Kelly’s Eye

I READ Sajid Javid’s comment last week: “The older adults have done their bit.We have passed the baton to younger people and are saying: ‘please help us’”, and thought – not for the first time –what a colossal nerve my generation possesses.

By my generation, I mean those of us born in the first two decades after the end of the SecondWorld War. It’s the age group now holding most positions of authority in this country, from the Prime Minister downwards.

We’re also the age group that early on in the pandemic was most likely to post those tiresome online memes about how while their predecessors went to war, all the current generation was required to do was stay home on the sofa.As if me and my contemporaries have the faintest idea of what it’s like to go off to war. On the contrary we are possibly the most cosseted generation in history: blessed by the first truly cradle-to-grave welfare state and every kind of technological break-through, and which has enjoyed unparalleled prosperity and opportunities.

We’re the ones much more likely to have spent Covid comfortably in our own homes – assets whose value are now far beyond the means of many of the young.

Yet we still have no compunction in hectoring them about their supposed responsibilities to us the moment they betray the first entirely understandable urge to get out and enjoy themselves, not least because this virus – which, let’s not forget, is fatal for less than 0.2 per cent of the population – carries even less risk for them.

And who will one day have to pick up the all-too-real bill and suffer the consequences of the fantasy sums blown over the past 18 months? Here’s a clue: it won’t fall most heavily on my age group.The young have been extraordinarily patient and uncomplaining.The least we can do for them is lay off the lectures.