Why I fear our next war will be against our own children

A drain on society. Clogging up homes. Soaking up state cash: all routine insults hurled at pensioners by the resentful young. Now one (senior) writer has had enough – and issues a grim warning . . .

FOR WE Oldies (I am 73), the years pass frighteningly quickly. Inevitably, we fear life’s climactic challenges, from being alone and poor to suffering from dementia or any number of other chronic disabilities. Now I fear, there’s a new threat: it’s called ‘generational warfare’.

We are told that the increase in the numbers of Oldies is placing an unfair burden on the young, who will pay for Oldies’ care and pensions at a time when they themselves are battling to find work and homes.

It also claimed that the old are applying massive pressure on our health and welfare resources, making the NHS unsustainable.

Others complain that many of these same Oldies are in fact disproportionately well-off, having benefited from economic ‘boom times’, and have amassed considerable wealth in pensions and the value of their homes and, as someone wrote, are ‘pulling up the drawbridge behind them’.

And, of course, we are told that the old hold all the political cards, that no party dare upset the ‘Oldie vote’.

These fears are expressed in dramatic terms. We are warned of a ‘time-bomb ticking away’ and an ‘impending catastrophe’. While it is my hope that ‘generational warfare’ is more a tremor than an earthquake, hostile heads are clearly appearing over the parapet.

In December the New York Times published an article raising questions about the wisdom of spending money on keeping alive old people with chronic diseases. Its author wrote: ‘Our duty may be just the reverse; to let death have its day.’

Recently the NHS rationing body, the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence, began openly discussing the relevance of ‘societal impact’ to the allocation of vital medicines. The chief executive said: ‘If you get a 20-year-old who might die within five years, and you’ve got something that allows them to live 25 years, you’ve got 20 years of contribution to society.

‘If you’re 75 and you might have lived to 85 but you’ve got a disease that might end your life in two years, if you can restore that to 85 you’ve gone from two years contribution to ten. Ten is lower than 20.’

There’s only one way to read this: if suitable medicines are in short supply, a 75-year-old should be denied another ten years because he or she will be less valuable as a ‘contributor’ to society.

Life and death becomes a matter of economics.

As one who at 73 has two chronic conditions – arthritis and diabetes – but keeps to a diet, exercises at the gym and works hard to keep in tiptop shape, both physically and mentally, and expects to be able to look after himself for at least another decade, I find such articles more than a little discomforting.

It appears to have become respectable to openly discuss whether, to save society paying for medicines and treatment, I should just slip off and die.

Researching this, I stumbled across a debate on the internet about whether the old are a burden, and was horrified to read the following:

‘The elderly need to go. They are an economic drain on society.’

‘The elderly ain’t nothing but trouble. They wander round clogging up pavements. I propose there should be an OAP curfew imposed, allowing them on the streets between 12 and 2pm on a Wednesday.’

‘They take society’s resources. There should be a mandatory test for people past a certain age to see if they are capable of basic tasks such as memory tests and mobility and if they fail them they should be euthanised.’

Then I read a much more alarming statement: ‘Someone needs to fight the selfish, shortsighted old… they are the past, not the future.’

You may ask, why worry about this particular quote more than those from the other semi-psychopaths quoted? The answer is that this was not a cyberspace rant. This was written in The Guardian newspaper, by a man who until recently was a senior Cabinet minister in the Coalition, namely Chris Huhne. (He is, admittedly, now a convicted criminal, but nevertheless for some reason is being allowed to rehabilitate himself in that newspaper.)

His actual detailed arguments were so absurd as to hardly warrant a reply, but let us consider those words.

First, he is inciting the young to fight the old. Sec- ond, there is the dismissal of 11 million people as one homogeneous group of the ‘selfish and shortsighted’. Third, there is the dismissal of those 11 million as ‘the past… not the future’.

A call to fight black people would have led to prosecution under the Race Relations Act. Such an attack on women would have caused a feminine outcry and allegations of sexism.

Such an attack on gay people would have had Huhne labelled as homophobic. I am one of those 11 million who, according to Huhne, have to be fought. I am one of the past. But unfortunately for him and those like him, there is a small problem: I and most of the 11 million are very much still the present and have no intention of being buried alive.

Fortunately, as I have said, his article represents one of the ‘tremors’ rather than the arrival of the earthquake, but he and others like him have to be taken on now, before it becomes too late.

Let’s look at the arguments…

DO THE OLD HAVE TOO MUCH POWER?

THE anti-Oldies produce evidence that, at the last General Election, only 44 per cent of 18-24 year-olds bothered to vote, whereas 76 per

Someone needs to fight the selfish, short-sighted old – they are the past, not the future

Ex-Cabinet Minister Chris Huhne

cent of pensioners did. But whose fault is it if Oldies vote and 18-24year-olds don’t?

If 18-24-year-olds want to wield political power, they know what they can do: their nearest polling station is well advertised.

Ironically, our generation of Oldies gave them the vote at 18.

There is also no evidence to support the assumption that Oldies vote as one, or even that we vote only on Oldie issues. A major study on the elderly stated: ‘It is wrong to view the elderly as a common fraternity who live, think, act and vote the same. In fact the old are probably more heterogeneous than any other age group.’

It concluded: ‘Age is probably the least significant ‘group’ indicator of how people vote.

‘Gender, colour, and income are all much more important.’

But if you really want evidence of how relatively powerless we are, take the issue of savers, who overwhelmingly are Oldies.

My generation was told, from the time we were children, that we should save for a rainy day, but above all for when we became old.

Yet now it comes to it, we who did so are being well and truly kicked in the teeth. The cumulative effect of virtually no interest from savings (because of rock-bottom interest rates), taxation of the minimal interest we do earn and inflation means that £10,000 invested (i.e. saved) in 2009 has the spending power of

about £8,800 today, five years later, and it’s falling all the time.

A substantial number of Oldies, of whom I am one, count on the interest we can earn from our savings to top up our pensions and enable us to live in at least minimal comfort.

We are the people who have done the right thing. We have not squandered the money we worked hard for. We have not ‘lived for today’ and relied on the State to take care of us when we’re old. We have saved to pay our own way. And even now we seek no handouts – only for a level playing field with others living in the economy.

Novelist Lionel Shriver recently wrote compellingly on this issue. She said: ‘The Britons being bilked [cheated] right now possess the character on which this country once prided itself. They are selfreliant sorts who plan for the uncertainties and calamities that may lie in wait, and they don’t expect to rely only on the State.

‘These are the people who are being told that saving is a mug’s game. Cash assets already preclude a host of benefits.

‘When the best assurance of a helping hand is going broke, the nest egg is a ball and chain.’

Some will say that the Chancellor has recently addressed this, by introducing a new Isa with an annual tax-free savings limit of £15,000. Not really. The increase is beyond the ability of most Oldies to pay.

The new pensioners’ bond is lim- ited to £10,000 and will be taxed. Typically, the Budget was a ‘gesture’, not much help.

When it comes to the treatment of savers, overwhelmingly Oldies, we are shown to have very little power.

ARE WE CREATING A PENSIONS TIME-BOMB?

YOU would think we Oldies have suddenly come from nowhere, landed from another planet and immediately demanded that we be given pensions. But to become pensioners, we have been around for at least 65 years paying for those pensions in advance.

I left school at 15 and really only stopped working, full-time or parttime, recently (I still do a little bit). For the whole of those 55 years in the workforce I paid income tax and national insurance, and this helped pay for the services I used, the NHS and so on, and paid the pensions of those who were ahead of me.

I did not inherit a penny from my parents. I never once took a penny from the State in benefits. I have paid my way all the way. And I never resented that.

I was happy to play my part, and I also assumed that those who followed me would do the same for me. That was the deal – a deal we all trusted. We have not turned up at the bank with a begging bowl looking for a handout we have not earned.

ARE THE ELDERLY JUST SELFISH?

THIS is one of the arguments of the Chris Huhnes of this world. Yes, it is currently harder for the young to obtain work and there is a housing problem. But the overall condition of the economy is not the fault of ‘selfish’ Oldies.

What has been happening for the past few years is a direct result of the behaviour of criminally irresponsible and greedy bankers.

The near-crazed financial world – Wall Street and the City of London – created a world-wide crash for which we all, except the bankers themselves, paid a heavy price. Now, it is true that some Oldies came out of all this better than many people. They had already paid off their mortgages and invested savings in schemes with a guaranteed return for life.

But that does not mean they’re sitting smugly on a pot of money while their children suffer.

Most are much more likely to be supporting their children than to be ‘takers’, helping them with tuition fees, rent, school fees and so on. These are all reasons why being called ‘selfish and shortsighted’ by the anti-Oldie crowd is so maddening.

As for the housing problem, organisations such as Shelter (and this Oldie knows a little about Shelter) have been calling for nearly 50 years for more priority for housing.

Politicians have paid lip-service but have not acted. We are still building very few new homes per year, yet in the 1960s my generation built over 400,000 houses a year two years in a row. Was that selfish or short-sighted?

Another claim by Huhne is that Oldies are an obstacle to tackling climate change.

Actually, it was my generation who created and made the environmental movement influential. If it were not for us, there would be no Greenpeace and Friends of the Earth to keep these issues on the agenda. Was that selfish or short-sighted?

I personally ran the campaign that means every child is now spared having to breathe in lead from petrol. My generation of Oldies backed me – 90 per cent of them, according to opinion polls – and not because lead pollution was a threat to them but to their children.

I know that the young are finding the economy unsympathetic to their current needs, but the anti-Oldies are going too far in painting a picture of a penalised and deprived younger generation.

The world Oldies have created for them bears no relation to the one I was born into.

When I was a kid, university was for the few. No more.

When I was a kid, travel was for the few. It took me six weeks to come to this country from New Zealand, because travel by ship was the only affordable option. Now the world is at youngsters’ feet, air travel easy.

When I started off as a cub newspaper reporter at 15, I had an oldfashioned typewriter of the kind you now see in museums. Today’s computers, smartphones and tablets – which every youngster has – didn’t exist in our wildest dreams.

We had an outside toilet, and we had no central heating, washing machine, refrigerator or television. And my family was not even poor, that was just the way it was.

My generation has eliminated some diseases and hugely contained others, created new technologies, improved the overall standard of living, rid the country of millions of slums, built an education system and NHS that, for all their problems, rank with the best in the world.

My generation is leaving a remarkable legacy in terms of improved quality of life, advanced technology, and a vast range of life and lifestyle opportunities. The 1960s generation, now blamed for this generation’s problems, were probably the most idealistic and unselfish generation we have known.

Yes, they had their fun – the 1960s was a time of social revolution – but we also cared. Hence the rise of a whole new force of charities and pressure groups and a series of major liberal reforms.

Do we ask for thanks for this remarkable legacy?

No. Just the pensions we invested in, and a little respect.

Well, OK, drop the respect – we’ll settle for not being told in national newspapers that we are ‘the past, not the future’, that we are ‘shortsighted and selfish’ and need to be ‘fought’.

DO OLDIES TAKE BUT NEVER GIVE?

THE picture of Oldies as a generation packing hospitals and dominating the benefit queues, just taking, is a false one.

They top the list of volunteers for local charities. Oldies actually spend more time looking after other Oldies than the young do. One husbandand-wife team described their lives in a letter to a newspaper. They wrote: ‘We help struggling readers at a local secondary school; are on the board of the local Citizens’ Advice Bureau; change library books for housebound people with the Royal Voluntary Service; help a local mum with three toddlers; do guided cathedral tours; provide commentary for the visually impaired at the football club; record churches; act as secretary to the local branch of a political party… as well as these activities, within our family we support four frail parents in their late 80s.’

It is even disputable that Oldies are takers from the economy.

A report shows that Oldies are net contributors to the tune of billions of pounds a year because we pay taxes and spend money that helps create employment.

Most pensioners spend their income quickly – the effect being that their pension money quickly returns to the economy.

Ironically, for people who are accused of being too needy of society’s charity, they are also the main contributors to charity.

If everyone pauses for a moment and thinks about it, they would realise that old people remaining healthier longer and living longer is to be welcomed by everyone. Because the old are not actually one unrepeatable group. Everyone becomes old. There will be no exceptions.

So everyone has a vested interest in ensuring that our attitudes to the old are positive. What do the young have to look forward to if they see the old being persecuted or discriminated against?

Knowing that a larger proportion of us will be Oldies, we should be creating the kind of society that caters to that and thus we should be creating hope.

I referred to anti-Oldies as representing a tremor, not an earthquake. There is time to stop the anti-Oldie crowd in their tracks.

It can be done by political leadership, by the best of the politicians (if there are any). But, above all, it can be done by us Oldies ourselves.

We have to stand our ground. Make our case. And I believe we will have supporters – and they will be the young. I cannot believe they share the cynicism of some of their elders who will find out only too soon that they are not uniquely protected from growing old.

Today’s Oldies should reach out to the young. We need a new movement that creates ways where the young and old work together.

There are huge opportunities for mentoring and other activities to build a generational partnership.

Yes, the pressures on the NHS will grow, but we can manage them if the political will is there.

Yes, an older population will require all sorts of adaptations, but we can manage that too.

We need a positive approach to the inevitabilities that we face.

‘Generational warfare’ should be snuffed out at birth.