Is our town a shithole..

"Well as a boomer we weren't asked if we wanted public services sold off. We didn't want public services sold off. We knew well that selling off social housing was a huge mistake. The newspapers left, centre and right said it was a huge mistake. Experts said it was a huge mistake.
We were proved right."

Right to Buy was actually one of Thatcher's most popular policies and was lauded by the right wing press, which dominates print media.

Thatcher was repeatedly elected on a manifesto of continued privatisation of public services, humbling the unions, freeing industry from regulation, and cutting public spending.

Boomers repeatedly voted in David Cameron, while blaming local authorities for the inevitable decline in public services created by huge cuts to local authority funding during austerity.

Your generation voted for it. Time and time again. And told us to shut up because it was all for your pensions and we were selfish and needed to be more change positive. It was ypur generation that implemented the ‘decisions of central government that you weren’t consulted about’. Central government did not force so many of you to be of private landlords, much less tell us to stfu all the time, much less tell us you were doing us a favour by forcing us into damp pest-infested rentals and handing over our work to your ill gotten lazy brats who never worked for any of it. At work you were happily complicit in watching youngsters getting paid half the wage for jobs that you’d done badly and enforce us having to run around. The old threads and the old conversations on other websites may still be around with your generations denials, minimisations and lies.

All your whataboutery and denials merely show those of us who were there what you are, all over again, and what you have turned Britain in to. The war generation who birthed you must be rolling in their graves in disgust - the dystopian literature they left you in the 50s and 60s were meant as warnings, not as guides.

Im through now. We never got truth, fairness or justice out of your generation. Just shit out of your arses.

@alikelylass

"Why are the Boomers being blamed for government decisions that they weren't consulted about ?"

'Boomers' repeatedly voted in Thatcher and Cameron, who campaigned on a 'personal responsibility' (for working age people) and 'let's shrink the state' (for working age people) manifestos.

'Boomers' are the people buying the Daily Mail, the Telegraph and the Express - all papers that have campaigned relentlessly to cut public spending on benefits for the working age population.

'Right to buy' was a hugely popular policy, it benefited those people who bought, and absolutely fucked the generations that followed.

64% of over 65's voted to leave the EU, compared to 29% of 18 to 30 year olds.

Retired people now have higher disposable incomes than working age people. They hold most of the housing wealth. They're all fucking nimbies.

If you can't look at your generation and accept that it has responsibility for the shit show it created through its political priorities then there's no hope for you.

Exactly 💯

So I'll ask again.

Why are the Boomers being blamed for government decisions that they weren't consulted about ?

Yes it’s terrible isnt it wanting the same social deal you had.

Handouts for that generation in the past included no-questions-asked benefits culture before the late 1990s, including the availability of council housing and right to buy. Free training - not just uni grants but free training and an expectation of employer responsibility for that and equipment. Surestart support and child tax credit on top of wages up to £50k pa (back when minimum wage was £10k and skilled but below professional work got £15k). Easy house prices. Low expectation of skills and qualifications, a qualified 90s professional would struggle to meet the same expectations of an entry level job on minimum wage now, in either quals or skills or effort involved. Encouragement to buy up houses on buy to let. There was a reason why that generation retired earlier out of the same jobs we get paid minimum wage for. In retirement, winter fuel tax, free transportation. I know more pensioners who are landlords or who are living individually in houses than I do those who are anywhere near working poverty and I know several who say they are better off in retirement than working. As usual any changes put in place will not affect that golden age group, but those of us just behind it who had it all stolen from us.

I don’t know what the claimants to the contrary have done with your money. I don’t much care. You had it all, and are still taking it all. You still lie and laugh at us who fund it, just as you always did.

@alikelylass I couldn’t get beyond the wages need to be at the level we can all buy - well yes that would be ideal and nice but given we don’t have standard fixed house prices simply not possible - I’m all for a strong social net , as I say I saw how it worked in Scandinavia- however I’m afraid I can’t go along with airy fairy frustration ( which I get) taking a pop at those who had no say in decisions that have contributed to issues we have today - it kind of reminds me of comments back in my home town when I moved ‘down south’ ( ex mining town in the midlands ) with the ‘those down south get everything’ - yep, we get pretty average wages in lots of cases outside of a few highly paid professions, high house prices and rents and frequently overlooked when it came to handing out money for regenerations etc -

Ha. ha, I would love to get all my former spud picking mates together and tell them we were exploited children. You really are an idiot if you think a bunch of kids - mostly working at their own pace - in the school holidays, should have been paid a full adult wage. 😆😆😆

Well as a boomer we weren't asked if we wanted public services sold off. We didn't want public services sold off. We knew well that selling off social housing was a huge mistake. The newspapers left, centre and right said it was a huge mistake. Experts said it was a huge mistake.

We were proved right.

@Crikeyalmighty "you are thinking about things arse over backwards"

Very succinctly put !😆

@OrdinaryMagicOfAcorns I’m not quite sure where to start with your posts as they are absolutely cuckoo , and I’m a centre/left voter - how on earth would you link wages to mean that anyone could buy anywhere given the huge difference between say London and the south east or the north east ? My son and his partner live in East Midlands, have a perfectly nice semi on very average wages bought a couple of years ago - my youngest son in London (27) and partner - no chance but could do shared ownership or possibly a 2 bed flat 20 miles out at a push - he doesn’t at the moment want to do that so they rent a nice flat in a nice location. They are both on just above average wages and working since he was 17 ( did an apprenticeship)

yes I think it’s tough for young people, very tough and I help him out as best as I can when needed- but I put a lot of the blame for issues far further back than you do - it was Thatcher who sold off social housing, Thatcher who bought into the greed is good mentality and sold off public services. These things are very very hard to just reverse once in private hands, it takes time and hard cash .

putting the blame on ordinary slightly older people is very unwise, they didn’t make those decisions, they had no political clout and many of us have had zero in the way of handouts- we never have had any and are 63 and 60 - and nope we don’t own either because the time we were earning enough we were beyond it being easy to get a mortgage and my H is bloody fussy where we live -in theory we are likely to inherit and would buy then . But this is again a choice, - we have owned before but sold up to build a business.

the only thing I agree with you on is training - I think a lot of training opportunities should be free or low cost - however even then you are wrong in thinking people would take it up in droves, plenty would, plenty wouldn’t - minimum wage is paying roughly £22k these days and yet there are many who would rather struggle on benefits than take up minimum wage jobs because they perceive they will be little better off and they may well be right -
what is needed is concerted building of decent quality social housing that is available across the board giving people the possibility of actually saving to buy on the open market and decent homes for those never in a position to buy .

what is your level of enough money? If you pay £18 an hour then basically an awful lot of both private and public sector jobs are below this - which then creates more pressure on the public purse and more private business going bust !! When we lived in Denmark minimum was around £13 to £14 - but the difference was high tax, cheap childcare, no council tax, good health provision, tons of subsidised good quality social housing - people didn’t actually rush to buy -

you are thinking about things arse over backwards .

The group that gets handouts are those claiming housing benefit, UC or PIP. Don't think it is generation related.

"They are the group that gets hand outs."
What handouts? I've never had any "handouts".

"They benefitted from selling off public services and from fucking us younger ones over,"
How? My husband worked for British Rail and says the worst thing that the government ever did was to privatise the railways. How are we to blame for what the government did?

"laughing and joking and abusing power structures to shut us up" I have no idea what that means.

You seem very bitter but still haven't explained why you think Boomers aren't "paying our way". and how and what we should pay ??

That’s not difficult . They are the group that gets hand outs. They benefitted from selling off public services and from fucking us younger ones over, laughing and joking and abusing power structures to shut us up as they spent their gains on early retirement and part time hobbies.

Screw ‘em. They - and the early gen X who enjoyed the same social co tracts and privilege - are the richest generation that’s ever existed, at the expense mainly of those directly behind them.

I'm still waiting for @OrdinaryMagicOfAcorns to tell us Baby Boomers why they think we aren't "paying our share" 😀

Yes there had been growing inequality through the 80s. But Blair’s time is when the need for inheritance became absolute due to the fuckup they made of training, the housing market, council funding, public service funding - PPI - and far too much leeway given to both the rich and the feckless. It was New Labour that destroyed the idea of working for a living among those not born to family support.

You seem to have a vested political interest in denying facts. My family were traditional Labour and I was left-wing. Until Blair had finished with me and spat me and all of my generation who did not come from nice middle classes onto the scrap heap.

on the news it was talking about water shortages becoming more common in future in UK but let’s keep allowing more and more migrants to come here and build on our green spaces which may help with water conservation

just great

No it isn't.

The idea that the Labour party started intergenerational inequality is not accurate. Intergenerational inequality is a complex issue with roots going way back, and it's not something that can be attributed to a single party or year.

While the Labour party may have implemented policies that had unintended consequences or failed to address existing inequalities, the issues of wealth, income, and opportunity disparities between generations have been building for decades.

As I said, appropriate that Labour are the ones to have to fix that since they started intergenerational inequality - that is a historical fact.

@OrdinaryMagicOfAcorns "And by getting the baby boomers and landlords to finally pay their share."

And what is the "share" that you refer to and how should it be calculated ?

"taxing the huge numbers of billionaires in this country," so how many of these do you think there are?

And yes, we are full. There is little food security here and it will only get worse. Our natural landscape has take a dive. Un coincidentally, over that same time period.

We could train our own people. If the government was forced to stop being able to import trained people from anywhere around the world they would be forced to come to the table and negotiate with the working classes they have screwed over for the last 20 years since globalism got started.

They could start by removing the ridiculous charges on basic training needed for essential jobs such as healthcare. They could continue by providing living wages that pay for the cost of owning - owning , not renting - housing, which is a basic essential of human life. They will have to sort out the housing market - appropriate that Labour should be landed with that, to undo the errors of New Labour who screwed the housing market completely. They can fund that by taxing the huge numbers of billionaires in this country, taxing large unearned incomes and undoing the privilege of capital that neoliberalism provides. And by getting the baby boomers and landlords to finally pay their share.

I live in a large city and the area I live has changed completely in the last 10-15 years.
My local high street has huge problems, with homeless people smoking spice (although that might have decreased a bit recently) and people (who don’t look homeless) drinking openly in the day time and sitting on street corners. Coming back from the gym the other day I got an empty beer can chucked in my direction.
Parking laws have completely gone out the window, people just parking where they want.
Add in people whizzing along pavements on electric scooters and bikes it’s a bloody nightmare.
Lots of the shops are front for money laundering, we’ve had lots of police raids. The local restaurant got raided and had ten of thousands pounds worth of cocaine stashed up stairs!
We will be moving when kids have finished college and can drive.
We have friends who live in a very different type of area and to them these things are unthinkable. It’s certainly changing my views recently, I’m completely fed up of it.

Really. I saw the sports centre bit . I do follow Ireland with my mother's family originating from the south.

It's happened in NI.
They were moved to a sports centre temporarily and then that got firebombed, so they had to be moved again.