Tuesday 14th March

We are okay, well most of us anyway.  Us older retired especially mostly have our own homes; there is always our health to worry about, but we all know we won’t live forever.  And besides we have mostly had a good life, the best music ever, an ever-improving standard of living, the opportunity of cheap travel, generous pensions and a free NHS to look after us.  Our kids, well mine anyway, are all doing okay too, they have their own houses, bought a few years ago with cheap mortgages and all in quite good and steady jobs.  But what of the next generation, what will they face as they reach their twenties?  Will University even be an option unless their parents can stump up some money, we had it free remember (okay, so I never went but if I had I would have had a grant and no fees and no loan to repay either).  Will there be jobs too; some estimates say that up to half the current jobs could disappear in twenty years with advances in computer technology.  It is now commonplace for many to have to retrain and take on a new career, but just what will the jobs of the future be like?  Will everyone effectively be self-employed and on short contracts, or waiting for their mobile to tell them they have a shift or even a couple of hours of work today?

And housing, the biggest crisis facing the young, what will the housing situation be then.  The proportion of people owning their own homes has slipped under 50% again, and the only real buyers in the market are those trading up or buy-to-let landlords.  The Bank of England policy of ridiculously low interest rates has simply inflated the price of houses – mortgages are cheap to repay so why not borrow more.  And soon I predict those interest rates will start to rise – watch America first.  And the private rental market is extortionate too, many landlords are simply raking it in, and conditions for many are desperate.  Short-term lets and the constant threat of increasing rents, families having to move time and time again are reminiscent of Victorian England where the poor shifted from pillar to post chasing jobs and cheap housing.

And of course, John Major’s dream of wealth cascading down through the generations only really applies to the wealthy.  Many, especially those living away from the hothouse of London have little to leave the next generations.  And even if my family aren’t too badly off, and I and my kids will I am sure do our best to help the grandchildren – I am a Socialist, and it is those less fortunate than my own immediate family that I also worry about.  The divisions and inequalities in society are widening  and looking back in forty years I am sure they will remember these as the good old days, before Brexit, before Trump, before the sell-off of the NHS, before the complete breakdown of society.