Rutger Bregman - poster boy for ungrateful spoiled brats everywhere!

Last night a Dutch academic with a book to sell was given a prime slot on a late night politics show, 'This Week'. I gather that the academic in question, Rutger Bregman, was also something of a hit at the annual elitist gathering in Davos. He has, so he tells us, exciting ideas and therefore we "have to agree with him" (pretty much how he started every answer). It turns out that those exciting ideas are:

1. Universal Basic Income

2. Higher taxes

3. Being rude about old people

So we have two ideas that are hardly new - Thomas More's Utopia contained proposals for a universal income and more taxes has been the lazy persons answer to every political problem at least since King John.

The only new idea that Dr Bregman has, therefore, is being rude to old people. And the good doctor demonstrated this during the programme by blaming "your generation" (he was speaking to three older men) for all the ills of the world. It wasn't a great way to win friends or have a substantive discussion of the ideas in the book Dr Bregman wants to flog. And, having had a tough time of it on the show (mostly by being unable to answer simple questions and then being rude), Dr Bregman took to Twitter in a fit of desperate post hoc rationalisation for his flop.

Dr Bregman starts by doubling down on being rude:

"A bit more background on how incredibly stupid the show really is..."

Then moves on to attack the panel:

"...three right-wing dinosaurs - two of them politicians from the Stone Age - start teaming up on you."

Apparently their fault was not to have read Dr Bregman's book (which presumably contains the answers he was unable to give to the simple questions asked by those 'right-wing dinosaurs').

Dr Bregman represents a trend for millennials (or whatever you call people in their 30s these days) to absolve themselves of any responsibility for any problems in their lives, the world and, even, the future by blaming the older generation. Alongside this is a related trend for the same people to blame someone or something else for all their problems - usually a large anonymous thing like 'Big Oil' or 'the rich'.

You're worried about climate change? All down to the "fossil fuels companies" nothing to do with those thirtysomethings wanting convenient supermarkets, nice warm homes, a car, air travel and all the other things that bless their lives but are only made possible by the use of fossil fuels.

You're fat? Not down to eating too much and exercising too little - it's the 'obesogenic environment' mate, nothing we can do about it, look at big food, advertising, fast food restaurants. How can I not be fat?

The same goes for drinking, smoking, betting and a host of other things that people do because they give pleasure - for the Dr Bregman's of this world we are like zombies animated by advertising not humans with agency.

The big problem though, according to Dr Bregman, is old people. And there are plenty of others who share this view - how dare 60 year old baby boomers do this (not entirely clear what we've done by the way but words like 'austerity', 'climate' and 'brexit' crop up a lot). I can lift the gist of this from another Tweet - not from Dr Bregman but it could be:

I’m sick of the boomers, they’ve been one long, self-indulgent midlife crisis.

This rather sums up a particular outlook - millennials of this sort simply deny any responsibility for their own lives, preferring instead to mither about how hard it is for them and how selfish old people are for making this so (they even have a spectacularly 'glass half empty' think tank in the Resolution Foundation to roll out endless graphs confirming just how bad it is for middle class thirty-somethings in good jobs). This is why ideas like universal basic income appeal to these spoiled thirty-somethings - what's not to like about getting money for doing nothing. And it's why they propose high taxes on, I assume, old rich people to pay for it all (plus saving the planet and ending austerity, of course). Someone else's problem, someone else's fault.

What we have is a generation - one that will dominate politics and culture for the next twenty years - that doesn't believe in personal reponsibility, hates capitalism (except when it's their web design business, of course) and, despite growing up in a vastly better world than their parents, believe that the baby boomers' great binge has denied them the chance for a good life.

My generation will bequeath a world that is healthier, wealthier, more fun, safer, cleaner, greener and happier than the one we grew up in. And all millennials like Dr Bregman can do is moan about it while taking full advantage of all the things that the creativity of those rich old people gave them, from central heating and reliable transport through to smart phones and affordable foreign holidays. Ungrateful spoiled brats!

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My Dad died last year. It seems some remainers are gleeful about this...

Your politics is very troubled if it takes you to a place where you wish your opponents - "the enemy" - dead. Yet this is precisely where we've got to with the Remain side of Brexit:

Enough old leavers will have died and enough young remainers will have come on to the electoral register to turn the dial on what the country thinks about Brexit.

This doesn't come from some little blog but from the UK's leading progressive news platform, The Guardian written by one of its star - and very well paid - columnists, Polly Toynbee. This position - we'll get what we want once all those unpleasant old people in provincial towns have pegged it - it a deeply unpleasant one. It sits alongside the idea - most recently from singer, Jamelia, that old people should have the franchise removed because, y'know, they'll be dead before the effects of their votes are truly felt.

Elsewhere:



Now the person who did this unthinkingly unpleasant site has taken it down claiming that he didn't mean to be nasty to people who are dying (they aren't, of course, all nasty old brexity people) or to the families of people who lost close relatives since the referendum. As far as I know, my Dad voted to leave and he died last year making him one of Polly and her pals gleeful statistics. I miss his wit and wisdom, things gained from a long life including 35 years as a local councillor - the idea that his views and opinions shouldn't have counted because he was at the end of his life is a truly unpleasant and undemocratic idea.

The people putting forward the idea that people dying is something to be celebrated because it suits their political positions demographics consider themselves to be intelligent, moderate, caring people. What these views show is that, in some respects, they are far more dangerous and damaging for our liberty and democracy than the UK's handful of right wing thugs - we sort of expect violent language from the latter but when establishment figures with columns in national newspapers start on the same line, unchallenged by editors or the wider media, alarm bells should ring. Old people are not an inconvenience but part of our society - wishing them dead because you think they might vote the wrong way is repulsive.

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Wrong, stupid and unsustainable - old people and the funding of care

Much of the discussion following the Autumn Statement concerned Brexit and the forecasts. Plus of course the prediction from the Institute for Fiscal Studies that we're not going to see "real incomes" rise until after 2021 (or something along those lines). I don't plan on making any comments about these forecasts except to say, as Chris Snowden at the IEA points out, even the much-heralded and 'independent' IFS isn't infallible when making predictions.

Instead let's talk about old people. The Local Government Association made great play of there being no mention - or extra money - for social care. It seems to me that, as Jeremy Warner observes, nearly all of the financial challenges facing government can be traced back to the inconvenient fact that us Baby Boomers (who have all the assets, or so we're told) are going to live a long time yet.

There are two reasons why people living a lot longer is a problem for government. The first of these is the impact on revenue budgets of looking after older people. Not just the very expensive end-of-life care but also the everyday costs of catering for people with declining mobility, poorer eyesight, incipient deafness and a collection of chronic but manageable health conditions.

The second is that, while we are busy not dying, the wealth we've accumulated stays safely tucked up in housing and other assets. And because we're living longer the circulation of that wealth within society is slowed down. It might be true that the explosion of home ownership post-WWII (culminating in Margaret Thatcher's brilliant right-to-buy legislation) represented the biggest transfer of wealth away from the elite in our history but right now us Boomers are sitting pretty atop all that wealth.

The proportion of the population that is over-65 is set to grow further. The ONS predicts (I know forecasts, pah) something like this:


This increase (and the corresponding stagnation in the numbers of young people) completely alters the balance of our demography. From a position where 'youth culture' dominates we are moving gradually to a sort of gerontocracy where the needs, expectations and preferences of the old vastly outweigh those of the young. It's notable that, after a time when political leaders seemed to get younger (Major, Blair, Cameron, Clinton), we now have a slew of older leaders. The two main UK political parities are led by a 60 year old and a 67 year old. Over in the USA the presidential election was fought out between a 69 year old and a 70 year old - with the 70 year old winning. If the current indications are right, France will get a 63 year old as President and Germany will keep its over-60 Chancellor.

It's also interesting to note that the question of age (as opposed to the matter of health) is never raised. When Ronald Reagan was elected his age was seen as a problem, yet no-one (so far as I can see) is challenging Trump on the basis that he ought to be getting comfy in the armchair with slippers and a pipe. This change just reflects the fact that there are millions of fit, healthy, active and involved folk in this age category. When your Dad is walking Munroes at 75 or your Mum riding at 81 then no-one's fussed about a Prime Minister who is 60 or a President of 70.

The difficulty is that our public finances (and to a considerable degree our economy) start with the assumption that people retire in their 60s and die in their 70s. When the NHS was founded its planners believed that the costs would diminish (OK they were batty) rather than increase as universal access improved overall population health. What we've seen instead is that, as health has improved, people have lived longer with the result that more and more of NHS resource gets directed to the health of old people. Today around 75% of NHS spending goes on the over-65s.

We can add the pressures on social care to these numbers - adult social care used to be an important but relative minor element in local government spending. Today it represents perhaps a third of spending with this proportion set to rise (under the current model at least) as the numbers of frail elderly increase in line with the numbers of people over 80. The current arrangement where local government contracting dominates the market for care provision results in downward pressures on costs that are simply unsustainable given rises in minimum wages and expectations in terms of service quality.

The third major element creating pressures in the simple fact of the old age pension (made more problematic by the so-called 'triple lock'). Of the current welfare budget over 40% goes on paying old age pensions and once we add in other payments such as mobility allowances, carer allowances, free TV licences and fuel discounts, nearly half of the money we spend on welfare goes to those receiving an old age pension. By way of comparison, just 1% of that welfare budget is spent on unemployment benefit.

In a world where there are fewer people working to pay the taxes to provide these benefits, it's pretty hard to see how such public largess - in health, care and benefits - can be sustained. Something has to give especially when it is clear that wealth is increasingly retained by the older generation, primarily in the form of those housing assets obtained during the great home ownership boom from the 1960s to the 1990s.

I don't believe that the answer to all this is the sort of anti-Boomer rhetoric of the Resolution Foundation where the fact of those assets (and the fortune of the increases in those assets' value) is seen as some sort of selfishness on the part of people aged over-55. Nor do I think that the answer lies in inventing a new tax so as to carry on with the market-fixing methods that result too often in expensive and poor quality social care. What is needed is an apology, some honesty and a better market.

First the apology. Aneurin Bevin lied to you and every subsequent government regardless of its political stripe has repeated and compounded that lie. National Insurance, for all the trappings of an insurance scheme, is just an income tax. So when people say, "I'm entitled, I paid my stamp all those years" they are merely repeating Bevin's lie. The government should stand up and apologise for this lie.

Next some honesty. People aren't stupid and can deal with facts so perhaps we should give them some. Starting with the one where we say that we can't go on with above inflation increases to the NHS, to social care and in old age pensions. That means we've either less money for other things that matter like policing, defence, firemen, roads and schools, or else your sons and daughters (the one's you're helping out because they struggle to buy the school uniform) will have to pay higher taxes. So old people with lots of money tied up with high value property assets need to start thinking about how they use those assets to provide the care and health support they'll need as they get older and more frail. This means no more "family house" nonsense and no more assumption that the Council will pay so you can leave those housing assets to your children.

And the market. Markets are very good at providing the things that people want. This isn't about ownership it's about how prices are set. Right now the UK's health and care system is (see above) unsustainable. Getting wealthy people to realise they are responsible for their own life is a start but, if we do this, we've got to have a market where they can purchase the care and health support they need.

None of this is about Boomers being selfish. After all part of the problem is that the Boomers' kids are anticipating the glorious day when that South London semi turns into £750,000 cash and some don't want any rapacious care homes, stair lift companies or walk-in shower fitters spoiling the prospect of this lovely lolly. A few weeks ago I was told by a housing officer how equity release schemes to improve home warmth were often blocked by families who saw this as eating into the inheritable asset. It's shocking but true that people will leave granny cold with no handrail on the front steps so as to keep ten or twenty grand on the inheritable value of granny's house.

At the core of all this is changing our presumption that care is some sort of absolute entitlement rather than something that's a matter of personal responsibility. When I sit in Bradford's Health & Wellbeing Board meetings is hear about the idea of 'self-care' - essentially people taking responsibility for their own health. Often this is little different from good old nannying fussbucketry -don't smoke, change your diet, cut out the booze, do more exercise - but it has within it the idea that we are, as individuals with agency, responsible for our own lives. And this means paying for stuff. The long term implication of self-care for an informed public taking decisions that reduce health harms and, recognising that some support in inevitable at some point, being prepared to pay others to help deliver that self-care.

In a nation obsessed with the idea of a "free" National Health Service, it's going to prove difficult to deliver the changes to our attitude to health necessary if longevity isn't going to turn almost all of government into a health care provider. And the core of all this is to recognise (or rather rediscover some we once knew but has lost sight of) that the assets we accumulate during our lives - houses, pension funds, cash savings and so forth - are there to be run down during our old age not something to which our descendants have any sort of entitlement. Getting the government to tax relatively poor people so you don't have to use your assets has always been wrong. Now it's wrong, stupid and unsustainable.

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How Jaywick and West Texas tell us the Intergenerational Foundation's research doesn't say what they think it says

The Intergenerational Foundation has done some research - it's pretty good and you can read the full report (pdf) here. The IF look at 'intergenerational segregation' - the extent to which people of different ages tend to concentrate in the same areas. And both the IF and also the media has focused on how the increasing geographical segregation of young and old in England is a consequence of housing problems such as lack of choice and affordability.

Here's the BBC's 'OMG this is terrible' report on the research:

Young families are being "ghettoised" in inner city areas by the housing crisis while older homeowners become isolated in the suburbs, a report says.

The Intergenerational Foundation study says the number of areas dominated by over-50s has risen sevenfold since 1991 as young people move into the cities.

Even within urban areas, older people, children and young adults are living increasingly separate lives, it adds.

I'm sure this pattern will be repeated across other media and will be reflected in reports on similar research in the USA and continental Europe. And the argument that it's all about housing costs will be repeated again and again without question or criticism. Put simply we are more age segregated as a result of older people being unable to move to more 'age appropriate' accommodation because there isn't enough of that housing so young people aren't able to cycle out from the cities into the suburbs. And young people are renting in the city because they can't afford to buy the limited number of houses that come available in those desirable suburbs.

The problem here is that this really doesn't match what the IF's research is saying. Here's a chunk of those findings:

...places with the highest median ages are predominantly in rural parts of the country, particularly around coastal areas, while urban MSOAs stand out for being more youthful.There is also evidence of a north-south divide, as the broader south east surrounding London contains a number of lighter MSOAs – which represent comparatively youthful smaller towns and cities in the region such as Watford, Milton Keynes and Cambridge – whereas the MSOAs which are outside the large northern cities appear to be shaded darker. This pattern supports the finding from previous studies that there is a substantial net inflow of internal migrants who are in their 20s from northern towns and cities to London, while the out-flow of former London residents in their 20s and 30s tends to be to other towns in the south east.

I'm not arguing that there isn't a problem with housing supply (in general or specific to particular needs or demands) but rather that the IF research doesn't really provide an argument supporting the typical description of that housing crisis - young people unable to afford to buy property and, therefore, trapped in rented accommodation. Nor does the work really tell us that these affordability and supply issues are the reasons for England's 'age segregation'.

To understand this, we should note that the highest median ages are 'around coastal areas'. Other than for parts of the South Coast like Brighton and Bournemouth, England's coastal towns are pretty affordable and characterised by high levels of multiple deprivation:

An Essex seaside village is the most deprived neighbourhood in England, according to official statistics.

The community east of Jaywick near Clacton-on-Sea has again topped a list that measured deprivation in 32,844 areas across the country, the government report found.

But all of the local authorities with the highest proportion of deprived neighbourhoods are in the north - Middlesbrough, Knowsley, Hull, Liverpool and Manchester.

And of the top 10 neighbourhoods, Blackpool, the ‘Vegas of the North’, has five in the list, and eight in the top 20.

We see this pattern repeated in other seaside towns - Great Yarmouth, Skegness, Bridlington, Minehead - where an ageing population doesn't have the sort of characteristics popularised by those who want to blame all our problems on 'Baby Boomers'.

John Byford, 48, councillor for Skegness South, said: “Opportunities around here are few and far between. There’s no industry. People like it that we don’t have the fast motorways, but that’s also a problem because it means we don’t get the industry.”

The recently released movie 'Hell and High Water' features two brothers robbing banks so they can pay off the debts on their late mother's ranch. Based in West Texas the film is a contemporary Western nodding to the themes and storylines we're so familiar with from the traditional genre. One thing that strikes you watching is the utter, abject poverty of West Texas with shacks and shuttered shops frequented by tired, old people. These are dying communities without young people and kept going only by the fortune of oil and gas, at least until that runs out too.

So where have those young Texans gone? To the cities:

Texas’s spectacular growth is largely a story of its cities—especially of Austin, Dallas–Fort Worth, Houston, and San Antonio. These Big Four metropolitan areas, arranged in a layout known as the “Texas Triangle,” contain two-thirds of the state’s population and an even higher share of its jobs. Nationally, the four metros, which combined make up less than 6 percent of the American population, posted job growth equivalent to 30 percent of the United States’ total since the financial crash in 2007. Within Texas, they’ve accounted for almost 80 percent of the state’s population growth since 2000 and over 75 percent of its job growth. Meantime, a third of Texas counties, mostly rural, have actually been losing population.

Why would you stay in a dusty, isolated West Texas town like Post or Brownfield when there's no work and no prospect of work? Same goes - perhaps a little less starkly - for England. Young people are leaving what might be called secondary communities in the North - places like Oldham and Burnley as well as those coastal towns we've already mentioned. And if you've made up your mind to head elsewhere for work you're going to go where those prospects are best which in England means you head to London. It's this pattern of migration that the IF are picking up in their research not merely the consequences of England's failing planning and housing policies.

And the problem is that, while we can do something to make London less age segregated by housing policies, we'll struggle to respond to the desire of older people to live somewhere slower, quieter and more communal than a great big city. Or for that matter the wish of single, fun-loving young folk to live in big cities with great nightlife and loads of other young people. The problems IF identify are as much a consequence of wealth and choice as they are of sclerotic housing policies.

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Too old to rock and roll? Forget it! Welcome to 21st century ageing.

The so-called WASPI campaign for women affected by the change in their retirement age from 60 to 66 has been a feature of news and comment for a while now. It is one of those odd quirks - not always a good one - of policy changes that some people are caught in the change meaning that, while nearly everyone accepts that the new policy is a good one, they also want it not to affect those caught in the change. In a society where women are not excluded from the workforce and where efforts are made to treat those women equally, there is no justification for having a different retirement age for men and women. Nor, given average life expectance pushing 80 years, is there much sense in younger people being taxed to provide twenty years or more of living for those older people.

But I don't want to discuss this issue but rather for it to provide a little context for a look at age discrimination in the UK. This has interested me for a while but was prompted by someone tweeting a rather unfunny quip about all of UKIP members being old dodderers. It wasn't that UKIP's members aren't disproportionately older but that it was fine to criticise - with references to Stannah and Saga - a group of people purely on the basis of their age. My concern though isn't that some people are unpleasant but whether this disparaging of older people is reflected in a wider set of prejudices that result, not in rude words on Twitter, but in significantly different treatment.

One of the WASPI arguments (albeit not their strongest) is about work. Or rather that women in their 50s and 60s find it difficult to find work:

Living longer inevitably means working longer too. But that’s no help to older women who can’t just grit their teeth and work longer as a result of Osborne’s measure, because they’re not even working now: women made redundant late in their fifties, who can’t persuade employers that they’re not past it;

Now I'm happy to believe Gabby Hinsliff here. I want to believe her. But I find it difficult to find much real evidence that older people can't find work. The number of people over 65 working in the UK has nearly doubled since 2008 hardly an indication that the people made redundant in their 50s will fail to get a job. What I do suspect is that men and women who leave management or professional positions in their 50s find it hard to get a similar job on a similar wage - I've known people who had very senior jobs really struggle to get new employment. For a few there's also the issue of declining health. But there remains something of a cult of youth reflected in the attitudes of the, mostly younger, recruiters.

In short, faced with two equally qualified candidates the recruiter will pick the younger one - "they'll fit in better", "more scope for development", "planning for the future". All quite understandable until you think about the actual facts. The average time people stay in a given job has been falling for years - Forbes reported that 'millennials' (can I say how much I hate that unhelpful term) are switching jobs every 4.4 years. So if you've a well-qualified 59 year old woman in front of you, don't think 'she'll be retiring soon', think 'up to eight years contribution from a really experienced person - more if she wants to stay longer'.

Another, more subtle piece of ageism, is a political act - typified by former MP, David Willetts in his book 'The Pinch':

David Willetts shows how the baby boomer generation has attained this position at the expense of their children.Social, cultural and economic provision has been made for the reigning section of society, whilst the needs of the next generation have taken a back seat. Willetts argues that if our political, economic and cultural leaders do not begin to discharge their obligations to the future, the young people of today will be taxed more, work longer hours for less money, have lower social mobility and live in a degraded environment in order to pay for their parents' quality of life.

It's hard to see how we reconcile this polemical view of my generation - selfish, greedy and so forth - with the WASPI victimhood or the anecdotes of declining income as older people take the only jobs they can get, well below their skills and experience. Yet that is what's happening - we're told (with good reason) that more and more of the government's spending is directed towards the old and we're supposed to get agitated because some how this is an imposition on the young while at the same time the established image of the poor old folk struggling away on a pittance sticks in the public's mind.

And yes it's true that we should stop with this emotive nonsense about 'the family home' or 'life savings' and expect older people to use that money to look after themselves. It really is an imposition on younger people to expect them to provide for older people just so they can pass on loads of expensive assets to their children and grandchildren. Indeed this is the only proper response to the issue starkly described by James Delingpole writing about the NHS:

That’s the good side. Now the bad — and it’s so bad I’m surprised it isn’t more of a national scandal. We read a lot about a service stretched to breaking point but what few of us grasp — I didn’t until I saw it myself — is perhaps the main contributory factor to this: bed after bed occupied by elderly, often Alzheimer’s-afflicted patients who simply don’t belong in wards designed to treat acute, short-term conditions.

Round about 75% of all the money spent by the NHS is spent in one way or another on the elderly. It's not just the 'bed-blocking' Delingpole describes but the industrial quantities of medication that the average pensioner chuffs down everyday, the repeated visits to the GP and the collection of special tests, injections and clinics directed to pensioners. All of this - except the de facto role of hospitals as old folks' homes - is entirely justified since it means more and more people living happy, healthy and active lives into their dotage.

Not only are those old people expensive but there are also more and more of them selfishly and greedily staying alive longer and longer. And this will carry on (perhaps with the exception of rock stars whose lifestyles perhaps preclude longevity) as our contemporaries - I speak as one of those 'boomers' - dash about filling up theatre seats, cruise ships and tea shops while driving carefully within the speed limit in front of the next generation of future selfish old folk.

Now I know a lot of young people will go 'ewww' at this but they've to get used a world quite unlike the one I was brought up in - a world where fashion, music, food and drink, art and travel markets are dominated by the middle aged and upwards and where 'youth culture' is a minority sport in every sense of the word. And this isn't because we've sucked up all the cash but because there are loads of us, we've earned a load of money during our lives and the bit of that cash we've got left we're planning on spending living well.

The ageism that Gaby Hinsliff alluded to in her article about the WASPIs may indeed be the case (although it's hard to find solid evidence for it) but it's a fact that's days are numbered. Not because of some sort of national campaign or shouty MPs but because the market tells us you'd better start respecting older people if you want to stay in business.

There's a bar in Harrogate called (creatively) The Blues Bar and it does more or less what it says on the tin. We're there listening to some good blues rock and, looking around, the whole audience is our age or older - no plaid, no slippers and no comfortable stretch slacks but rather jeans, casual shirts and even the occasional band t-shirt. This is the reality of 21st century ageing.

So however po-faced David Willetts gets, I'm convinced that he's wrong. Us 'boomers' do have a duty - it's not to subsidise the next generation or to get trapped in an inter-generational version of the lump of labour fallacy but rather to have as good a time as possible in the two or three decades left to us on this earth. To travel, to party, to eat, drink and enjoy the bounty of the great world we've helped create - we are the richest generation there has ever been and we should enjoy that wealth rather than find reasons to say 'it's not fair'. The next generation, without a shadow of doubt will be even richer than us, will live even longer and - I hope - will have an even better time with their last couple of decades.

We've a long way to go yet. Organisations like Age UK (and the WASPIs for that matter) are still stuck playing the 'poor old folk' card when in large measure that simply isn't the case at all. For sure, there's age discrimination - from nasty little quips on Twitter through to the difficulties redundant managers have in getting jobs - but in the place that really matters, in the consumer markets, older people are the kings and queens. Let's enjoy it!

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No Dr Pirie, you can't say that. It ain't so. Taking the Adam Smith Institute to task on the elderly.

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The Adam Smith Institute is one of the good guys. I like their consistent defence of liberty and classical liberalism. Sam Bowman, the Research Director is one of those amazingly and eclectically brainy people that challenge how we look at things.

Sometimes they get stuff badly wrong:

Popular perception of the circumstances in which pensioners live is somewhat out of accord with modern reality. The image of a woman with a blanket over her shoulders, huddled over a fire and wondering if she can afford to toss another stick onto the flames does not accord with present day reality for most pensioners. Some 86% of pensioners live in households with assets in excess of £50,000. The average income of over 65s is £15,400. A young person working on current minimum wage for a normal working week earns just under £13,000. Yet the young person is taxed while the older person is guaranteed a triple locked pension that will rise with inflation, or average earnings, or 2%, whichever is the highest. On top of this comes a winter fuel allowance, a Christmas bonus and a free bus pass.

Don't get me wrong here - I have some sympathy with the argument being made (although the 'it's all baby boomers fault' schtick is a load of nonsense). But if you're to make an argument do it in a way that doesn't open you to having your argument blown out of the water.

"Some 86% of pensioners live in households with assets in excess of £50,000"

Yes. And this is a consequence of twenty or thirty years paying off a mortgage plus maybe fifty years squirrelling money away in a pension pot. Nothing to do with taking money from the young. And does Dr Pirie really think assets of just £50,000 is such a great big deal - especially since those assets, most commonly, represent the person's home and the savings they'll need to see out today's long retirement. More to the point, Dr Pirie is deliberately conflating assets with income to make his point.

"The average income of over 65s is £15,400. A young person working on current minimum wage for a normal working week earns just under £13,000. Yet the young person is taxed..."

First we've compared average income for the elderly with minimum wage for the young. Secondly most working young people are earning more than minimum wage. And while its true that the personal allowance is higher for those elderly over 77 (and they don't pay national insurance), it's not true to say that old people aren't taxed. And the basic state pension is included in that calculation.

This whole argument is out of the same box as the idea (which I'm sure the ASI would criticise) that somehow the rich have got that way at the expense of the poor. It really is nonsense - by all means say that pensioners get too much of a good deal but it's simply not the case that there's a great deal of 'redistribution from relatively poor young people to comparatively affluent older people'.


Finally most of those assets and that income will, in the end, get spent (quite rightly) on providing social care (mostly delivered by those low paid young people).

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Death doesn't become us - revisiting the case against 'assisted dying'

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My Mum has just gone into a nursing home. It hasn't been an easy time for my Dad and I feel slightly guilty that, for reasons of distance and business, I haven't been there as much as perhaps I should. But this isn't about me visiting my angst on you, dear reader, but rather about what it costs. Not because I think that johnny taxpayer should pick up the tab willy-nilly but rather to demonstrate the financial advantages - for families and the government - of people dying more quickly.

The fees at Mum's home run to about £1000 per week, which my maths tells me is £52,000 per year. And this is a hell of a lot of money. More, I suspect, than my dad ever earned in a year and comfortably more than the average earnings of people today (my Dad retired in 1997). Again, let's be clear that I do think our savings and assets are best directed to our own interests and this includes providing care - I really do not feel that I have any right to demand that young people with big mortgages and families to raise pay more tax so I can inherit Mum and Dad's house.

But this cost - £26,000 in a six month period - is one very good reason to question the seemingly inexorable move to what is called 'assisted dying'. Now when I read the advertisements placed by Dignity in Dying I am, like you will be, touched by the stories there of people's last days and how a quick exit would have saved them suffering. I don't doubt the sincerity of the people involved - knowing their beloved brother, wife or mother was dying they sought only to make what was left of their life less painful. And they think that helping these people to die would have been a release from that pain.

It's hard not to find the case compelling. So to help you understand my doubts, let me tell you something else about my Mum. Something I wrote some while ago in a little article called, "Death doesn't become us":

My Mum spent 25 years and more working with old people in and around Penge – delivering meals-on-wheels, driving the mini-buses and running Penge & Anerley Age Concern’s lunch club and day centre on Melvin Road. In this time she saw every sort of folk – from Mr Squirrel who worried that he couldn’t (at 96) dig the garden as in times past to Dr Arnott, communist party member, academic historian and employer of a maid.

Every day, my Mum would tell us, one or more of the people she saw would proclaim – in that depression of loneliness so common among the old and infirm – “I’m just a burden, I’d be better off dead”, or some similar formula of despair. Mum’s response would be to tell them not to be so silly, have a cup of tea and a chat.

But Mum’s view – informed by bitter experience – was that not all the relatives and carers took the same view as she did.

And this last sentence captures my concerns. You and I may be good, honest folk who wouldn't dream of having granny bumped off so we could inherit earlier. But can you be certain that others have our scruples? That there is no circumstance where 'six months to live' is liberally interpreted:

...where a depressed, slightly confused, sad old person signs to say they want to die, where the bureaucracy takes this as consent and Auntie Sissie or Grandpa Geoff is shipped safely across the Styx leaving his worldly goods behind for the inheritors to enjoy.

I know there will be safeguards. I'm sure people have considered how they would mitigate the possibility of the six months rule being abused. But I am less sure. My Mum told too many stories of rapacious and uncaring relatives, of useless solicitors and deadening, rule-bound social workers or doctors for me to be so sure that, despite the agony of those stories in Dignity in Dying's advertisement, we can go to a place where we deem it acceptable to kill another human being.

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Assisted suicide requires one person to kill another person. That's wrong.

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We have taken another step towards allowing the killing or the old and the ill - or 'assisted suicide' as the modern euphemism describes it.

The legislation of assisted suicide has moved a significant step closer after the Government made clear that it would not stand in the way of a change in the law.

Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs and peers – including Coalition ministers – will be given a free vote on a Bill that would enable doctors to help terminally ill patients to die.

Such a step would be terrible and tragic. I don't say this for reasons of religious conviction - I'm not sure I have much of that left - but for reasons of consequence and because we assume that the motives of the killer are always pure.

I've written before that my Mum worked with the elderly for over two decades - running a day centre, delivering meals-on-wheels and organising a whole range of other support and service. And one thing she said more than once was that almost every day she heard at least one old person wish they were dead.

"I'm just a burden" the old person would say. Or "I'm trapped in this flat, it's not worth living". Even "were I dead the grandkids could have the money".

And my mum, in her practical way, would tell them not to be so daft, to have a cup of tea and that she'd get her onto the minibus next week for the trip to Ramsgate. If mum knew the family or the neighbour she'd ask them to call roand - give a bit of cheer to a depressed old person.

Imagine instead the world of 'assisted suicide'. There'd be a form to fill in, a signature or other indication of assent to obtain and probably a certificate from a doctor confirming the old person was compus mentus. The minibus wouldn't be to Ramsgate but to a comfortable hospital bed where that old person would be made comfortable. The family might cluck round a bit but probably not - just enough to make sure the deed was done.

And then the doctor would kill that person. Dead.

Is this what we want in a civilised society? Is this progress?

I don't think so. It doesn't matter how you wrap it up, how many tragic circumstances are produced to support the proposals, 'assisted suicide' requires one person to kill another person. And that is wrong.

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The (lottery) funding of fussbucketry...

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You'll recall a fuss over how old folk are getting drunk and fall over rather too much for the liking of the public health fanatics. Indeed, it is one particular set of fussbuckets - the Royal College of Psychiatrists - who are leading the charge on this one:

A group of experts from the Royal College of Psychiatrists says there is a growing problem with substance abuse among older people, who they describe as society's "invisible addicts".

The report says a third those who experience problems with alcohol abuse do so later on in life, often as a result of big changes like retirement, bereavement or feelings of boredom, loneliness and depression.

But the extent of the drinking is hidden because unlike younger drinkers, more older people drink in their own homes, the report suggests.

Far be it for me to say that these older folk a drinking because, hell, they like getting sloshed and, since they've retired they now see absolutely no reason not to do so.

Any way these fussbuckets have persuaded the National Lottery to stump up a load of cash (£25 million to be precise) to:

The Big Lottery Fund will make a £25 million award to one partnership to develop a portfolio of projects which will also generate learning to influence and inform policy and practice in preventing alcohol misuse amongst older people aged 50 and over. The scale and scope of the investment means that the award will be made to a partnership of voluntary and community organisations that can work together, drawing upon wide ranging expertise to deliver projects and interventions that provide a wider evidence base of what works for policy makers and practitioners. Potential UK leads have until 24 October 2013 to submit their first stage application. 

Essentially the lottery are stumping up the cash for Alcohol Concern and others of that ilk to polish their lobbying skills and thereby to persuade government that old folk getting a little tipsy is a major public health crisis. Doubtless this money will fund campaigns to ban drinking in old folks homes, to develop new ways of 'screening' for drunken wrinklies (drunken in this context seems to be having drunk a couple of small sherries or one large whiskey) so that doctors can find yet another thing to hector and stress at said old folk.

When I think of all those cricket clubs wanting pavilions, those village halls that need fixing and those befriending services for lonely people that could use a bob or two, I can't help but think that all those people's lottery money is being misused to prosecute an ideological obsession of the public health business. Quite frankly I'm inclined more towards the Leg Iron attitude to old age and retirement:

I’m getting old too, I have seven years until my little pension kicks in and by then it’ll be just enough. I plan to spend most of it on booze and along with some other old scientists I know, maybe try class A drugs. Can’t touch them now, I need my brain to make money but at the end of life hey, get those experiences in while you can.

The lottery's there to help good causes and, however hard I try, I can make out lecturing old folk about drinking to be a good cause. This is just £25 million of unwanted, annoying and unhelpful nannying fussbucketry.

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The thinking man's nannying fussbucket

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Ah! Joan Bakewell! Dubbed the 'thinking man's crumpet' by Frank Muir many moons ago and a feature of every self-regarding, slightly left wing, artsy-farty programme ever since, the woman has become (for reasons that escape me) some sort of champion for the elderly.

Now, in line with the latest piece of prohibitionist propaganda, Ms Bakewell has transformed from crumpet to fussbucket overnight. Apparently, she has been told that every second old widow woman is now a complete lush, out of her brains on wine or G & T.

Barbara is in her seventies and since being widowed has lived alone. She and her husband were enjoying a happy retirement in France’s expat community. But his illness and death plunged her into gloom. Come 4pm, she starts on the wine and downs a bottle a day.

So Barbara needs a social life, perhaps someone like Joan to take her to the theatre or perhaps just shopping. Maybe just a road trip to the seaside or into the hills. Or an occasional visit to a nice cafe. But that's not what Joan is offering. She's offering a stern lecture about drinking and support for making Barbara's bottle of wine (or actually not unless M. Hollande plans to completely destroy his electoral chances by making wine more expensive) more pricey.

The saddest thing is that Joan Bakewell - who is approaching the grand old age of 80 in fine health - has got the drinking thing about nailed:

Which brings us back to those units. I won’t recite them now because they’re confusing and contradictory: what exactly is “half a standard glass of wine”? All I can say is that my drinking diary registered me as well over the limit. Yet I share the same way of life as many, never drink at lunchtime, rarely touch spirits. And I enjoy the conviviality of old age.

Joan's 'drinking diary' may exceed the limits recommended by the prohibitionists but she's doing fine and has no need - or reason - to change her drinking habits. Certainly not on the back of a pack of lies from the Church of Public Health about old people drinking.

Sadly Joan, once so liberal in outlook, has become just another nannying fussbucket. Indeed, the thinking man's nannying fussbucket!

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