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Blame the Businessmen, not the Baby-boomers


The proliferation of news items and articles stating that ‘baby boomers’ have it all is misleading, and has created conflict and resentment between generations. We all need to work together and to learn from one another.

It is not helpful to blame particular generations of British people for some of the woes we face today.  Blaming consumers is a smokescreen. Decisions have been made on behalf of the general public without adequate thought of the consequences. Consumers respond to economic situations created by unethical business leaders and short-sighted decision makers in Government. The UK will always therefore do better being served by a government that takes the long view, which removes their focus from pleasing businessmen, and stops prioritising profit above people and the planet.

The generation referred to as the baby-boomers were born between 1944 and 1964 when the UK was recovering from the catastrophic financial and human costs of two world wars. The mood was optimistic and innovative.

From the 1960s the UK experienced a period of growth in science and technology, leading to mass use of chemical fertilisers to name one example, radically changing from traditional farming methods and land management. The baby-boomers were toddlers and under fives at this time, so grew up into a time of mechanised farming and changing landscapes. Small farms either went bust or were bought out and merged into large industrial operations.

Hedges were grubbed out to expand fields for easier mechanisation, leading to the destruction of insects and small rodents from the ancient hedgerow ecosystems, and to soil erosion.

The rhythm of farming through the cycle of the year, and all the lives associated with countryside management and food production changed forever. The enormous number of skilled craftsmen and labourers always needed in agriculture declined rapidly, and the cohesion of rural communities that centred around food production and processing (such as milk and cheese, or butchery) and the associated storage, sales and transportation became unglued. Instead, one man will operate sophisticated machinery, alone, covering huge acreage in a day, and suicides in farming are high.

As we well know, human interference with the ecosystem has caused devastating loss of wildlife, and their contribution to maintaining necessary balance. The chemical engineers, government ministers and boards of agri-businessmen driving this destruction were all born in the 1920s and 1930s (assuming they were in their 40s and 50s when they were in positions of authority), either in ignorance of the effect that chemical and industrial farming would cause, or reckless in their excitement at increased efficiency, yield and profits. They were not baby-boomers.

The baby-boomers, teenagers through the 1970s, and young adults through the 1980s, had entirely different lives from Generation Y, or millennials, who now complain how hard they have to work and how hard it is to buy a home. It was ever thus. However, this resentment has become an unhealthy prejudice against an older generation whose youth and family years would be considered deprived by todays’ thirty-somethings climbing the career ladder.

Those born between 1944 and 1964 may indeed have had parents with a heavily mortgaged house, or they more likely lived in rented accommodation, or in council housing.

Homes were basic, and cold, without central or underfloor heating, but usually an open fire or Rayburn type heater, or with an electric bar fire glowing dangerously in front of the black and white television, ready to set alight the clothing of anyone who stood too close. TV public education films taught parents to push their children onto the floor and roll them in a rug to put out the flames when their nightwear burst into flames.

Furniture was basic and scruffy, passed down from grandparents, or from friends; broken backed beds with stained mattresses, faded and damaged sofas, and battered dining room furniture. It was ‘make do and mend.’ Floors were wooden, or covered with linoleum, freezing to bare feet in the Winter, with a rug sometimes thrown in the middle of the room for a bit of luxurious comfort, or as a fire blanket, above.

They lived in multi-generational homes, with an elderly, perhaps widowed parent, and sometimes with older sisters and their children, all squeezed in together. It was normal social behaviour to have an elderly parent in the home, and it was considered unusual to live alone. Grandparents, therefore, could be irritating, but they could also babysit.

The current lack of social housing is due to one short-sighted policy implemented by the Conservative Government led at that time by Margaret Thatcher. This policy was to sell off council house stock (which was often promptly re-sold at a higher price) and to not replace it. This astonishing policy whereby councils were not allowed to use the proceeds of the sales to rebuild much needed new homes meant there were not enough homes. Simple logic. Private landlords took up the slack and offered property for rent – at high prices, naturally. Successive governments have never capped the high rents, allowing greedy landlords to charge as much as they pleased, and the buy-to-let market means that individuals took out mortgages which the tenants then paid for them. The tenants were ill-served by their government, and exploited by landlords. An additional insult is that there is no security of tenure, as there was with council housing, and tenants can be asked to move out at any time.

Governments must decide on policies that firstly ensures citizens have a secure home for as long as they want or need it, taking Finland’s Housing First policy (Juha Kaakinen writing for The Guardian – 14 Sept. 2016) as a template.

When people are housed, they can begin to build their lives. The next item on the government list needs to be training for jobs, and support for new businesses. It is time to end the situation of huge businesses paying no, or minimal, tax, and to use these taxes for housing, training, and small business support.

Once people are housed and working, we need to rethink food production, and to reduce ‘food miles’, working towards strong local economies, with sustainable food production close to consumption, aiming for a high percentage of self-sufficiency and lower imported goods. UK food production needs to be sustainable far into the future, and government food and farming policies need to work towards heavily reducing the dependence on pesticides and fungicides, helping producers to maximise yield with the use of nature’s own balancing of the ecosystem, as we see with mixed planting and permaculture principles.

No man-made chemical fertilisers, pesticides, or fungicides must be authorised or approved for crops and food use without stringent testing over thirty years. No more plastics and man-made products must be made unless a safe means of disposal is guaranteed, or re-use is certain. For example, aluminium foil can be endlessly recycled, and innovative products such as plant based compostable packaging will biodegrade.



When we consider education and careers, those born between 1944 and 1964 were taught in secondary modern schools or grammar schools. (This article is about the average person, so public schools and those with inherited wealth are not included for comparison). A select few went to universities, those with the intellectual capacities to become academics, and for these gifted teenagers, university tuition was fully funded until 1998 when students going to university had significantly increased.

Baby boomers had low paid work, were inadequately educated, thus wasting an entire talent pool. Although the Police, Armed Forces, Local Authority and the Civil Service, and the National Health Service workers contributed to workplace pensions, the rest of the country believed that the state would look after them by paying into the State Pension for 35 years. However, low paid workers could not afford private pension payments as well so their old age poverty is assured.

Workers were fortunate to be awarded two whole weeks holiday, which only became eligible after working the first 52 weeks in a new job. Extra days off were taken as unpaid leave.  Workers could not make or receive telephone calls during working hours and every minute of the working day belonged to the business. The use of an envelope, or paper, constituted theft.



The UK economy picked up considerably in the 1980s so Generation Y millennials were born into a time of prosperity. Spending began on homes and home improvements, furniture and decor, and they grew up in comfortable, centrally heated, carpeted homes, with shiny kitchens. Endlessly encouraged by advertisers to spend on our homes, and boost the sales of sofas and kitchens, we have become a nation of home-lovers, with homes no longer simply somewhere to live, but displays of lifestyles central to our identities.

Millennials grew up with several changes of clothes as well as their school uniforms, not wearing the hand-me-downs the baby-boomers inherited. Millennials went to out-of-school activities, they were taken on holidays abroad and, in the 1990s, they began to need mobile ‘phones and monthly credit, paid for by their parents.



Infighting helps no-one but it does divert our attention from the decision makers who have encouraged and allowed profligate flying for example (by allowing no VAT on aviation fuel) and the continued use of agri-chemicals although it is now well understood that their use has destroyed many species of our native wildlife, and emptied the soil of nutrients.

If the Government of the day remain irresponsible to citizens and the countryside which needs biodiversity for food production, look to local innovators and small food producers and buy fresh and local. Avoid any products flown around the world and support the local ethical economy.

Accountability lies with individuals. Life could be as simple and basic as it was in the 1970s, but with warm homes, better food and much better clothes. Housing first.

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