UK Politics Thread (Part 4)

These the same ones you call boomers ?..wonder what those who did fight would have thought of society today?

The ā€œboomersā€ were specifically people born after WWII. Originally, it referred to people born around 1947 but has come to mean anyone born between 1946 to 1964. Personally, I don’t find those sort of generational cohorts particularly useful because the defining characteristics will vary greatly between shared experiences of people in different countries and even difference regions within a country. It seems to be a popular way of lumping people together these days.

edit: sorry @odin_telamon, I thought that you were replying to my Cable Street comment.

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Lol no worries, just find it interesting to see how other peoples perspectives are of those ( especially of say our grandparents would view society) on the one hand i think they would be glad of the progress on many issues in technologies and stuff, but also the fact that the country changing so much would cause them concern, the fact that pensioners nowadays get lambasted by a younger generation is something that is perplexing , because many of those during the war and after lived in extreme poverty by todays standards, and saw a nation ravaged by war and the progress changing the face of the country…but also i think they would be/are appalled by the standards of our politicians…

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I read it as a reply to @Mascot’s comment suggesting that the boomers were the ones who fought in the war.

Just a handy note for everyone: presuming you’d take 16 as the age at which it’s youngest to have plausibly served, then the last veterans from WW2 would be 95 today.

They were the parents of the boomers, if anything.

EDIT:

Edited to add, I think there was an opinion piece I read which pointed out that boomers do genuinely like to believe that they fought the war, and want to bathe in the glories of that, while having very little knowledge of what it was actually like.

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Not guilty…

You would have to be at least 100 to have fought in the war :wink:

It reminds me of my mother in law who was in her 80s when she met an old school friend on the bus and asked him if he was still in the army :rofl:

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Wow, you have got some serious problem with the older generation haven’t you?

I retired just before my 60th for 2 reasons. Firstly my job was taking it’s toll on my body to the extent I felt like I’d run a marathon after every 12 hour shift and second I had no desire to work until I dropped, I opted to spend as much time as I could with my family and to take things easy after working non-stop for 43 years.
I have 2 defined benefit pensions (or ā€˜gilded’ DB pensions as you put it) that I took at 55. Between them they pay Ā£655 a month. That’s before tax btw. Untold riches! I don’t know what to do with it all! Most people I know from those 2 employments are either getting by on not a lot of money or are still working well into their 60’s because they can’t afford to retire.
You make the point it is existing employees who fund the current retirees and that may be true but it’s no different to what I and everyone else did when we were still working. We payed in, funded the system and expected a pension at the end of it. Those still paying in now, and there wont be that many because a lot of those schemes have been wound up, will still get their pension at the end of it. DB schemes will be obsolete soon, you’ll be able to throw a party when the time comes.
When people joined those pension schemes the vast majority didn’t have a clue what they were signing up for. I was 21 when I joined the first one, myself and 15-20 others sat around a big table on our first day being handed a form with 6 or 7 options to put a X next to if we wanted to contribute through our wages. Sports and Social, Union, a health plan, a couple of charities etc, and the pension scheme. Lots of shrugs of shoulders and ā€œdunno’sā€ where the pension was concerned, everyone in their late teens or early 20’s so retirement was a long way off, I didn’t have a clue about pensions and possibly only put an X in the box because the bloke sitting next to me did. And yet you give the impression everyone was clued-up, like we all sat there thinking " Yes, I’ll have a bit of that, I’ll be fucking minted one day and my kids and grand-kids can get to fuck!"
You talk about ā€œa generation that voted for a lot of the short-sighted policies and politicians funnelling money to the richā€. I don’t know what you’re referring to there. Most people I knew voted Labour and would have done if there was a chimp standing for them. Most people are ignorant and un-informed after all, at least that’s what they had hurled at them after the Brexit vote, so I doubt they put as much thought into it as you seem to think.
Plenty of people pissed their money up the wall, or at least spent it like there was no tomorrow. I never earned much myself, I spent my whole working life on the shop floor, never rose to any sort of position of authority, but what I did earn I looked after. My old man was the same, worked all his life, saved money for his retirement and so as not to be a burden on the state, now he’s 94 and paying Ā£1200 a week to lie in a bed in a nursing home and living off soup from a fucking beaker. And all the time he’s supplementing the care costs of half the other residents who don’t pay a penny.
But he’s part of the problem isn’t he in your opinion? He’s only got his own greed and selfishness to blame hasn’t he? It was his fucking fault for joining a pension scheme he was offered. I’ll tell him when I go and see him later, tell him his grand-kids and great-grand-kids are paying the price for his choices because he should have known better.

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You get taxed on that? :woozy_face:

I think you’re reading far too much into what I said. I said imo the country is fucked beyond repair. I made no comment on the reason why I think that is the case, or who is to blame. I just think it’s fucked to the point there is no going back, that’s all.

I never said it was.

No, not really. Apologies if it sounded that way.

I have a problem specifically with the idiots who voted for the very same policies they benefited from to be taken away, and then blame the ā€œsoft younger generationsā€ when they were mollycoddled themselves and pulled the ladder up after themselves.

You say this, but the statistics point otherwise. Just because the people you know voted that way doesn’t mean that as a group, that generation didn’t vote otherwise.

And yet you’ll criticise others for their decisions when you got lucky with yours.

The rest of your post, well I’ll leave you to it. You quite clearly have a chip on your shoulder about it all, but I don’t, so you’re welcome to it.

Not right now as my income is so low I’m a non-tax payer. My wife is in the same position but gets less than Ā£400 a month. We get by on that and dip into savings.
Of course if I’m lucky enough to survive to 67 and get my state pension then the taxman will come knocking.
I accept I only have myself to blame for opting to join a gold-plated workplace pension scheme when I was 21 and fully aware I was fucking over my future children/ grand-children.

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I haven’t got a chip on my shoulder about it at all. I have views and what I think is right and wrong. I think you want to lash out at a certain demographic because things have gone a bit tits-up.
Everything you’ve said suggests you have though. Whining on and on about old people with pensions, who they voted for and the choices they made as if they had a fucking crystal ball or something.

I was explaining the vitriol that people have for the older generations, but feel free to superimpose the explanation onto my personal opinions.

Uhh what?

A very small percentage of the people on pensions today will have much memory of even the immediate post-war years. The overwhelming majority of people on pensions now were born after 1945.

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Ah, ok I get it, you’re acting as some sort of conduit for other people’s opinions?

Read your posts back.

Yes, I’m just trying to literally answer the question as to why younger people might have a problem with the older generation.

I have, and once again, I’m explaining the depth of the feelings and why they might arise. The pensions point is only relevant insofar as to the economic burden that younger generations have to shoulder, while older generations in general (and not your specific circumstances) have had economic privileges that no longer exist, in part due to the voting preferences (again in the demographic group as a whole, not individuals) that resulted in this situation.

Or, as @cynicaloldgit would say, brainwashed by neoliberalism.

I don’t have a chip on my shoulder about it, because most of the people fitting that demographic that I have had the fortune to converse with have been largely nice, and in fact victims of the voting preferences of their cohort too.

I think you can also acknowledge two different ideas about pensions at the same time:

  • old fashioned pensions that lots of boomers are pulling pose a real financial problem for the country
  • those pensions and the people who live off them should be protected because that was the deal that was made with them.
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My date of birth would point to me being a boomer.

I’d be really intrigued to know what economic ā€œprivilagesā€ I’ve been so lucky to have

There’s a danger you are in receipt of a ā€˜gilded’ DB pension, and then voted to stop anyone else getting one, you selfish thing!

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Pensions, as outlined above.
Houses prices.
Student fees/grants (if you went to uni).

Just for a start