… to think that no one wants to speak up for the younger generation?

[SnowBells]

I don't know what it is. Maybe political correctness gone mad.

Pensioners who are already wealthy get winter fuel allowance, etc. Each time this kind of stuff gets mentioned on things like Question Time or something, people shout and whistle, showing complete disregard for the subject, and no real debate can happen.

I am not talking about the pensioners who aren't well off. But a huge proportion of pensioners did profit from the higher house prices - something not likely to happen for the younger generation.

Our kids have to pay to go to uni. My generation will retire much, much later. We also have to pay for inflated house prices.

And yet, there will be people who say 'but we've paid our taxes'. Well, we pay taxes and our kids will, too, but we are likely to get A LOT less back. I just feel there's a huge generational wealth divide. And I wonder why no one wants to discuss this properly? Why do people want to stop a debate before it has even had a chance to happen?

Everyone will die. Your legacy is the next generation. So why not speak up for what essentially will be your only legacy?

[BrawToken]

ageofgrandillusion unfortunately many of them spent their £200k+ free money (equity) on foreign villas so it didn't even benefit the country. And now they tut-tut over feckless, jobless rapidly becoming homeless people who have often never had a working role model because of that BITCH Thatcher who they loved because she let them buy their council houses.

[sadbodyblue]

moonmin same age and same experience.


we had 2 kids in the first recession of my adult life in 1992. it nearly crippled us as a couple. do you remember interest rates going up from 12 to 15% in one fucking day

since the boom and bust.

no change, but it sure ain't the pensioners fault.

[MoominMammasHandbag]

Er yeah
Absolutely everyone I know over 50 has a villa in Spain, funded by the profits from selling their right to buy council house.

Are you lot bankrolled by Starbucks then, Amazon maybe?

[sadbodyblue]

Braw do grow up dear!!! not everyone voted for Maggie.

were you an adult then? do you remember the riots?

Maggie got in because the Labour Party tire themselves apart with internal squabbling. she didn't win they lost.

Michael Foot was a decent bloke but he looked a shambles compared to her slick machine.

by the way my my parents didn't buy a villa abroad. they just about manage in a bungalow.

ridiculous sweeping judgments.

[sadbodyblue]

age the young like my adult twenties kids are suffering because we are in a recession.

don't know how old you are but sit tight, this won't be your first one.

[CailinDana]

Moomin I totally agree. Many of the older people I know are well off but they all started out without two red cents to rub together. It seems to me that many of my generation (I'm 31) expect no hardship whatsoever. They expect the job they feel entitled to because of their qualifications and to be able to afford a lovely house in a "good" area straight off the bat. Many of my contemporaries are amazed when they hear I have a mortgage and am a SAHM despite my DH earning "only" 31K. How do we manage? We save, we economise, we make do. We don't struggle by any means - we have a lovely life. We're just realistic about what we can afford at this stage in our lives.

Our kids will have to pay for Uni? Boo fucking hoo. Poor bubbas. God forbid they might not get everything handed to them on a plate.

[BackforGood]

What moomin said. ome ridiculous sweeping generalisation on here, and sweeping over YEARS of history because it doesn't suit the argument.

[MoominMammasHandbag]

Let's get this straight, my Dad his like never shafted anyone. Worked underground from age 15 til the mines closed. Lived all his life in the same house without any of this property ladder nonsense. Suffered shocking ill health in his later years from dust and fags and a crap diet. Never took a penny off anyone.
So don't give me your ignorant "pulled up the drawbridge" shite.

[BrawToken]

I know not all did vote for Maggie, I also know many did and benefitted massively. She also lost a whole generation of working aged folk with the death of industry where she cruelly ripped their livelihoods from them and left them and their children and childrens' children destined for a life of handouts and now they are being cruelly targetted by her predecessors. Not to mention the kids who left school into that cruel recession, many of whom are my friends (I am 40).
Perhaps I was not clear that I was being a bit tongue in cheek, really didn't mean to piss people off. You must admit that many of the 'baby boomer' generation have done alright though?
As it happens I have a child about to leave school into this weird moment in time which is as grim as fuck.

[BrawToken]

I didn't mean predecessors, I meant the opposite which my stupid wine brain can't remember the word for. I am going to shut up now! Postdecessors?

[SeaSickSal]

49.4% of the population is over 40.

23.9% of the population is too young to vote.

That means that only 26.7% of the population is under 40. And they are a lot less likely to vote.

This means that politicians simply go after the vote of the over 40s which is why we are being ripped off by the energy companies to pay their pensions, we have astronomical house prices because it's giving them a good return on the property the bought cheaply years ago.

Unfortunately things are not going to get better for us under 40s until they start dying off. And I suspect at that point we may be outnumbered by the younger people and our needs will also be sidelined then.

I think if you are aged 20-40 now you are in a very unfortunate generation who will never have their interests looked after by the political classes. If you are poor and in that age group you're fucked basically.

[SeaSickSal]

Moomin, I think that your father was one of a minority. For that age group there was great social mobility, good free education, cheap plentiful housing and families could survive on one wage.

I understand you don't want to feel that your father is being blamed for something and it's not about him personally - but as a generation they did do this.

[MoominMammasHandbag]

They did what Sal? Lived their lives without too many luxuries and a bit put aside for a rainy day?

Just what did the baby boomer generation do?

[MoominMammasHandbag]

And no my Dad wasn't one of a minority, he was an archetypal working class bloke. I imagine his life was pretty much the norm.

[IamInvisible]

I think it is an absolute scandal this debate hasn't happened.

Interest rates may have been higher in the 80s and 90s, but do you know what? DH and I bought our first house in 1995, I was a SAHM, it cost £37.5K, we had a £32K mortgage, 12% of that was much! much more affordable than 2,3,4 or 5% of £250K+!

Some pensioners have paid in, but they have not paid in to a savings account ready to draw out on retirement, and that is what many seem to think. They have had the education for their children, healthcare, refuse collection, emergency services, armed forces, highways agency, local government agency, etc etc.

It grips my shit that people are going to food banks to feed their kids, yet people like my PILs who are sitting on a 7K sofa, or my parents who have just spent 2 months in the Algarve, are receiving benefits they don't need. It is so, so wrong.

[Jollyphonics]

I think every generation has its good and bad times.

I'm 46, so probably classed as nearer to the "lucky elderly" than the "unlucky youth". But my older brother committed suicide when the recession hit and he couldn't find work.

And my student life was very different from what I see now. We had bank accounts from which we withdrew £5 at a time. No credit cards. All our clothes were from jumble sales. We ate cheap stuff from the market. Nights out were in the student bar or dodgy local pubs. None of the designer lifestyle people seem to expect now, in which ordinary people have credit cards, cosmetic surgery, foreign holidays, Radley handbags, and drink in wine bars in town centres!

I'm not doing a "didn't we have it tough" speech, I'm just trying to illustrate that much of what is said about the older people in the country is just not true. It wasn't a free ride.

And also, younger people need to vote more if they want governments to care about them!

[MoominMammasHandbag]

It is big business that has fucked up this country. Companies are only interested in their profits for their shareholders. Not in providing decent jobs at decent wages. The housing crises is basically due to overcrowding and excessive demand.
Non of this has anything to do with your average pensioner.

[SeaSickSal]

Moomin, I think you are incredibly wrong about that. Both my parents were extremely working class from Lancashire and ended up as professionals as did a lot of their friends from the same places.

The social mobility for that generation was like nothing before or since. Children who were working class had opportunities to better themselves that their parents never, ever had. In my grandparents generation that was the class you were born in and there was no opportunity to move up in the world. For the baby boomers there was simply not that restriction any more should they have chosen to take the opportunities available.

Of course not everybody took them, but the opportunities were there.

[SeaSickSal]

Jollyphonics, if you honestly think that is the kind of life 'ordinary people' live then you need to get out more so you can actually meet some.

[Jollyphonics]

I meet a lot of different people in my work, from all walks of life, and I think that expectations are different these days. It's just my observation.

[Jollyphonics]

And I get out plenty thank you.

[Jollyphonics]

Sinister I'm not saying that young people should put up with whatever hardship their ancestors did, definitely not. But I do get tired of hearing how easy it was back then compared to now. As I said, I think there were good and bad things in all eras.

[MoominMammasHandbag]

Sal, do you really think that the whole of the working classes became professional people because there was a chance for a few of them to go to grammar school and university.
Yes a couple of my parents' mates became teachers or something. That didn't lead to the mess the economy is in now though.

[traininthedistance]

Moominmammashandbag well for a start they are taking out from the state massively more than they ever paid in taxes; a majority of them voted for Thatcher; they are sitting on a massive gain in asset prices which will be paid for by the younger generations but are also expecting those younger generations to fund their pensions and pay for their health and social care, whilst preserving entitlements that they have voted en masse to deny to younger people (such as defined benefit pensions, free university education, stable employment, etc.)

But don't worry, the call has clearly gone out to the "young people have too many IPHONES! Too much STUFF! We had it tough interest rates were 15 percent yap yap yap" crowd who will helpfully come along and drown out for example some basic maths. Average real house prices have tripled (relative to incomes) since the 80s and 90s: ask yourself this; as an exercise, which is the bigger, 15% of 100,000 or 5% (an optimistic estimate of a first time buyer interest rate) of 300,000?

And the 15% interest rates were only at that level for about a year (you can look this up on the BoE's historic interest rate data).

Most young people would rather have a chance of having a stable job, home and family rather than a few bits of electronic stuff imported from the Far East as a sop for becoming debt slaves to fund a demographic bulge of entitled boomers who believe that having to have second hand furniture in the 70s was a great hardship (while they bought their first houses aged 22 on one starter salary).