What did the Boomers ever do for me?

[Nomama]

In the interests if balance, you understand!

I shall start with the Ford machinists:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ford_sewing_machinists_strike_of_1968

Equal Pay Act 1970

My thanks to you, Baby Boomers. Without you I couldn't have earned the same honest day's pay as the man working next to me. Hell, I couldn't even have got the job in the first place.

Now this generation needs to thoroughly break the Glass Ceiling!

[twoopsie]

They are being conned, by many people including the boomers that voted for and created the system to benefit themselves.

Boomers should take some responsibility for their actions, rather than pointing to the obvious politions / bankers. Yawn.

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

Despite what they think boomers weren't making the world a better place

No, okay. You give up your rights to paid maternity leave and your tax credits if low-paid. Accept overt racism and sexism as the norm. Get used to passers-by insulting you for keeping your disabled child with you; feel free to demand why single mothers are single and how many fathers have their children. Leave your baby outside shops, as they aren't allowed inside, and don't even consider breastfeeding in public. Forget about changing facilities. Don't bother calling the cops if your partner beats you up or rapes you. Unless you're in London, there won't be any help for you. I could go on.

[twoopsie]

Boomers were not responsible for most of the improve ments in sexism, that was after ww2 when women were doing men's jobs things started to change.

Tax credits they probably were responsible for, they are the reason big companies get away with paying to little and are doing lots of long term damage.

Without boomers you wouldn't be able to call the police after a rape?!?! Please do go on...

[twoopsie]

Love how all the natural improvements in society are down to boomers. Even funnier than crediting them for changing the world when they were teenagers.

They really do believe their own hype

[TheChandler]

I've tried to explain this several times! We have anti-discrimination laws because its a pre-requisite to membership of the EU. The EU has the single market, which is a tariff and customs free trade zone between its members. Nothing to do with the baby boomers passing laws.

If you think about Turkey, which has been an applicant state for 12 years I think and will not be allowed to join until it reforms its laws on the above, you might get an idea of what the UK would be like. EU member states now also have to be signatories to the ECHR.

(this is not to get involved in a stay or leave the EU argument, just the history).

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

Marital rape wasn't illegal until 1991.
If you called the police to domestic violence, until very recently they'd write it off as "a domestic". If they even bothered to come out, they'd ask you what you'd done to provoke him and maybe give him a caution.
We bloody were responsible for most of the improvements in sexism, you should have tried being a young woman when we were!
In 1975, women's earnings averaged 55% of men's.

[twoopsie]

We bloody were responsible for most of the improvements in sexism

No you weren't , educate yourself. Sexism has been improving over many man decade and still has a long way to go. No generation can claim most of the rights to improving it. Inflated boomer egos.

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

I quit my first choice of career because a woman wasn't allowed to progress until she was married to a man in the same trade.
I took part in a big strike to secure paid maternity leave in 1982. This was a large national company. We won 6 months on 60% pay (not sure about the percentage) with a two-year qualifying period.
It was normal to be questioned at interview about your plans to marry or have children. In two of my jobs in the 1980s, I was required to sign a contract not to get pregnant within 2 years.
Definitions of rape were broadened in 2004.
And other stuff.

"They are being conned, by many people including the boomers that voted for and created the system to benefit themselves."

As I've said, I was behind Kinnock's 1987 speech all the way and did not support the Thatcherite dream - for the very reasons that we're now seeing enacted.

Where you (generally) and I (plus others) differ is that I believe your resentment is born of those very ideals. You've known nothing but life under Thatcherite values. Therefore you can't understand why this value set looks selfish/greedy/irresponsible to those who lived with different values.

The pre-Thatch value system in the UK was not perfect, nothing is. But today's generation seems largely unable to grasp that any other system is possible or workable.

[elephantspoo]

They are being conned, by many people including the boomers that voted for and created the system to benefit themselves.

That's what human beings do. Are trying to tell me that that is not exactly what you are doing now? Every time you vote. Every time you pay tax. Every time you debate what should and should not be paid for by Governments spending. Every time you say, we need more this, or we need more that. You are doing exactly what every single generation in history has done, in exactly the same way, in practically the same political and economic system.

We all play the hand we are dealt, and we do the best we can with what we are given. There were no ness losers and no more winners in previous generations. There was greater poverty, poorer education, poorer healthcare, less opportunity for education, less opportunity to learn new skills, and greater restrictions on business and commerce.

Every generation builds upon what has gone before it. It is a fact of life. That is how societies evolve. They developed electronics, computing, communications technology, ultrasound, the internet, digital commerce, and they raised and educated us.

To bash a single generation seems to be both ignorant and driven by some need to blame others for a feeling of inadequacy some in their offspring have been brought up to feel.

If I could level any critics at my forefathers, it would be that they failed to educate my generation, and instead fed them dogma and rhetoric because they were lead to believe that was best.

[elephantspoo]

Love how all the natural improvements in society are down to boomers. Even funnier than crediting them for changing the world when they were teenagers.

You really are bitter with someone.

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

You put that much better than me, elephants.

[elephantspoo]

Garlic - I have found that most people have no intention of understanding what you have said. They read the words, but they do not understand the implication. And the idea that they do not control their lives, their society, or their country, but are merely given the illusion that they exert control, is more than most people are willing to accept. Those who understand tend to succeed with greater ease, generation on generation, and hose who do not tend to perpetuate the myth. It is not a coincidence that we do not teach children to think in school. It is by design, and it works very well.

[elephantspoo]

I meant your post at the top of the page, btw.

[TinklyLittleLaugh]

i'll tell you one big mistake the Boomers made. We over protected our children, we tried to give them a better standard of living that we had. More educational opportunities, a guaranteed minimum wage, more freedoms. And in doing so we created a massively infantilised, entitled generation. A generation who expect Mum and Dad to sort everything out.

The Boomers never moaned to their parents about the massive debt legacy of the second wold war, that left Britain in poverty for decades, we never moaned about the political wrangling that left us with the iron curtain and the fears of the Cold War. We bloody did our best to sort it out ourselves, by activism and marching and using the political system. We didn't sit there saying, "Wah, Wah this is all your fault". We accepted that nobody has the gift of prophecy, people do what seems best at the time, and basically, it was up to us.

We brought down communism, we lifted people out of poverty and the tyranny of prejudice. You younger generation have absolutely no idea what it was like, and you are pissing it all away with your apathy and your materialism and your wilful dumbing down of everything.

[HeraldAngelSinging]

1965 aged 24 and I went for a Civil Service job interview. I had to undergo a medical examination which comprised a pummelling of my stomach and being asked if I were planning to have a baby. I wasn't planning to but I got the job.

Would that happen now? I might not have been ...what's the word ... vociferous / impatient / campaigning about it at the time because I knew no better but others did it and I was grateful when I had number 1 in 1966 for maternity grant and allowance. Yeah okay £4 pw ma but better than nothing (and yes, I was married).

[TheChandler]

ElephantsPoo Every generation builds upon what has gone before it. It is a fact of life. That is how societies evolve.

I think that's a bit simplistic - its more likely incremental improvements characterised by leaps and bounds, and followed by troughs, such as the two world wars, or even the 2008 Financial Crisis, which set back incomes 10 years or more.

Societies (generalising hugely here) also have a huge capacity to forget that which was known before. Which Europeans do you think first set foot on North America, and what do you think most likely happened to them and why?

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

I thought elephants's comment was a sound riposte to twoopsie's grumpy remark about "natural improvements in society". Societies aren't some kind of plant; they are made of, and shaped by, their people.

Elephants wrote:
Every generation builds upon what has gone before it. It is a fact of life. That is how societies evolve. They developed electronics, computing, communications technology, ultrasound, the internet, digital commerce, and they raised and educated us.

These weren't "natural improvements" that boomers "take credit for". They are improvements brought about by the people active at that time. Tim Berners-Smith is the same age as me. If I'm an evil product of my selfish generation, so's the world-wide web!

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

Vikings, by the way!

[Andrewofgg]

bedraggledmumoftwo The 1.5% widows and orphans was extra - you also had to pay for your own pension. At some stage the two were consolidated and I believe the rebate for those who ever had a wife or a child was done away with. As I was married when I joined I never inquired clsoely into that aspect of it.

As you say the over-fifties are not being forced into the new cheaper (i.e. inferior) scheme although our contributions have been increased. It's a bit like East Germany after the Wall when people looked forward to retirement age because they were allowed to go to the West in the hope that they would not come back and the East German state could save their pension and stop providing them with health care and give someone else their flat!

[moggiek]

Tinkly - you are absolutely spot on with the over protectiveness thing.

[elephantspoo]

TinklyLittleLaugh - Being one of the generation you 'over pampered', I will not disagree with you. I see it all aroipund me. Every single thing that is wrong is someone else's fault. It's like whole swathes of my generation and subsequent generations (X,Y) are stuck in adolescence. But the Millennials are different. A lot of them are really smart and they know how to play the game. I only hope my generation isn't going to hold them back with our greed and self-obsession.

I talk in generalisation here because the question is limited to generational comparison. So generalisation is required. I am well aware that there are many in all generations who are aware of more than what they are taught by their televisions and their newspapers.

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

Also nodding at Tinkly's summary.

Young Boomers tended to have this conversation with their parents:-

Dad: What's all this activism about? Your generation doesn't know how good you've got it! When I was your age ...
Teen: I do know how much better it is, Dad. I want to keep improving things for the future. You know, like your generation improved things.
Dad: Ah, yes. Well done. Watch out for yourself in that short skirt.

The parallel conversation on this thread seems to be going:-

Gen X/Y: When are you going to give me your house? I can't afford one!
Boomers: Well, shall we take a look at whether you can earn/save more, or whether you really need to buy a house anyway?
Gen X/Y: I can't earn more, you've taken all the money away. I neeed to buy one and I can't! So give me yours. And die soon, I don't want to have to pay your pension.

If I'm wrong, do correct me.

By the way, many of us (including me) saved for our first mortgage deposit by squatting and simply spending nothing except on food and fares to work. A large part of the reason why squatting isn't any easy option any more is your generation's hatred of seeing anyone getting something for nothing. And you may not see this, but the reason you feel that way is because you've been manipulated by corporate property owners & developers.

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

But the Millennials are different. A lot of them are really smart and they know how to play the game. I only hope my generation isn't going to hold them back with our greed and self-obsession.

This is interesting! I don't know anyone under 24. I shall have to extend my social media base ...

[elephantspoo]

I think that's a bit simplistic - its more likely incremental improvements characterised by leaps and bounds, and followed by troughs, such as the two world wars, or even the 2008 Financial Crisis, which set back incomes 10 years or more.

I won't disagree with your characterisation of it. I'm easy either way, but the concept is the same. Regarding 2008 thought, I'd suggest that is more likely a rebalancing of the books than a setback 10 years. We have been living out with our means as a society for close on 40 years, and we have done nothing, absolutely nothing, to correct the fault since the warning of 2008. We have continued to increase our nations' debt exponentially, reducing interest rates to near zero % so we see no repo cushions, we have inflated the housing bubble, our banking sectors exposure to derivatives have multiplied many thousands%, and we have legislated to hang the entire debt burden for the next collapse on the man in the street. We are looking at the next Great Depression straight ahead of us, and all we can do to conceal this from the public is fake our GDP and inflation figures and create distractions in the media, hoping they won't notice until they wake up one morning and their £ is worth half of what it was the night before, and their bank isn't open when they try to get their money out.

Societies (generalising hugely here) also have a huge capacity to forget that which was known before.

Everyone up in the UK conveniently forgets what happened in Cyprus. They say, "it couldn't happen here" and completely ignore the laws being changed to enable confiscation of their bank accounts. The one thing you can count on is peoples' inability to learn from the past.

[GarlicDrankTheChristmasSpirit]

completely ignore the laws being changed to enable confiscation of their bank accounts. - Glad I'm not the only one who noticed that!

We are looking at the next Great Depression straight ahead of us, and all we can do to conceal this from the public is fake our GDP and inflation figures - I would feel slightly better about this if I weren't facing constant evidence that everyone accepts the lies and makes like a blind monkey.

YY to history airbrushing. I mean, we all know it happens, but I've been frequently gobsmacked on this thread to see my own history erased!