understanding of the older generation (pensioners) who are overtly criticised in this piece. Pensioners don’t pay NI because at state retirement age you have contributed for decades to get the pittance paid in retirement pension. Our state retirement pension is one of the lowest in Europe and taken later in life. It is half the equivalent income of someone working for the minimum wage. So you think that is fair and leads to a high financial existence. As for the rest blame it on gutless self centred globalist politicians post thatcher. Their only interest has been in themselves and certainly not the interests of the nation they were elected to serve
As a 55 Yr old mum of a 21 and 16 year old I'm watching your generation being screwed over on a scale mine wasn't. My dad was 21 when I was born, he put a roof over our heads, paid the bills, mum stayed at home and my sister was born. All on one man's wage! There isn't a hope in hell you'll be able to do what he did because your squashed salaries in relation to house prices will never allow it. My university education was free and gave me £65 a week grant to pay accommodation and bills, that was the God send that got me out of our council estate and on the path to a better life. You've never been afforded that privilege.
My son is living with his girlfriend's parents in the Midlands to take an apprentiship that doesn't exists here in Rishi's constituency because he's not interested in young people. Most young people here leave because there's nothing for them. I'll always be grateful to her parents for doing it.
I haven't voted for a number of years now because I recognised the generational 'neglect' when my 2 were small and became aware of the system that had become completely skewed towards older and away from young on a scale we'd not seen before. As society became older and older so the skewing got worse as the parties tried to outdo each other for the big voting pool that was older. At that point I began to disengage with voting as nobody seemed interested in young people.
I've yet to make my mind up about Reform being different to Labour, Tories, Lib Dem and Greens but I do know I'll dump them if they don't start offering more to my youngsters. My parents had it easier as their salaries were able to buy a home and keep a family, yours doesn't. What really annoys me is the fact we have a political class who don't seem to give a toss about it. Worse still we have people who become so defensive they lack the capacity to have a reasoned conversation.
Until someone does something for young people (who are not woke and entitled) then leftwards we'll keep sliding.
If Reform are serious about preventing the continual creep leftwards they have to show some courage and stop paying the wealthiest pensioners triple locks and Winter fuel allowance on the basis the benefits system should be about 'need' not an automatic entitlement based on age, and they need to look at investing money on apprentiships that give people opportunity of not running up debt. And they need to understand that young people like to live near parents for future support and that means bringing opportunity to all areas of the country including rural areas as well as dth de-industrial towns.
My heart goes out to you ....and your mum , because I know exactly how she feels and how sometimes she'll cry herself to sleep worrying about you just as I do (even if she doesn't tell you....mum's do that💔).
I used to work in a local council housing department and at the end of the 1990s I started to see a major change in the allocation of social housing. Suddenly permanent social housing was being given to anyone who had just arrived in the country. Though the media was always on about 'poor refugees' who needed our help, what I saw was the middle class of other countries coming to take advantage of our largesse. The 'right to buy' didn't help as it was available to all tenants, not just British citizens. "Racism' was elevated to become the great, original and unforgivable sin that would ruin the life and career of any person who dared to point out what was going on. No questions were ever asked about how a penniless refugee would suddenly acquire the funds to purchase their housing after a mere 2 years (the qualifying period). Often council flats would be sublet by the tenants to other more recent refugees as they were used to better in their own countries and did still have access to money in their countries of origin.
The one class of person that we would never help was the young white male. We would help females with children as long as they would pretend that there were no men around. Any young British couple who wished to establish a stable family to work and raise children were not helped, but families who just turned up from the other side of the world were put at the head of the queue for housing. Is it any wonder that depression and suicide are so common among young white men? I have struggled to understand why this country has pursued such suicidal policies. DEI policies are destroying our society.
I was very interested to read this article by a young man. I will admit that I am not happy about a lot of the new housing schemes (though I have never opposed any) but I have 2 reasons for that. The first is that I don't want to build housing for people who don't belong in this country in the first place. We need to get immigration under control and to do that we need to stop worrying about being kind or fair or solving the world's problems. I feel that we are 'full' and should just stay 'no more' until our infrastructure and society can cope with more. The second reason is that the house building plans never include enough parking spaces for their residents and visitors. Councils are obsessed with creating a cycling paradise and refuse to acknowledge the fact most immigrants are determined to get a car and drive it no matter what.
There is a lot of resentment of 'boomers' now but we are not going to live forever. Most of the people I know go to great lengths to help their children (I personally don't have any). When we do die and all of that housing stock that we are supposedly blocking is released, what do you think will happen?
When societies crumble as that in the UK is doing, people look for others to blame. Much of the blame in this guest post is misdirected but that won't cause it not to become a fixed belief. The writer is struggling for whatever reasons and feels hopeless and angry. It would come as a surprise to him or her that most oldies are just as angry at the Conservative party and feel just as angry and hopelss at the electoral prospects before them.
It should be obvious that after a lifetime of working and saving, older people are better off than when they were young and that this is a highly desirable result. They have not set out to achieve it at the expense of the young. That is utter nonsense. Getting angry and blaming the older generations simply because they achieved this happy state will not improve the prospects for the young one iota. Furthermore it is offensive to the many older people who have worked their butts off to provide for their families and the future of their children now to be blamed for the rigours some young people face.
There are very obvious causes for these difficulties, notably Net Zero, mass immigration, illegal immigration, profligate government spending, money printing, high inflation, the structural deficiencies in the NHS, irresponsible growth of the welfare state (particularly by the Blair and Brown governments to make the majority clients of the state), Woke Left wing policies etc etc. None of these policies is supported predominantly by older generations. On the contrary, they have all tended over the last few years to be favoured by the young. Mass immigration and Net Zero, in particular, have been championed mostly by younger generations. It is wrong to blame the older generations for the dreadful results of what the younger ones themselves demanded. It will not gain the young support from the old and is counter productive.
That said Matt Goodwin has done a great service in this guest post to illustrate the depth and extreme gulf of division in British society. It really is broken and there are no easy fixes.
Though I agree the older generation are not to ‘blame’ for the ills of the country and you have eloquently spelled out the causes, one must accept that many within the older generations have played a role in creating our current mess by voting in Blair in 1997 and thereafter for pro-mass migration governments in the subsequent 6 general elections.
Demographic change in the 1997 vote:
"The Labour vote increased among all age groups (as might be expected in an election with such a significant swing) but there was a much larger increase among younger voters than older voters. While the Labour vote increased by 12 points for 25-34 year olds and 35-44 year olds, it only increased by 4 points for 55-64 year olds. The 45-54 age bracket saw the biggest collapse of the conservative vote (down 16 points). While Labour were ahead in every age bracket (an unusual result indeed!) this was by a relatively narrow margin for 55-64 and 65+ voters, while all other age brackets had differences in double figures, and the lead for those under 45 was over 20 points. Very nearly half of 18-44 year olds voted Labour, compared with 44% overall (according to the exit poll).
"Putting some of this data together, the largest increase for Labour appears to be among young women on low incomes and the largest collapse for the Conservatives among middle-aged, middle-class men and women."
The young should be familiar with this analysis. It comes from "STUDY NOTES, General Election 1997 - Gender, Age, Ethnicity and Region. Level: AS, A-Level. Board: AQA, Edexcel. Last updated 20 Nov 2017".
It can be read in two ways. The young of that vote are now 25 years older so many can be counted as today's 65+. But that demographic doesn't change much. The young always are inclined that way and generally change their views (for the better) as they get older. Every poll of attitudes in the last decade or more shows younger people more favourable towards immigration and increasing immigration. It is also favoured more srongly by university graduates as there was seen to be less competition for their jobs from immigrants than for the lower skilled. A case of I'm alright Jack. ....... .....
Part 2: And recent surveys show that immigrants are for the most part not the highly skilled contributors that are promised but semi or unskilled and a net cost to the economy. The reason is government policy, not oldies clamouring for mass immigration. On the contrary, the oldies oppose it most strongly. But the young still favour it, calling the oldies xenophobic, racist, white privileged and all the rest.
But there ARE easy fixes! 1) Tice needs to recruit young people, like the writer of this profound essay, to be the faces of Reform, not the unappealing/depressing grey/silver haired 90% of Reform candidates we saw in a recent photo 2) Reform URGENTLY needs at least a dozen spokespeople, a Shadow Cabinet, to make the party look electable, they should be touring the UK's town and village halls, stirring true Brits and laying out Reforms's clear views. 3) All of the issues this young person writes about would make a great party newspaper; please someone tell me Reform is about to reveal this newspaper and start getting it distributed across key constituencies. 4) A younger, smarter team needs to replace the tired, old, useless fossils at Reform HQ who gave the party JUST TWO council seats in the May elections. 5) Boot out the people from Reform who are working for Labour's big win on July 4th; you know who your are, why don't you quit before you get kicked out?
If you write to Reform you will probably receive a properly considered reply. Give it a go.
Hilarious, made me laugh.
Well I did write and I received an encouraging reply - which I never get from my Conservative MP. And now Nigel Farage is leader and standing in Clacton.
Mrs Bucket: its not so easy. Tice is not prime minister material and Reform is going nowhere under his leadership.
Well, that's been proved correct with today's news
Well, then the demographic problem began with the boomers (I don’t have to have 2.4 kids man) they massively support the welfare state. However with the lopsided demographic pyramid they helped create it’s unaffordable without massive growth. Frankly that’s not going to happen Britain is much too old for that in demographic and economic terms. The old happened to come of age at a uniquely good time to come of age. Where the economy was highly regulated competition was artificially low (few women in work, Asia a backwater, tightly controlled banking, finance, broad manufacturing base, free Uni, low house prices, rising wages, high unionisation) All these factors are now in reverse destroying the post war prosperity we took for granted. When this tight regulation was eased the affluent boomers benefited by being first (ie having established their careers and backgrounds before deregulation) then benefiting from the capitalism boom of the 80s/ early nineties then the long 90s boom. Now the state regulates both too much and too little, interferes both too much and too little. Given the policy of soaking the young for the benefit of the old they’ve every right
Just talk about pension or housing reforms, watch those older people run out saying but I paid in, but my view ect. Not realising that they paid for their parents pensions, they’re (overburdened children) will have to pay for theirs.
By the by it will be that self same generation in a couple years probably the next Tory or Labour government that will have a “plan” for pensions involving a phase out of state pensions for those under retirement age… due to cost.
From where do you get the idea that the boomers 'massively support the welfare state'? Or that they helped create the welfare state, or that they came of age 'at a uniquely good time to come of age'? You're wrong on all counts.
Conservatives believe in a small state and most 'boomers' (born from 1946 to 1964, now 60-78) are conservative and have always voted conservative - until this general election when it is about to change.
Here's the history. The welfare state was founded by Labour after the war on the principles of socialism 10-15 years before the first 'boomers' could even vote.
The Socialist Labour government of Clement Attlee: "Over the course of the 1945-1950 Parliament, legislation was passed which allowed for the nationalisation of the Bank of England, the coal industry, the telecommunications industry, the transport industries including railways, canals and civil aviation, the gas and electricity supply industries and the iron and steel industry." House of Commons Library BRIEFING PAPER Number CBP8325, 31 May 2018.
The 'boomers' came of age between 1962 and 1979, a period marked by the 3-day week, the miners strikes, rail strikes, hopeless nationalised public services such as gas and electricity, rampant inflation, balance of payments crises leading to UK's only ever bail-out by the IMF and UK joining the then EEC as the sick man of Europe.
You are gravely mistaken.
Thanks for the long reply from far away. Very accurate, I expect things to get worse before there is a chance of a correction, if we are lucky. Who knows what the future holds? There are times though when the sun shines, and people are out and about enjoying life. And then on a summer’s evening you find a nice pub, with views over rolling fields and a pint of beer (not cold) and life is ok.
I agree with all of this but why doesn’t everybody?? 84% of Gen Z will vote for labour etc. Why do they think these charlatans will do anything other than make things worse? This is not to endorse the filthy Tories.
That's the point the writer makes, they are conditioned to blame the evil Tories, the people in charge, the boomers. Their ancestors would blame the aristorcracy or the monasteries. At some point they will notice that they are supporting their own immiseration.
Maybe but that view is grossly misguided. As I said above that won't stop it becoming a fixed belief. The average age of MPs at general elections has ranged from 48.8 to 51.2 between 1979 and 2019. They are NOT boomers.
The proportion of MPs aged 60 or over in each party following the 2019 GE was 16% among Conservatives and 25% among Labour. 49% of Conservative MPs were under 50.
the average age of newly elected MPs has not changed since 1983: 40-45, with women slightly older on average than men.
Source: House of Commons trends: The age of MPs, 3 Nov 2020.
It's a bit of a mix though. Gen Z are encouraged to blame the oldies for hoarding their wealth at their expense. It's convenient to blame someone. It must though be in the interests of some to promote this view. There is something wrong in a system where I cannot aspire to have the lifestyle my parents had and my children cannot aspire to have the lifestyle I had, in terms of say property ownership. Until we are dead, and by then after tax and care costs and divided by number of children, may not be much left for them!
Yes there is something wrong and I have expressed my view as to what is wrong in earlier comments: a heap of policies that tend to be favoured by younger people plus a measure of government incompetence. The blame game is symptomatic of any society in decline. It is intensified by identity politics, a specialty of the young who are now also greatly influenced by Wokery and Marxist ideas. The idea that the old have been ganging up against the young is utterly wrong and dangerous.
I agree, it is not good to play off one group against another. What happened to the idea of us all being in it together? What is also frustrating is that too many people will still vote for policies that will make them (and the rest of us) poorer.
Patriotism has been falsely conflated with nationalism meaning Nazism. Hence any one speaking up for UK or Brits first is labelled as Far Right, ie., Nazi.
Neither socialists nor Remainers believe in the nation state. Everything they advocate is intended to dismantle, neutralise or subjugate it. For socialists (who oppose private wealth) it goes back to the International. For Remainers it is the EU's ever closer union and the EU as the model for one world technocatic government supported by extra-national bodies like the WEF, UN, ECHR et al..
Obviously democracy cannot be extended beyond the nation state so it will die as a consequence of the intentions of these people, who in any case are quite content to force compliance of the majority with their views by law. Democrats they are not.
So you will all be in it together by force of law, and anyone who differs will be outlawed or sent for re-training to correct their thinking. Which is exactly how 'inclusive' policies already operate.
PS. In a properly socialist system, insiders are highly privileged so making everyone else poorer doesn't bother them and it serves their political objectives - they can speak up for them and get their votes. Without the poor they would have no power and the more people who are poor, the more votes they get.
They are going to get an awful shock when Starmer and his cabinet get into power. That is my only consolation when I think of the devastation the country will endure at the hands of those incompetents. (Not that the Tories were in any way competent - immigration anybody?)
After 5 years of Labour, they will be as thoroughly discredited and hated as the Tories are now. That might be when a new politics emerges.
My thoughts exactly.
No 84% of gen Z that turn out will vote Labour, I am a conservative Zoomer, there are plenty of us around (it’s just a different type of politics) more reactionary than conservative it finds little outlet in the (overwhelmingly) Liberal centrist parties that dominate British politics. Ask a conservative Zoomer if they value freedom or security they will answer security but freedom for their private lives. A boomer would answer reflexively they value freedom, and bang on about Thatcher ect. Such people see little point in politics, like their older less reactionary uncle the Red wall voter. They drop out of politics because they don’t feel represented by their leaders. Doesn’t help that the face of the British Right in Britain is old, well off, property owning liberal pensioners. It puts me off and I’m a Tory member, and former councilor candidate.
Excellent article and I completely sympathise with the author. I made similar comments yesterday on Matt's other article regarding Reform. There is huge potential amongst millenial and gen-Z voters, many of whom are utterly apathetic and do not vote. Yet Reform - and the other parties - offer them nothing, nor do they seek their vote. These people are ostensibly middle class. They are well educated, erudite, hard-working. They work in the city. They work in tech. Yet they do lot lead middle class lives in the historical sense. Some years ago, the Great British Class survey recognised this group as "New Affluent Workers"; yet they have been squeezed hard and are not all that affluent. All that New Labour, the Conservatives, academia and the State have promised over the last thirty years has proven false. They are unable to own their own homes. They are unable to have families - or if they do, they will have one or two children only. They have few savings and many do not have private pensions. Invariably they will live as a couple in a depressingly small one or two bed flat often well into their 30's. Both will work. They do not commit crime, they sought an education, always at great expense. They did everything right. Yet they are continually at the back of the queue, the bottom of the pile. And as the author remarks, with Labour, if they are white English, they will be increasingly discriminated against in their own homeland. This is intolerable. This is unjust. Yet no one is sticking up for them. As I said yesterday, immigration absolutely IS to blame for a lot of our nations problems. Yet you cannot wallow in hatred. You have to offer a vision of something more, something greater. We can provide these people with homes and the prosperity they deserve. So promise them something, seek them out on LinkedIn, contact them on social media and make them stakeholders. Give them responsibility in the party. They will vote for you IF you offer them something and if you recognise their struggle.
100 likes. You are absolutely right, it is intolerable that young white British especially men are being treated like this in their own country. My heart goes out to this young man, comparing his life to mine in London in the 70s. All I would say is don't blame the boomers entirely for this. Although many have excellent pensions enabling them to live more than comfortably, like many others I live on the state pension, I have no company pension although I have my own self-invested small pension to fall back on when/if things get bad. It's not our fault the governments are forever chasing our votes. The pandemic saw the bigget redistribution of wealth ever I believe, from the poor to the rich and whatever Starmer says about being a socialist, you can be sure than any attempt he ostensibly makes to redistribute wealth will end up with everyone worse off, (except probably those on benefits).
Yes, this is one thing which I take issue with in the original post. I don't hate baby boomers at all and I think some parts of the article mischaracterises them. As I understand it, baby boomers were the generation immediately after WW2, which includes my parents. My father certainly does remember rationing and being hungry. He also remembers baths in front of an open fire, no running hot water, single glazing and no central heating. These sorts of comments have become tropes, but people did lead extremely humble lives. Times certainly were tough. Not to mention good luck entering a professional career with a "regional" accent - although that bigotry still exists, it's not nearly as bad as it used to be.
That said, there is a segment of that generation which is vehemently anti-growth. I can understand rural working class types in their 60-80's not wanting Redrow estates built on the outskirts of their villages. These people are usually anti-immigration too, so at least they're logical "I never wanted the country to get so large in the first place, so I am going to oppose house building in my area". But there a large wedge of professional urban middle class types who have retired to rural areas. These people are often quite liberal/progressive, want to be part of the EU, want endless immigration.... but no houses or other infrastructure built in their area. Those people are your bog standard Lib Dem voters and they deserve harsh words.
One possible question here might be saying immigration is the problem. I'm mostly with you on the causes. And maybe my own example is unusual, but I can relate fully with the author's predicament (especially the feeling of doing everything right, education upon education, going where the market supposedly lay, yet losing much of my income on taxes of one form or another, half of it on rent, and feeling like handouts are going everywhere else with that).
Yet I am an immigrant, as is my wife, arriving in the late 90s. Now 48, I'm not in the same generation as the author but suffer from all the same issues - the difference being I have fewer years in which to resolve them and fewer years before I'm forced out of the workforce entirely. I spent a substantial number of years when I first arrived doing manual work, at risible £4.50/hr rates, with no sick pay, holiday pay, or perks and even now earn barely £50k. My only 'hope' is that when my parents pass on there will be some degree of inheritance.
My point with all this is that while immigration pressures have created a problem, those of us who work and watch others who live off benefits are all in the same boat - migrants or UK born. When I arrived I had no "recourse to public funds" for the first four years of my time in the UK. The idea that many have their rent covered from the moment they arrive and for years after angers me as much as any native British.
"They have few savings and many do not have private pensions."
Unfortunately when people obsess about the problems of "debt" then that necessarily means eliminating "savings" or "pensions".
That's because for some entity to have savings, another entity must have debt. That's how balance sheets work. Getting rid of one requires getting rid of the other.
Good article, and one that the politicians might like to read, although it will not rock any boats in the corridors of the real governors of this country, the WEF and UN who dictate immigration policy and are dedicated to destroying nation states via immigration.
I must take issue though with the writer's hatred of pensioners, of which I am one. I began work at fifteen, in a hard manual profession, TEN YEARS BEFORE the writer, who was happy to swan around at university, because my family was so poor I had to contribute to the household, and I can assure him that my generation did not have it easy - my first years wages were £6 - 15 shillings and sixpence a week and my father only earned £18 a week as a head chef and my mother was a cleaner. My father went to work by bicycle, and I remember him arriving home shivering and soaking wet on many occasions as we could not afford a car, nor did we have mobile phones!
The idea that the young are paying for the old is scurrilous - because society is structured to allow working-age people to support the young and old who are not able to work; who does the writer believe paid for his upbringing, education, healthcare and university place? (Don't say the student loan, as this is heavily subsidized by the tax-payer). Old people DO generally have possessions because they worked for fifty years in order to buy them; it would be a strange world if they had not accrued some wealth in that time; does the writer believe that nobody should be allowed to own anything? And as for the state pension, it is the lowest pension, by Capita in the world, nowhere near large enough to live on, so the idea that it is unaffordable and should be cut is disgraceful.
Every single problem that the writer discusses is due to immigration, from the enormous, unsustainable benefits bill to support Ilegal immigrants, currently running at ten million a day, to the seven out of eight legal immigrants who are dependents who do not work, to the lack of productivity due to employers using cheap, mass immigration instead of investing in technology, to the impossibility of accessing NHS services that are swamped by the vast immigrant population using it for free, and the lack of cash available because wages are so low. As for housing, we need to build a new dwelling every two minutes to house immigrants, so that does not give much scope for housing the indigenous population, and the much-repeated comment that houses were more affordable in the past is not true, because for the vast majority of the population, home ownership was a pipe-dream, something only the affluent could aspire to, and I would say that 90% of the people that I knew lived in council house accommodation, something that could not happen today because even If councils had the cash to build houses, British people would be at the bottom of the list and the houses would all go to immigrants.
All of this has been brought to our friend the writer by our own politicians, buying in to the WEF and UN's doctrine of destroying nation states by swamping them with mass immigration, resulting in poverty for most people, who have seen their lives destroyed by it. Why have our politicians betrayed the British people? Ideology? Greed? The fact that London has a Muslim Mayor, who naturally wishes to turn the place into a Muslim paradise explains much, but even he must see that if you allow millions of people into the country to live on benefits, then the result can only be a breakdown of society. Khan is currently funding his passion by taxing the motorist, but once they are eradicated, where will he turn to for funds? 90% of Somalis in Tower Hamlets do not have a job, so who do they think is funding their benefits? I wonder what Mr Khan's answer would be?
This treachery was begun by Blair, who states that his reason was to 'rub the Right's nose in diversity', but I find it hard to believe that, as a Scot, he would wish to see his own nation lose its identity and wealth (although this is guaranteed by English tax-payers). No, I believe that Blair was the first generation of politicians who bought into the UN's project, although possibly arch-EU fanatics like Hesseltine and Ken Clarke were paid up members of the club as well. The writing is on the wall - if we do not stop importing slave labour who drain benefits, and if we do not get wages up and reduce the demand for housing, then we will have a country like many with high populations, that have a wealthy upper-class who live in protected neighbourhoods, and a mass of people who have nothing, living in filth; think Brazil, India or South Africa.......
Our anonymous Gen-Z poster should vote Reform on this occasion and then back the new centre-right, control-our-borders party that emerges after the election.
Almost every issue we face can be traced, in some way, to mass immigration as either root cause or a contributory factor.
Work ethic is not as easy as non work ethic. The over generous benefits system is proving to be pernicious beyond reason. Of course one law of economics, the first, is scarcity sets price, so if you want cheap labour increase supply. Indeed that is the only supply side that the Tories have addressed is labour, not energy not housing not infrastructure so it’s understandable those with the option of not being socially mobile have their options stymied at every turn decide the country is not on their side. No job pays as well as the government. White unemployment is around 3% Bangladeshi unemployment more than four times that, so even the potentials recruits to low cost labour seem not to partake in market capitalism corrupted by social payments and gerrymandering.
I did write more but deleted it as I’m on a rant!
“One of the sad signs of our times is that we have demonized those who produce, subsidized those who refuse to produce, and canonized those who complain.”
― Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed: Self-Congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy
Thanks, where Thomas Sowell is right, he's right.
I recommend Peter Robinson's Uncommon Knowledge. He has many interesting guests in addition to Thomas Sowell and the discussions are all deeply interesting.
Off topic, may I ask which of Thomas Sowell's books you'd recommend as an introduction to him and his thinking?
Where to start on that one. Intellectuals and Society? The vision of the anointed? Every one of his books is an obvious work of huge genius. With music it’s JJ Cale, economics, politics and real philosophy it’s Sowell
He has visibility on You Tube, the best president the USA never had
Thank you, I will start with YouTube and then look through his published works.
Am not going to dwell on the young man’s depressing and dispiriting circumstances as he has explained it all brilliantly himself and I feel for him.
I don’t understand all this anger directed at boomers though . I had my first job brushing up, making tea, shampooing in a hairdressers aged 12. Always had a Saturday job at school, worked in university holidays and apart from child benefit when it wasn’t means tested haven’t had a penny from the state . Ditto my partner. Am 68 he’s a bit older, still working through choice, paying higher rate income tax and corporation tax and am bewildered as to how we have ruined the country or are being paid for by Gen Z . We do both get state pension which is the only thing we have ever got back so is cherished, but we contribute enough to pay for our own. Our friends similarly provide for themselves one way or another .Instead of pitching generations of the indigenous population let’s face the elephant in the room hardly anybody talks about. Immigration. Part of our town has been taken over as the author describes, 15 people cramming into a dwelling that used to house five, throwing their rubbish onto the streets, lots of empty Turkish barber shops, range rovers and similar top of the range cars outside the houses, drug dealing , hostility towards any indigenous people unfortunate enough to still be living there. The police don’t go because they were mobbed everytime they tried to arrest someone . It was the site of one of the grooming gangs that made the headlines. There’s the problem right there. It’s this situation created and maintained by politicians , the discrimination against the indigenous population that we should be uniting to fight against . Currently Farage would be the only possible leader but he’s out of the game . I recommend the poem “The beginnings” by Rudyard Kipling
Yes but it is the younger voters who favour mass immigration and call the older voters who oppose mass immigration racist, xenophobic, white privileged and all the rest.
Yes because unfortunately they don’t see the ramifications . Another reason why it absurd to enfranchise 16 year olds
The only thing that matters is getting their vote and the young are easily manipulated.
Why is it that Gen Z especially but also the Millennials keep harping on about "the Baby Boomers who wrecked the country they inherited" without any evidence being offered? If the 'boomers' did so badly, why didn't the Gen Xers (now in their fifties) alleviate that mess? It's a bit like Labour and other lefties blaming Mrs Thatcher for everything, even a good 30 years after she was kicked out of No 10. IIRC, neither Blair nor Brown did much about correcting her policies, in fact Blair called himself the 'heir to Thatcher', and as for the Cameron government, the less aid the better.
Since Gen X, the Millennials and Gen Z clearly need an 'enemy', and since it's forbidden by the MSM-governing New Elites to question mass illegal immigration and the ever increasing 'welfare' state, that enemy must be the old, the boomers, granny and gramps who have been 'elevated' into the realm of a new aristocracy which uses up scarce room, sitting in their huge houses instead of handing them over, which sits on huge pots of money instead of being content with genteel poverty, and which is always ill, using up resources of the precious NHS: off with their heads, innit like ...
Well, I suppose every generation will have to go through the grinder that is a socialist government ... and no, I am not advocating to vote for the Tories: there's a reason why we call LibLabCon the Uniparty.
An outstanding article. There was an article in the FT (comments disabled) about how this generation is turning to right wing populist parties in Europe for precisely all the reasons explained above.
You state all this, and say your friends feel similarly but the majority of them are going to vote Labour! It was Blair’s policy of free movement that helped the decline that Thatcher had already began with mass privatisation of service industries. Make no mistake, Thatcher ruined Britain, Blair continued with the spiral of decline with mass immigration and the current tories have added to the damage with their mass immigration policies. One pie that keeps getting divided into ever decreasing sized portions. The working class have paid and continue to pay the ultimate price. We have for decades now. I lived through Thatcher’s rule and then Blair’s. Now at 58, I have to move hundreds of miles away to where I also know nobody as Icannot afford to stay in the area I live any longer! I also cannot even get a job as nobody wants to employ middle aged women! Don’t be fooled by the lie that there are jobs that Brits won’t do. We don’t even get to interview! It is Thstcher and Blair and now this lot that have ruined Britain. Make no mistake about that.
They can't remember any of it, they weren't born. They blame what they have witnessed. You can't just preach at people they have to find out themselves just as we did.
I am not trying to preach. Nothing will improve unless people with more life experience are heard too. If this isn’t the case then we might as well give up.
Eloquent but depressing. You can see the frustration of Gen-Z who intuit that something is wrong and either give up, want to smash everything or vote Labour in the naive hope that things will get better. At some point, a politician will cut through and show the consequences of a progressive one party state. There are also parents and grandparents who worry about their kids and their kids' futures - there is a huge constituency out there for someone.
More needs to be done to help the young. I find it incredible for instance that Londoners over 60 can travel for free on the tube but 20 year olds cannot get a discount on peak travel. Similarly for free prescriptions for over 60s. But these are minor issues compared with the cost of housing.
Iona, I would just say that most over 60’s are on multiple drugs which for someone existing on the state pension would be unaffordable. In America people often don’t take the drugs they need because they can’t afford them, resulting in worse outcomes , in our case costing the NHS more in the long run. Again free off peak local travel for pensioners can be a lifeline . For myself I have taken three local train rides in 8 years and hardly anyone I know uses it more than once in a blue moon . It’s not a big expense because it’s occasional use not a daily commute
I would say this perfectly articulates the opinions of my Millennial and Zoomer children. Very well written indeed.
Whilst I have considerable sympathy for young people and their financial and societal problems they need to get a grip and be a bit more understanding of the older generation (pensioners) who are overtly criticised in this piece. Pensioners don’t pay NI because at state retirement age you have contributed for decades to get the pittance paid in retirement pension. Our state retirement pension is one of the lowest in Europe and taken later in life. It is half the equivalent income of someone working for the minimum wage. So you think that is fair and leads to a high financial existence. As for the rest blame it on gutless self centred globalist politicians post thatcher. Their only interest has been in themselves and certainly not the interests of the nation they were elected to serve
As a 55 Yr old mum of a 21 and 16 year old I'm watching your generation being screwed over on a scale mine wasn't. My dad was 21 when I was born, he put a roof over our heads, paid the bills, mum stayed at home and my sister was born. All on one man's wage! There isn't a hope in hell you'll be able to do what he did because your squashed salaries in relation to house prices will never allow it. My university education was free and gave me £65 a week grant to pay accommodation and bills, that was the God send that got me out of our council estate and on the path to a better life. You've never been afforded that privilege.
My son is living with his girlfriend's parents in the Midlands to take an apprentiship that doesn't exists here in Rishi's constituency because he's not interested in young people. Most young people here leave because there's nothing for them. I'll always be grateful to her parents for doing it.
I haven't voted for a number of years now because I recognised the generational 'neglect' when my 2 were small and became aware of the system that had become completely skewed towards older and away from young on a scale we'd not seen before. As society became older and older so the skewing got worse as the parties tried to outdo each other for the big voting pool that was older. At that point I began to disengage with voting as nobody seemed interested in young people.
I've yet to make my mind up about Reform being different to Labour, Tories, Lib Dem and Greens but I do know I'll dump them if they don't start offering more to my youngsters. My parents had it easier as their salaries were able to buy a home and keep a family, yours doesn't. What really annoys me is the fact we have a political class who don't seem to give a toss about it. Worse still we have people who become so defensive they lack the capacity to have a reasoned conversation.
Until someone does something for young people (who are not woke and entitled) then leftwards we'll keep sliding.
If Reform are serious about preventing the continual creep leftwards they have to show some courage and stop paying the wealthiest pensioners triple locks and Winter fuel allowance on the basis the benefits system should be about 'need' not an automatic entitlement based on age, and they need to look at investing money on apprentiships that give people opportunity of not running up debt. And they need to understand that young people like to live near parents for future support and that means bringing opportunity to all areas of the country including rural areas as well as dth de-industrial towns.
My heart goes out to you ....and your mum , because I know exactly how she feels and how sometimes she'll cry herself to sleep worrying about you just as I do (even if she doesn't tell you....mum's do that💔).
I used to work in a local council housing department and at the end of the 1990s I started to see a major change in the allocation of social housing. Suddenly permanent social housing was being given to anyone who had just arrived in the country. Though the media was always on about 'poor refugees' who needed our help, what I saw was the middle class of other countries coming to take advantage of our largesse. The 'right to buy' didn't help as it was available to all tenants, not just British citizens. "Racism' was elevated to become the great, original and unforgivable sin that would ruin the life and career of any person who dared to point out what was going on. No questions were ever asked about how a penniless refugee would suddenly acquire the funds to purchase their housing after a mere 2 years (the qualifying period). Often council flats would be sublet by the tenants to other more recent refugees as they were used to better in their own countries and did still have access to money in their countries of origin.
The one class of person that we would never help was the young white male. We would help females with children as long as they would pretend that there were no men around. Any young British couple who wished to establish a stable family to work and raise children were not helped, but families who just turned up from the other side of the world were put at the head of the queue for housing. Is it any wonder that depression and suicide are so common among young white men? I have struggled to understand why this country has pursued such suicidal policies. DEI policies are destroying our society.
I was very interested to read this article by a young man. I will admit that I am not happy about a lot of the new housing schemes (though I have never opposed any) but I have 2 reasons for that. The first is that I don't want to build housing for people who don't belong in this country in the first place. We need to get immigration under control and to do that we need to stop worrying about being kind or fair or solving the world's problems. I feel that we are 'full' and should just stay 'no more' until our infrastructure and society can cope with more. The second reason is that the house building plans never include enough parking spaces for their residents and visitors. Councils are obsessed with creating a cycling paradise and refuse to acknowledge the fact most immigrants are determined to get a car and drive it no matter what.
There is a lot of resentment of 'boomers' now but we are not going to live forever. Most of the people I know go to great lengths to help their children (I personally don't have any). When we do die and all of that housing stock that we are supposedly blocking is released, what do you think will happen?